Design For Community 56
| Design For Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places | |
| author | Derek M. Powazek |
| pages | 307 |
| publisher | New Riders |
| rating | 9 |
| reviewer | Cliff Lampe |
| ISBN | 0735710759 |
| summary | Good stuff, nice to get the developers perspective. |
Since this is at heart a 'how to' book Powazek arranges the chapters in a sensible manner leading the potential community-builder through a series of potential decisions. One of the strengths of the book is Powazek's clear-headed take on the need for community elements in a website, and the first chapter counsels the potential designer to seriously consider whether building an online community is really the best use of his resources. Following chapters range from the sublime to the mundane, including design elements, programming tools to consider, interaction policies, moderation and finally when to know the community is dead. That last element is often neglected in books on building online communites, and is handled with unexpected candor and grace here.
Feature building advice given in this book is typified by Powazek's treatment of design as an element of building online community. When building features for interaction into your website, the following principles need to be considered:
- Design for your audience
- Design for flexibility
- Design for your experience
- Design for simplicity
- Design for readability
- Design for beauty
With each exhortation the author offers screen capture and narrative examples of people who have done it well and poorly. Other features like policies and moderation also are broken into these easily digestible, rarely contentious pieces intended to allow the casual user to consider the options for building community without feeling overwhelmed by issues involved. (As a facetious aside, I thought the designs for both kvetch and fray were terrible, but "do as I say, not as I do").
The real strength of each chapter is the interview with a Real Life (tm) community builder who describes an experience that provides support for the chapter. For example, the chapter on moderation includes examples of what is done at Slashdot, and then an email interview with Rob Malda in all of his curmudgeonly glory. Other interviews include, but are not limited to, Steven Johnson (FEED and Plastic.com) talking about design, Emma Taylor (nerve.com) on barriers to entry and Matt Williams (amazon) on commerce communities. Each community-builder gives a little blurb on what they do, and then goes on to some fairly decent reflections on what it means to run an online community. It ain't all rosy "Love Thy Neighbor" crap, and the narratives really help illustrate the real and solid design issues involved.
What's Good?
The narrative, as mentioned above, makes for compelling reading. Powazek seems to have really done some thinking on the issue, and the practical tone is a nice counterbalance to the Rheingoldian tradition of lionizing online communities. All books (well, this type anyway) are very dependent on audience. If you are a person who is just beginning to think about adding interactive elements to a site that you are running, or want to convince your boss to do the same, this is a very well put together book that addresses the major practical issues.
What's Bad?
The counterbalance to the above statement is that if you are already intimately involved with online communities, this treatment will seem rather superficial. 'Yeah but...' will come often to mind. Also, Powazek speaks with the voice of Authority to comfort his intended audience, but in reality the jury is still out on a lot of the benefits of different features in online communities, as well as the value added of user interaction in the first place. Correctly for this style of book, Powazek does not address those issues, but if they are your main interest, you may be driven mad by their absence here.
So What's In It For Me?
If you are thinking of starting an online community, you should get this book. The descriptions of major considerations, with examples from the realities of what's been done before, will be a helpful starting place, though by no means the end of your research. If you are not going to start a community, or are already embroiled in one, this book still has quite a bit to offer. The interviews with various community builders makes for fascinating reading, and could be expanded into a book all its own. Overall, this is not a revolutionary work redefining our concepts of virtual community, nor does it want to be. It is a handy book on designing online interactions, with compelling examples and rich narratives that make for a quick, fun read.
Reviewer notes:
Cliff is a doctoral student at the School of Information, University of Michigan. His research involves self-organizing websites, online deliberation and social captial effects of persistent online interaction. He can be reached at cacl@umich.edu
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I'll be getting this book... (Score:4, Interesting)
Oomind Open Education Community (Score:3, Interesting)
Oomind Open Education Community [oomind.com] So basically it works like this: the units of educational material are called Courselets. Each courselet is like an article writen about a specific subject. There's lots of flexibility here so even a poem can be a courselet. A courselet has ratings in ten different attributes including Beauty, Creativity, Insightfulness, Theoretical, etc. Registered users can moderate these ratings on a courselet. The ratings change based on a weighted average taking into account a user's level of influence. Courselets also have quiz questions. The questions can be written by anyone, not just the author of the courselet. The questions also have a score which is just a weight, and a price (!) which is in "oo-points". Oo-points are Oomind's internal unit of currency. They are purchased and redeemed for cash. When you answer a question and get it correct then the price of the question is taken from you and distributed three ways: 40% to the courselet author, 40% to the question author and 20% to the system. Oh: authors can use multiple aliases. When you answer the question correctly you also get "credit" - the 10 scores of the courselet are modified by the weight of the question and added to your "Portrait". Therefore your academic credit is cumulative rather than percentage based. It is also dynamic: as the scores of the courselets change, so do your learner scores. You also have educator scores which are the sum of the scores of all the courselets you have contributed (also dynamic). Courselet are free to be read by anyone and can be linked too from external sites - "knowledge wants to be free". In progress: group and messaging features. I really hope that people check it out and sign up. Right now there are about 80 registered users. The next 20 get 1000 oo-points free, and after that it is just 100 oo-points free. Also there aren't that many courselets right now (maybe about 100) and not too many questions on courselets. Please contribute! Thanks and please mod this up. I know this is blatant but I think it is of real interest for the Slashdot community.
Re:Where's The Cash? (Score:1, Interesting)
We're in an economy now where the excesses and waste of the dotcoms has thoroughly soured everyone on any computer-related business or technical innovation. Of the dotcoms, the ones in "online community" were the worst offenders. Remember theglobe.com? Peaked at $90. Was last seen trading at about a nickel. Even Slashdot's parent VA is failing (I hope Hemos and Taco got paid in cash, not stock).
The words "online community development" just say "scam artist" to me, and, more importantly, to those who would be willing to pay real money to use or finance any of those things.
Re:It's harder than it sounds (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, the reality of the matter is that it's just not possible. Online communities just happen. If you try to intentionally build one, you are wasting your time.