Analyzing the social capital valuechain in community network

interfacesCM Chewar D Scott McCrickard and John M Carroll

Center for Human-Computer Interaction and Department of Computer ScienceVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg Virginia USA

Abstract

Purpose ndash This work aims to probe how interface designers concerned with human-computerinteraction of community networks might use the theoretical constructs of social capital and activityawareness

Designmethodologyapproach ndash A design model for community network interfaces is introducedthat reconciles various computer-mediated communication research contributions with support fortypical community network scenarios of use Using this model an inspection is performed on existingcommunity network implementations (available December 2002) and then the adequacy of the modelfor informing the design process is examined

Findings ndash Based on the insight gained through this analysis a generic prototype and new userevaluation method are introduced that allow survey of user reaction to community network designelements under differing conditions It is shown how results obtained through this method frame avalue-chain understanding of conceptual tradeoffs

Research limitationsimplications ndash To demonstrate the new user evaluation method in ananalysis of critical design tradeoffs the issues of persistent virtual identity implementation and usagemotivation are probed However the evaluation method must be validated with other issues and testedby researchers that were not part of its creation process

Practical implications ndash Contributions from this paper include tools (a design model a genericprototype and an evaluation method) linking theory with community design artifacts building onprevious work Evaluators now have indicators for assessing community informatics

Originalityvalue ndash Interface designers of community networks and those interested in socialcapital theory will appreciate the link between practice and theory provided by this approach

Keywords Man machine interface Design Interface management

Paper type Research paper

IntroductionCommunity networks implement technology to tie together diverse membersDefinitions of community networks and related terminology can be confusing Mynattet al (1997) describe network communities as technology-mediated environments thatfacilitate a sense of community (SOC) among members One of the characteristics intheir description of community includes shared geographic area although they includeother possible bases of community as well Online communities or virtual communitiesdescribe a general gathering of interest without the condition and organizational basisof residential proximity or the goal of affecting real-world events or interactions(Preece and Maloney-Krichmar 2003 Haase et al 2002) Similarly as OrsquoNeil (2002)looks at community informatics indicators that can be used to gauge successfulcommunication technologies she thinks of community networks as supportingterritorial communities However to refer specifically to geographically collocatedgroups of people that use technology as a complement for real-world interaction others

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

wwwemeraldinsightcomresearchregister wwwemeraldinsightcom1066-2243htm

INTR153

262

Internet ResearchVol 15 No 3 2005pp 262-280q Emerald Group Publishing Limited1066-2243DOI 10110810662240510602681

use the term community networks (Carroll and Rosson 2001 Cohill and Kavanaugh1997 Schuler 1996a b) as we do here Schulerrsquos definition of community includes threeaspects of membership common residential location ldquolike mindedrdquo in the performanceof daily activities and a sense of belonging with a larger social unity This definitionprovides a reasonable and constrained articulation of our focus and is consistent withthe conceptual concerns in differentiating SOC in place-based communities andcommunities of interest (Blanchard and Markus 2002)

Toward effective community networksRecent efforts within the research community have begun to clarify the importantcharacteristics and questions for community networks Mynatt et al (1997) develop a setof characteristics uniquely demonstrated by network communities which can besummarized as a multi-user technologically mediated persistent context for activity andrealtime interaction ndash strongly suggesting an expectation of user identity rather thananonymity They also describe important design dimensions that apply to communitynetworks which include managing linkages between real and virtual elements Theycharacterize ldquosuccessrdquo as supporting long-term participation a variety of social rhythmsfor interaction a sense of membership and understanding of conventions and trust

Carroll and Rosson (2001) raise many critical unanswered questions about communitynetwork participants productive outcomes impacts on community life and effect oneconomic development ndash all probing specific sources of potential social capital andstressing the relationship between community networks and social capital production Theyalso note the differences in the variety of personal relationship types again implying theneed for virtual identities The distinctive characteristics of community networks providean opportunity to recognize and measure instances of community or collective efficacy theperception of the members regarding the communityrsquos ability to accomplish goals

Unfortunately actual implementations of community networks do not yet seem tobe effective in building social capital While it has been noted that the BlacksburgElectronic Village served as a catalyst for local technology infrastructure (Carroll andRosson 2001) actual remedies to the crisis of community appear to be only anecdotaland relatively short lived Carroll and Rosson also provide a summary of otherlack-luster evaluations and Schuler (1996a b) describes some of the challenges thathave consumed community networks OrsquoNeil (2002) also summarizes 18 evaluations ofcommunity networks noting that five theories of outcomes can be identified strongdemocracy social capital individual empowerment SOC and economic developmentOther research casts doubt on the role of social capital within broaderorganization-based knowledge management initiatives (Edelman et al 2004)suggesting that a better understanding of social capital ldquobridging and bondingelementsrdquo must be better understood for systems to be beneficially implemented

In order to postulate shortcomings of community networks in building socialcapital and to suggest improvements we focus on two questions

What design elements of community networks support production of social capitalIn other words we want to identify key components of the community networkinterface that should be fulfilling this critical system function and

What role should virtual identity play in a successful community network Wesuspect privacy and security concerns inherent with a persistent virtual identitymay be tradeoffs with mutual trust and awareness which seem to beprerequisites for social capital Is a balance or work-around possible

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

263

To this end the next section focuses on understanding the social capital buildingprocess Considering general support for collective activity may broaden our purviewso we also provide a review of design strategies supporting the social capital buildingprocess This suggests a general design model for community networks which weintroduce as a representation of the value chain within these interfaces and then use toanalyze several existing systems Based on the analysis we developed a genericprototype with design elements that may facilitate production of social capital Withthis prototype we obtained user feedback related to our question about persistentvirtual identity options in a community network framing a discussion of future workand design conception tradeoffs

