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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USASK/oai:usask.ca:etd-08132009-222204 |
| Date | 20 August 2009 |
| Creators | Sahib, Zina Hasib |
| Contributors | Vassileva, Julita, Deters, Ralph, Mandryk, Regan, Biggs, Lesley |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | University of Saskatchewan Library |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-08132009-222204/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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