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WISETales: Designing a New Niche Online Community for Women in Science and Engineering to Share Personal Stories

Date

2009

Journal Title

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Volume Title

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Type

Degree Level

Masters

Abstract

User contributions are vital to online communities; therefore it is important to know how to motivate user participation to ensure flow and quality of content, and to generate more traffic and revenue to community owners. In contrast to previous research which has explored the motivations of participants in already existing online communities, I investigate whether a new niche online community with a particular focus(women in Science and Engineering sharing their personal experiences through stories) can be started through a design that follows best practices for community design and principles derived from theories of motivation. The design of the WISETales community is based upon insights from literature in three main areas: social psychology, computer science, and gender studies. A social visualization which serves informational, navigational and motivational tool was also developed. One pilot study and two exploratory studies were carried out to evaluate the need for such a community, its design and interface usability. The design of the community and visualization, along with the results from the studies, their analysis and discussion are presented in the thesis.

Description

Keywords

visualization, social visualization, WISETales, Women in Science and Engineering, niche online community, build a new online community, online community design, cold start problem, human motivation, intrinsic motivation, gender studies

Citation

Degree

Master of Science (M.Sc.)

Department

Computer Science

Program

Computer Science

Citation

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