Building social capitalHaase et al (2002) describe three forms of social capital that could be influenced bycommunity networks although their discussion is framed more generally around theinternet Network capital describes the frequency of contact with friends and otherrelations civic engagement describes participation level in political activities andvoluntary organizations and SOC describes the willingness and effectiveness formobilizing In this recent report they provide evidence that the internet is increasingall three forms of social capital OrsquoNeil (2002) provides indicators for both social capitaland SOC that form a guide for evaluation Blanchard and Markus (2002) summarizecomponent dimensions of SOC feelings of membership feelings of influenceintegration and fulfillment of needs and shared emotional connection They alsosummarize how each dimension is developed for example feelings of influence resultfrom the process of enforcing and establishing norms within a groupDevelopmentmaintenance processes for feelings of influence include establishmentof boundaries personal investment of time use of common symbols status rewardsshared values and the like Considering these processes it is difficult to imagine howthey could be effectively accomplished without virtually expressing and interpretingself and member identity within the community network We save a thorough analysisof the role of virtual identity for later

Strategies for collective activity supportAs we consider how community network implementations can be improved werecognize the potential that computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) conceptsmay introduce To frame this review we extract three topics (providing a persistenthistory of asynchronous activity facilitating coherent near-synchronouscommunication and linking the real and virtual worlds) that were introduced earlieras important characteristics of community networks and that would collectivelysupport all dimensions of the SOC development processes

Providing a persistent history of asynchronous activity Much recent work within theCSCW field has been directed toward providing common ground the context necessaryfor guiding effective collaboration and complex activities Without support forcommon ground collaborators are unable to effectively assess each otherrsquoscontributions or develop trust and common goals One technique for this support is adurable artifact depicting interaction over time such as conversation trees and threadeddiscussion boards which offer the key benefits of a coherent recording mechanism andperipheral awareness of groupwork (Smith et al 2000) A persistent history of

INTR153

264

interactions can also be enhanced with data-mining and visualization techniques suchas the Usenet patterns of participation augmented with thread-tree piano rollsociogram and tree map visualizations (Smith and Fiore 2001) ndash these provide apossible first-step in understanding the historical background required for deeperdiscussion Researchers have also identified specific aspects of groupware systems thatcontribute to successful archival communication including moderator support forfocusing topical discussion and streamlined history size that eliminates repetitivediscussion or unwieldy organization conducive to browsing (Whittaker 1996) Therecent articulation of activity awareness the knowledge of group project coordinationand execution that involves understanding the relationship of tasks and goals has beenfound to be a useful objective for designing and evaluating interfaces that inform groupmembers of current collective and sub-group progress and plans historicalperformance and opportunities for impromptu goal revision (Carroll et al 2003)

Facilitating coherent near-synchronous communication Other efforts have focusedon improving computer mediated conversation interfaces to more closely match normsof spoken interaction Tersquoeni (2001) argues that designers of communication supportsystems must balance the communication medium and message form and offers amodel for studying the communication process and selecting optimal configuration ofmedium and message attributes Tersquoeni lists several communication strategies that canbe augmented by computational solutions contextualization control attentionfocusing affectivity and perspective taking These general ideas can be useful forfurther probing formation of social capital through communication In other workSmith et al (2000) summarize deficiencies of chat interfaces found in sociologicalconversation analysis which include poor management of interruption andturn-taking ambiguity in message presentation order and awareness of real worldattention focus

While their threaded chat interface may begin to address these issues other chatalternatives (Vronay et al 1999) provide more comprehensive indication of remote userstatus with a set of last line immediate text and keyboard activity representationsassociated with each chat user This approach is consistent with Ackerman and Starrrsquos(1995) argument for the importance of social activity indicators based on a ldquosocialfacilitationrdquo effect that describes heightened mobilization of individual energy inconditions where others are known to be active In this area Erickson et alrsquos (20002002) ideas about social translucence are particularly exciting and farther reachingthan chat Social translucence refers to systems that allow visibility of sociallysignificant information awareness of othersrsquo actions and accountability for actionsperformed Through these properties community processes such as formation ofinteraction conventions peer pressure and imitation are supported which allowcoherent communication Abstracting individual actions enough to preserve a sense ofprivacy prevents transparency thus translucence To implement social translucenceminimalist visualizations called social proxies depict individual activity over time andin relation to the group providing subtle cues that convey context for activities such asparticipating in an auction or lecture and waiting in line (Erickson and Kellogg 2000)Another direction seeks to prompt opportunistic interaction of web site browsers bydepicting a dynamic lexical representation of their work context (gleaned by otherprocessing activities) and intelligently suggesting others with common situations(Budzik et al 2002)

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

265

Linking the real and virtual worlds With the ability to monitor design elementsshowing near-synchronous activity information of group and community membersusers may often want to keep an eye on such information while they devote most oftheir attention to other computing and non-computing tasks Notification systemsparticularly activity notifications allow users to receive such information of interestwithout introducing unwanted interruption to ongoing tasks often in a peripheral andubiquitous manner (McCrickard and Chewar 2003 McCrickard et al 2003) As we lookfor ways to link virtual and real world events and awareness notification optionsprovide answers Basic notification systems include AOL Instant Messengerrsquos BuddyList indicators and e-mail message status representations ndash users are able to learnsomething about collaborator actions at a glance More advanced systems provideinteractive maps that use real world metaphors to represent virtual community eventsHowever potential is vast considering work being done to seamlessly integratenotification with a userrsquos physical environment such as Ishii and Ullmerrsquo (1997)ambientROOM or the symbolic mappings of activity and presence information inAROMArsquos active wall display images (Pedersen and Sokoler 1997) and the movementtoward aesthetic and meaningful design of ubiquitous data (Hallnas and Redstrom2002) Other work leverages wireless technology and portable client devices to extendthe depth and range of notification possibilities (Kindberg et al 2002 Stathis et al2002) and uses recommender features to provide notification of availability and easyaccess to group collections like NuggetMine (Goecks and Cosley 2002)

The role of individual identityIn our survey of these strategies for collective activity support of critical communitynetwork features and social capital production the reliance on recognition ofestablished user identity is strong However as Erickson and Kellogg (2000) note thereis a critical tradeoff associated with the tension between user privacy requirements andproviding persistent (and increasingly broad) visibility of their activities Identitytradeoffs within community networks are even greater ndash in exchange for our privacywe expect to gain a sense of security and well-being Walters (2001) makes an excellentargument about this community component of additive well-being innate protection ofprivacy rights in communal action and possibilities for activity translucence availablethrough privacy-enhancing technologies (PET) such as encrypted digital pseudonymsEspecially poignant is his observation that PET designs must ldquocontain doors orswitches by which the subject may remain ldquoreachablerdquo provided certain conditions setby him or her are metrdquo in order to allow the production of social capital and preservedesire for anonymity This reinforces our research questions motivating the need tounderstand how persistent virtual identity impacts the design elements of communitynetworks and their social capital production process

A design model for community networksTo investigate how the underlying notion of persistent virtual identity could impactthe design of community networks and acceleration of social capital production weintroduce a design model that reconciles the promising internet andcomputer-mediated communication research contributions with support for typicalcommunity network scenarios of use As a general design model this conceptionaddresses what are believed to be typical user goals and interaction intentions Since

INTR153

266

we are working under the assumption that the primary goal of a community network isto provide a source of social capital (Carroll and Rosson 2001) we revisit the socialcapital building processes which we cross-reference with the collective activitysupport strategies to reveal discrete stages of necessary user interaction facilitation

Feelings of membership result from understanding social conventions devotingtime to group efforts and using group symbols (Blanchard and Markus 2002) which isbest supported by notification for activity awareness and receipt of social cuesnecessary for visibility awareness and development of accountability Thereforeactivity notification is the first stage in our design model (Figure 1) Activitynotification leads to social translucence (the second stage) which primarily supportsthe second dimension of SOC ndash feelings of influence Here coherent communicationadvances the production of social capital especially network capital SOC andincreased perception of collective efficacy result creating a collective efficacy context(stage three) if supported by a sense of history this further inspires confidence in thedimension of integration and fulfillment of needs The final dimension sharedemotional connection is supported by activity notification social translucence and ahistorical context Coupled with this social capital can be focused into distributedcommunity activities our fourth stage that allows the cycle to be repeated indefinitelyFigure 1 provides a succinct statement of each stagersquos basic purpose andimplementation expectations This model represents the value chain of social capitalndash the links necessary for accumulation of SOC Understanding the value chain can beuseful for analysis of design implementations and issues inherent within each stage

Figure 1General design model of a

community networkhighlighting four stages of

social capital production

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

267

Typical scenarios of useTo simplify discussion of this model and further analysis we focus on two scenarioswhich may describe the most typical community network users one involving aldquoservice-providing actorrdquo and another involving a ldquoservice-demanding actorrdquo Possiblecommunity network needs at each design model stage are reflected in Table I

In the first scenario (scenario SP) the user asks ldquowhat can I do for my communityrdquowith a strong spirit of undirected volunteerism and consults the community network tofind out This user is likely to be interested in learning about various issues identifyingleaders or more experienced members fitting individual talents to community needsand carrying out and receiving recognition for valued actions

In contrast the user in the second scenario (scenario SD) asks ldquowhat can mycommunity do for merdquo demanding some type of action or service that he feels he isowed This user is likely to value feedback about his issue in the form ofacknowledgement and shared interest or identification of others with similar issues Hewill also value a forum that allows negotiation or planning and coordination of action

As we use the design model to analyze existing community networks and laterwhen we conduct user testing on our persistent virtual identity question we considerhow the design implementations support each of these two scenarios (SP and SD)These scenarios are carried over in our user testing example later in the paper

Analysis of existing community networksUsing our model we analyzed the designs of six existing community networks toidentify breakdowns in the social capital production process The main purpose of thiswas to exercise the model itself and get a sense of how well it helps focus attention oninterface elements that contribute to SOC However we also wanted to demonstrate amethodical review of existing systems to provide a more solid basis for a genericprototype design The six community networks reviewed (in Dec 2002) includeBlacksburg electronic village (wwwbevnet) columbiaMOcom (wwwcolumbiamocom) Danbury Community Network (wwwdanburyorg) Davis Community Network(www2dcnorgdavisorgsDCN) Hamilton CommunityNet (wwwfreenethamiltononca) and Prairienet (wwwprairienetorg) These six community networks were chosento represent a wide variety of community sizes geographic locations andelaborateness of interface functionality Each community network was pre-selectedfrom a pool of sites that had been previously reviewed or cited by others researchingvarious aspects of community network interface design Although we did not considertheir evaluations before forming our own we thought it would be most interesting todemonstrate our design model around interfaces that already had earned researchinterest

Half of the interfaces were analyzed in the context of each scenario SP and SDAnalysis procedures invoked inspection of interface functions to assess support foreach design model stage described with a rating of ldquononerdquo ldquolowrdquo ldquosomerdquo or ldquostrongrdquodepending on the degree that interface artifacts instantiated the purpose andimplementation expectations (Figure 1) Ratings for each of the six communitynetworks are provided in Table II For most ratings a brief note describes the specificartifacts that support the stage Additionally a column is provided to noteimplementation details of any persistent virtual identity

INTR153

268

To this end the next section focuses on understanding the social capital buildingprocess Considering general support for collective activity may broaden our purviewso we also provide a review of design strategies supporting the social capital buildingprocess This suggests a general design model for community networks which weintroduce as a representation of the value chain within these interfaces and then use toanalyze several existing systems Based on the analysis we developed a genericprototype with design elements that may facilitate production of social capital Withthis prototype we obtained user feedback related to our question about persistentvirtual identity options in a community network framing a discussion of future workand design conception tradeoffs

Building social capitalHaase et al (2002) describe three forms of social capital that could be influenced bycommunity networks although their discussion is framed more generally around theinternet Network capital describes the frequency of contact with friends and otherrelations civic engagement describes participation level in political activities andvoluntary organizations and SOC describes the willingness and effectiveness formobilizing In this recent report they provide evidence that the internet is increasingall three forms of social capital OrsquoNeil (2002) provides indicators for both social capitaland SOC that form a guide for evaluation Blanchard and Markus (2002) summarizecomponent dimensions of SOC feelings of membership feelings of influenceintegration and fulfillment of needs and shared emotional connection They alsosummarize how each dimension is developed for example feelings of influence resultfrom the process of enforcing and establishing norms within a groupDevelopmentmaintenance processes for feelings of influence include establishmentof boundaries personal investment of time use of common symbols status rewardsshared values and the like Considering these processes it is difficult to imagine howthey could be effectively accomplished without virtually expressing and interpretingself and member identity within the community network We save a thorough analysisof the role of virtual identity for later

Strategies for collective activity supportAs we consider how community network implementations can be improved werecognize the potential that computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) conceptsmay introduce To frame this review we extract three topics (providing a persistenthistory of asynchronous activity facilitating coherent near-synchronouscommunication and linking the real and virtual worlds) that were introduced earlieras important characteristics of community networks and that would collectivelysupport all dimensions of the SOC development processes

Providing a persistent history of asynchronous activity Much recent work within theCSCW field has been directed toward providing common ground the context necessaryfor guiding effective collaboration and complex activities Without support forcommon ground collaborators are unable to effectively assess each otherrsquoscontributions or develop trust and common goals One technique for this support is adurable artifact depicting interaction over time such as conversation trees and threadeddiscussion boards which offer the key benefits of a coherent recording mechanism andperipheral awareness of groupwork (Smith et al 2000) A persistent history of

INTR153

264

interactions can also be enhanced with data-mining and visualization techniques suchas the Usenet patterns of participation augmented with thread-tree piano rollsociogram and tree map visualizations (Smith and Fiore 2001) ndash these provide apossible first-step in understanding the historical background required for deeperdiscussion Researchers have also identified specific aspects of groupware systems thatcontribute to successful archival communication including moderator support forfocusing topical discussion and streamlined history size that eliminates repetitivediscussion or unwieldy organization conducive to browsing (Whittaker 1996) Therecent articulation of activity awareness the knowledge of group project coordinationand execution that involves understanding the relationship of tasks and goals has beenfound to be a useful objective for designing and evaluating interfaces that inform groupmembers of current collective and sub-group progress and plans historicalperformance and opportunities for impromptu goal revision (Carroll et al 2003)

Facilitating coherent near-synchronous communication Other efforts have focusedon improving computer mediated conversation interfaces to more closely match normsof spoken interaction Tersquoeni (2001) argues that designers of communication supportsystems must balance the communication medium and message form and offers amodel for studying the communication process and selecting optimal configuration ofmedium and message attributes Tersquoeni lists several communication strategies that canbe augmented by computational solutions contextualization control attentionfocusing affectivity and perspective taking These general ideas can be useful forfurther probing formation of social capital through communication In other workSmith et al (2000) summarize deficiencies of chat interfaces found in sociologicalconversation analysis which include poor management of interruption andturn-taking ambiguity in message presentation order and awareness of real worldattention focus

While their threaded chat interface may begin to address these issues other chatalternatives (Vronay et al 1999) provide more comprehensive indication of remote userstatus with a set of last line immediate text and keyboard activity representationsassociated with each chat user This approach is consistent with Ackerman and Starrrsquos(1995) argument for the importance of social activity indicators based on a ldquosocialfacilitationrdquo effect that describes heightened mobilization of individual energy inconditions where others are known to be active In this area Erickson et alrsquos (20002002) ideas about social translucence are particularly exciting and farther reachingthan chat Social translucence refers to systems that allow visibility of sociallysignificant information awareness of othersrsquo actions and accountability for actionsperformed Through these properties community processes such as formation ofinteraction conventions peer pressure and imitation are supported which allowcoherent communication Abstracting individual actions enough to preserve a sense ofprivacy prevents transparency thus translucence To implement social translucenceminimalist visualizations called social proxies depict individual activity over time andin relation to the group providing subtle cues that convey context for activities such asparticipating in an auction or lecture and waiting in line (Erickson and Kellogg 2000)Another direction seeks to prompt opportunistic interaction of web site browsers bydepicting a dynamic lexical representation of their work context (gleaned by otherprocessing activities) and intelligently suggesting others with common situations(Budzik et al 2002)

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

265

Linking the real and virtual worlds With the ability to monitor design elementsshowing near-synchronous activity information of group and community membersusers may often want to keep an eye on such information while they devote most oftheir attention to other computing and non-computing tasks Notification systemsparticularly activity notifications allow users to receive such information of interestwithout introducing unwanted interruption to ongoing tasks often in a peripheral andubiquitous manner (McCrickard and Chewar 2003 McCrickard et al 2003) As we lookfor ways to link virtual and real world events and awareness notification optionsprovide answers Basic notification systems include AOL Instant Messengerrsquos BuddyList indicators and e-mail message status representations ndash users are able to learnsomething about collaborator actions at a glance More advanced systems provideinteractive maps that use real world metaphors to represent virtual community eventsHowever potential is vast considering work being done to seamlessly integratenotification with a userrsquos physical environment such as Ishii and Ullmerrsquo (1997)ambientROOM or the symbolic mappings of activity and presence information inAROMArsquos active wall display images (Pedersen and Sokoler 1997) and the movementtoward aesthetic and meaningful design of ubiquitous data (Hallnas and Redstrom2002) Other work leverages wireless technology and portable client devices to extendthe depth and range of notification possibilities (Kindberg et al 2002 Stathis et al2002) and uses recommender features to provide notification of availability and easyaccess to group collections like NuggetMine (Goecks and Cosley 2002)

The role of individual identityIn our survey of these strategies for collective activity support of critical communitynetwork features and social capital production the reliance on recognition ofestablished user identity is strong However as Erickson and Kellogg (2000) note thereis a critical tradeoff associated with the tension between user privacy requirements andproviding persistent (and increasingly broad) visibility of their activities Identitytradeoffs within community networks are even greater ndash in exchange for our privacywe expect to gain a sense of security and well-being Walters (2001) makes an excellentargument about this community component of additive well-being innate protection ofprivacy rights in communal action and possibilities for activity translucence availablethrough privacy-enhancing technologies (PET) such as encrypted digital pseudonymsEspecially poignant is his observation that PET designs must ldquocontain doors orswitches by which the subject may remain ldquoreachablerdquo provided certain conditions setby him or her are metrdquo in order to allow the production of social capital and preservedesire for anonymity This reinforces our research questions motivating the need tounderstand how persistent virtual identity impacts the design elements of communitynetworks and their social capital production process

A design model for community networksTo investigate how the underlying notion of persistent virtual identity could impactthe design of community networks and acceleration of social capital production weintroduce a design model that reconciles the promising internet andcomputer-mediated communication research contributions with support for typicalcommunity network scenarios of use As a general design model this conceptionaddresses what are believed to be typical user goals and interaction intentions Since

INTR153

266

we are working under the assumption that the primary goal of a community network isto provide a source of social capital (Carroll and Rosson 2001) we revisit the socialcapital building processes which we cross-reference with the collective activitysupport strategies to reveal discrete stages of necessary user interaction facilitation

Feelings of membership result from understanding social conventions devotingtime to group efforts and using group symbols (Blanchard and Markus 2002) which isbest supported by notification for activity awareness and receipt of social cuesnecessary for visibility awareness and development of accountability Thereforeactivity notification is the first stage in our design model (Figure 1) Activitynotification leads to social translucence (the second stage) which primarily supportsthe second dimension of SOC ndash feelings of influence Here coherent communicationadvances the production of social capital especially network capital SOC andincreased perception of collective efficacy result creating a collective efficacy context(stage three) if supported by a sense of history this further inspires confidence in thedimension of integration and fulfillment of needs The final dimension sharedemotional connection is supported by activity notification social translucence and ahistorical context Coupled with this social capital can be focused into distributedcommunity activities our fourth stage that allows the cycle to be repeated indefinitelyFigure 1 provides a succinct statement of each stagersquos basic purpose andimplementation expectations This model represents the value chain of social capitalndash the links necessary for accumulation of SOC Understanding the value chain can beuseful for analysis of design implementations and issues inherent within each stage

Figure 1General design model of a

community networkhighlighting four stages of

social capital production

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

267

Typical scenarios of useTo simplify discussion of this model and further analysis we focus on two scenarioswhich may describe the most typical community network users one involving aldquoservice-providing actorrdquo and another involving a ldquoservice-demanding actorrdquo Possiblecommunity network needs at each design model stage are reflected in Table I

In the first scenario (scenario SP) the user asks ldquowhat can I do for my communityrdquowith a strong spirit of undirected volunteerism and consults the community network tofind out This user is likely to be interested in learning about various issues identifyingleaders or more experienced members fitting individual talents to community needsand carrying out and receiving recognition for valued actions

In contrast the user in the second scenario (scenario SD) asks ldquowhat can mycommunity do for merdquo demanding some type of action or service that he feels he isowed This user is likely to value feedback about his issue in the form ofacknowledgement and shared interest or identification of others with similar issues Hewill also value a forum that allows negotiation or planning and coordination of action

As we use the design model to analyze existing community networks and laterwhen we conduct user testing on our persistent virtual identity question we considerhow the design implementations support each of these two scenarios (SP and SD)These scenarios are carried over in our user testing example later in the paper

Analysis of existing community networksUsing our model we analyzed the designs of six existing community networks toidentify breakdowns in the social capital production process The main purpose of thiswas to exercise the model itself and get a sense of how well it helps focus attention oninterface elements that contribute to SOC However we also wanted to demonstrate amethodical review of existing systems to provide a more solid basis for a genericprototype design The six community networks reviewed (in Dec 2002) includeBlacksburg electronic village (wwwbevnet) columbiaMOcom (wwwcolumbiamocom) Danbury Community Network (wwwdanburyorg) Davis Community Network(www2dcnorgdavisorgsDCN) Hamilton CommunityNet (wwwfreenethamiltononca) and Prairienet (wwwprairienetorg) These six community networks were chosento represent a wide variety of community sizes geographic locations andelaborateness of interface functionality Each community network was pre-selectedfrom a pool of sites that had been previously reviewed or cited by others researchingvarious aspects of community network interface design Although we did not considertheir evaluations before forming our own we thought it would be most interesting todemonstrate our design model around interfaces that already had earned researchinterest

Half of the interfaces were analyzed in the context of each scenario SP and SDAnalysis procedures invoked inspection of interface functions to assess support foreach design model stage described with a rating of ldquononerdquo ldquolowrdquo ldquosomerdquo or ldquostrongrdquodepending on the degree that interface artifacts instantiated the purpose andimplementation expectations (Figure 1) Ratings for each of the six communitynetworks are provided in Table II For most ratings a brief note describes the specificartifacts that support the stage Additionally a column is provided to noteimplementation details of any persistent virtual identity

INTR153

268

interactions can also be enhanced with data-mining and visualization techniques suchas the Usenet patterns of participation augmented with thread-tree piano rollsociogram and tree map visualizations (Smith and Fiore 2001) ndash these provide apossible first-step in understanding the historical background required for deeperdiscussion Researchers have also identified specific aspects of groupware systems thatcontribute to successful archival communication including moderator support forfocusing topical discussion and streamlined history size that eliminates repetitivediscussion or unwieldy organization conducive to browsing (Whittaker 1996) Therecent articulation of activity awareness the knowledge of group project coordinationand execution that involves understanding the relationship of tasks and goals has beenfound to be a useful objective for designing and evaluating interfaces that inform groupmembers of current collective and sub-group progress and plans historicalperformance and opportunities for impromptu goal revision (Carroll et al 2003)

Facilitating coherent near-synchronous communication Other efforts have focusedon improving computer mediated conversation interfaces to more closely match normsof spoken interaction Tersquoeni (2001) argues that designers of communication supportsystems must balance the communication medium and message form and offers amodel for studying the communication process and selecting optimal configuration ofmedium and message attributes Tersquoeni lists several communication strategies that canbe augmented by computational solutions contextualization control attentionfocusing affectivity and perspective taking These general ideas can be useful forfurther probing formation of social capital through communication In other workSmith et al (2000) summarize deficiencies of chat interfaces found in sociologicalconversation analysis which include poor management of interruption andturn-taking ambiguity in message presentation order and awareness of real worldattention focus

While their threaded chat interface may begin to address these issues other chatalternatives (Vronay et al 1999) provide more comprehensive indication of remote userstatus with a set of last line immediate text and keyboard activity representationsassociated with each chat user This approach is consistent with Ackerman and Starrrsquos(1995) argument for the importance of social activity indicators based on a ldquosocialfacilitationrdquo effect that describes heightened mobilization of individual energy inconditions where others are known to be active In this area Erickson et alrsquos (20002002) ideas about social translucence are particularly exciting and farther reachingthan chat Social translucence refers to systems that allow visibility of sociallysignificant information awareness of othersrsquo actions and accountability for actionsperformed Through these properties community processes such as formation ofinteraction conventions peer pressure and imitation are supported which allowcoherent communication Abstracting individual actions enough to preserve a sense ofprivacy prevents transparency thus translucence To implement social translucenceminimalist visualizations called social proxies depict individual activity over time andin relation to the group providing subtle cues that convey context for activities such asparticipating in an auction or lecture and waiting in line (Erickson and Kellogg 2000)Another direction seeks to prompt opportunistic interaction of web site browsers bydepicting a dynamic lexical representation of their work context (gleaned by otherprocessing activities) and intelligently suggesting others with common situations(Budzik et al 2002)

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

265

Linking the real and virtual worlds With the ability to monitor design elementsshowing near-synchronous activity information of group and community membersusers may often want to keep an eye on such information while they devote most oftheir attention to other computing and non-computing tasks Notification systemsparticularly activity notifications allow users to receive such information of interestwithout introducing unwanted interruption to ongoing tasks often in a peripheral andubiquitous manner (McCrickard and Chewar 2003 McCrickard et al 2003) As we lookfor ways to link virtual and real world events and awareness notification optionsprovide answers Basic notification systems include AOL Instant Messengerrsquos BuddyList indicators and e-mail message status representations ndash users are able to learnsomething about collaborator actions at a glance More advanced systems provideinteractive maps that use real world metaphors to represent virtual community eventsHowever potential is vast considering work being done to seamlessly integratenotification with a userrsquos physical environment such as Ishii and Ullmerrsquo (1997)ambientROOM or the symbolic mappings of activity and presence information inAROMArsquos active wall display images (Pedersen and Sokoler 1997) and the movementtoward aesthetic and meaningful design of ubiquitous data (Hallnas and Redstrom2002) Other work leverages wireless technology and portable client devices to extendthe depth and range of notification possibilities (Kindberg et al 2002 Stathis et al2002) and uses recommender features to provide notification of availability and easyaccess to group collections like NuggetMine (Goecks and Cosley 2002)

The role of individual identityIn our survey of these strategies for collective activity support of critical communitynetwork features and social capital production the reliance on recognition ofestablished user identity is strong However as Erickson and Kellogg (2000) note thereis a critical tradeoff associated with the tension between user privacy requirements andproviding persistent (and increasingly broad) visibility of their activities Identitytradeoffs within community networks are even greater ndash in exchange for our privacywe expect to gain a sense of security and well-being Walters (2001) makes an excellentargument about this community component of additive well-being innate protection ofprivacy rights in communal action and possibilities for activity translucence availablethrough privacy-enhancing technologies (PET) such as encrypted digital pseudonymsEspecially poignant is his observation that PET designs must ldquocontain doors orswitches by which the subject may remain ldquoreachablerdquo provided certain conditions setby him or her are metrdquo in order to allow the production of social capital and preservedesire for anonymity This reinforces our research questions motivating the need tounderstand how persistent virtual identity impacts the design elements of communitynetworks and their social capital production process

A design model for community networksTo investigate how the underlying notion of persistent virtual identity could impactthe design of community networks and acceleration of social capital production weintroduce a design model that reconciles the promising internet andcomputer-mediated communication research contributions with support for typicalcommunity network scenarios of use As a general design model this conceptionaddresses what are believed to be typical user goals and interaction intentions Since

INTR153

266

we are working under the assumption that the primary goal of a community network isto provide a source of social capital (Carroll and Rosson 2001) we revisit the socialcapital building processes which we cross-reference with the collective activitysupport strategies to reveal discrete stages of necessary user interaction facilitation

Feelings of membership result from understanding social conventions devotingtime to group efforts and using group symbols (Blanchard and Markus 2002) which isbest supported by notification for activity awareness and receipt of social cuesnecessary for visibility awareness and development of accountability Thereforeactivity notification is the first stage in our design model (Figure 1) Activitynotification leads to social translucence (the second stage) which primarily supportsthe second dimension of SOC ndash feelings of influence Here coherent communicationadvances the production of social capital especially network capital SOC andincreased perception of collective efficacy result creating a collective efficacy context(stage three) if supported by a sense of history this further inspires confidence in thedimension of integration and fulfillment of needs The final dimension sharedemotional connection is supported by activity notification social translucence and ahistorical context Coupled with this social capital can be focused into distributedcommunity activities our fourth stage that allows the cycle to be repeated indefinitelyFigure 1 provides a succinct statement of each stagersquos basic purpose andimplementation expectations This model represents the value chain of social capitalndash the links necessary for accumulation of SOC Understanding the value chain can beuseful for analysis of design implementations and issues inherent within each stage

Figure 1General design model of a

community networkhighlighting four stages of

social capital production

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

267

Typical scenarios of useTo simplify discussion of this model and further analysis we focus on two scenarioswhich may describe the most typical community network users one involving aldquoservice-providing actorrdquo and another involving a ldquoservice-demanding actorrdquo Possiblecommunity network needs at each design model stage are reflected in Table I

In the first scenario (scenario SP) the user asks ldquowhat can I do for my communityrdquowith a strong spirit of undirected volunteerism and consults the community network tofind out This user is likely to be interested in learning about various issues identifyingleaders or more experienced members fitting individual talents to community needsand carrying out and receiving recognition for valued actions

In contrast the user in the second scenario (scenario SD) asks ldquowhat can mycommunity do for merdquo demanding some type of action or service that he feels he isowed This user is likely to value feedback about his issue in the form ofacknowledgement and shared interest or identification of others with similar issues Hewill also value a forum that allows negotiation or planning and coordination of action

As we use the design model to analyze existing community networks and laterwhen we conduct user testing on our persistent virtual identity question we considerhow the design implementations support each of these two scenarios (SP and SD)These scenarios are carried over in our user testing example later in the paper

Analysis of existing community networksUsing our model we analyzed the designs of six existing community networks toidentify breakdowns in the social capital production process The main purpose of thiswas to exercise the model itself and get a sense of how well it helps focus attention oninterface elements that contribute to SOC However we also wanted to demonstrate amethodical review of existing systems to provide a more solid basis for a genericprototype design The six community networks reviewed (in Dec 2002) includeBlacksburg electronic village (wwwbevnet) columbiaMOcom (wwwcolumbiamocom) Danbury Community Network (wwwdanburyorg) Davis Community Network(www2dcnorgdavisorgsDCN) Hamilton CommunityNet (wwwfreenethamiltononca) and Prairienet (wwwprairienetorg) These six community networks were chosento represent a wide variety of community sizes geographic locations andelaborateness of interface functionality Each community network was pre-selectedfrom a pool of sites that had been previously reviewed or cited by others researchingvarious aspects of community network interface design Although we did not considertheir evaluations before forming our own we thought it would be most interesting todemonstrate our design model around interfaces that already had earned researchinterest

Half of the interfaces were analyzed in the context of each scenario SP and SDAnalysis procedures invoked inspection of interface functions to assess support foreach design model stage described with a rating of ldquononerdquo ldquolowrdquo ldquosomerdquo or ldquostrongrdquodepending on the degree that interface artifacts instantiated the purpose andimplementation expectations (Figure 1) Ratings for each of the six communitynetworks are provided in Table II For most ratings a brief note describes the specificartifacts that support the stage Additionally a column is provided to noteimplementation details of any persistent virtual identity

INTR153

268

Linking the real and virtual worlds With the ability to monitor design elementsshowing near-synchronous activity information of group and community membersusers may often want to keep an eye on such information while they devote most oftheir attention to other computing and non-computing tasks Notification systemsparticularly activity notifications allow users to receive such information of interestwithout introducing unwanted interruption to ongoing tasks often in a peripheral andubiquitous manner (McCrickard and Chewar 2003 McCrickard et al 2003) As we lookfor ways to link virtual and real world events and awareness notification optionsprovide answers Basic notification systems include AOL Instant Messengerrsquos BuddyList indicators and e-mail message status representations ndash users are able to learnsomething about collaborator actions at a glance More advanced systems provideinteractive maps that use real world metaphors to represent virtual community eventsHowever potential is vast considering work being done to seamlessly integratenotification with a userrsquos physical environment such as Ishii and Ullmerrsquo (1997)ambientROOM or the symbolic mappings of activity and presence information inAROMArsquos active wall display images (Pedersen and Sokoler 1997) and the movementtoward aesthetic and meaningful design of ubiquitous data (Hallnas and Redstrom2002) Other work leverages wireless technology and portable client devices to extendthe depth and range of notification possibilities (Kindberg et al 2002 Stathis et al2002) and uses recommender features to provide notification of availability and easyaccess to group collections like NuggetMine (Goecks and Cosley 2002)

The role of individual identityIn our survey of these strategies for collective activity support of critical communitynetwork features and social capital production the reliance on recognition ofestablished user identity is strong However as Erickson and Kellogg (2000) note thereis a critical tradeoff associated with the tension between user privacy requirements andproviding persistent (and increasingly broad) visibility of their activities Identitytradeoffs within community networks are even greater ndash in exchange for our privacywe expect to gain a sense of security and well-being Walters (2001) makes an excellentargument about this community component of additive well-being innate protection ofprivacy rights in communal action and possibilities for activity translucence availablethrough privacy-enhancing technologies (PET) such as encrypted digital pseudonymsEspecially poignant is his observation that PET designs must ldquocontain doors orswitches by which the subject may remain ldquoreachablerdquo provided certain conditions setby him or her are metrdquo in order to allow the production of social capital and preservedesire for anonymity This reinforces our research questions motivating the need tounderstand how persistent virtual identity impacts the design elements of communitynetworks and their social capital production process

A design model for community networksTo investigate how the underlying notion of persistent virtual identity could impactthe design of community networks and acceleration of social capital production weintroduce a design model that reconciles the promising internet andcomputer-mediated communication research contributions with support for typicalcommunity network scenarios of use As a general design model this conceptionaddresses what are believed to be typical user goals and interaction intentions Since

INTR153

266

we are working under the assumption that the primary goal of a community network isto provide a source of social capital (Carroll and Rosson 2001) we revisit the socialcapital building processes which we cross-reference with the collective activitysupport strategies to reveal discrete stages of necessary user interaction facilitation

Feelings of membership result from understanding social conventions devotingtime to group efforts and using group symbols (Blanchard and Markus 2002) which isbest supported by notification for activity awareness and receipt of social cuesnecessary for visibility awareness and development of accountability Thereforeactivity notification is the first stage in our design model (Figure 1) Activitynotification leads to social translucence (the second stage) which primarily supportsthe second dimension of SOC ndash feelings of influence Here coherent communicationadvances the production of social capital especially network capital SOC andincreased perception of collective efficacy result creating a collective efficacy context(stage three) if supported by a sense of history this further inspires confidence in thedimension of integration and fulfillment of needs The final dimension sharedemotional connection is supported by activity notification social translucence and ahistorical context Coupled with this social capital can be focused into distributedcommunity activities our fourth stage that allows the cycle to be repeated indefinitelyFigure 1 provides a succinct statement of each stagersquos basic purpose andimplementation expectations This model represents the value chain of social capitalndash the links necessary for accumulation of SOC Understanding the value chain can beuseful for analysis of design implementations and issues inherent within each stage

Figure 1General design model of a

community networkhighlighting four stages of

social capital production

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

267

Typical scenarios of useTo simplify discussion of this model and further analysis we focus on two scenarioswhich may describe the most typical community network users one involving aldquoservice-providing actorrdquo and another involving a ldquoservice-demanding actorrdquo Possiblecommunity network needs at each design model stage are reflected in Table I

In the first scenario (scenario SP) the user asks ldquowhat can I do for my communityrdquowith a strong spirit of undirected volunteerism and consults the community network tofind out This user is likely to be interested in learning about various issues identifyingleaders or more experienced members fitting individual talents to community needsand carrying out and receiving recognition for valued actions

In contrast the user in the second scenario (scenario SD) asks ldquowhat can mycommunity do for merdquo demanding some type of action or service that he feels he isowed This user is likely to value feedback about his issue in the form ofacknowledgement and shared interest or identification of others with similar issues Hewill also value a forum that allows negotiation or planning and coordination of action

As we use the design model to analyze existing community networks and laterwhen we conduct user testing on our persistent virtual identity question we considerhow the design implementations support each of these two scenarios (SP and SD)These scenarios are carried over in our user testing example later in the paper

Analysis of existing community networksUsing our model we analyzed the designs of six existing community networks toidentify breakdowns in the social capital production process The main purpose of thiswas to exercise the model itself and get a sense of how well it helps focus attention oninterface elements that contribute to SOC However we also wanted to demonstrate amethodical review of existing systems to provide a more solid basis for a genericprototype design The six community networks reviewed (in Dec 2002) includeBlacksburg electronic village (wwwbevnet) columbiaMOcom (wwwcolumbiamocom) Danbury Community Network (wwwdanburyorg) Davis Community Network(www2dcnorgdavisorgsDCN) Hamilton CommunityNet (wwwfreenethamiltononca) and Prairienet (wwwprairienetorg) These six community networks were chosento represent a wide variety of community sizes geographic locations andelaborateness of interface functionality Each community network was pre-selectedfrom a pool of sites that had been previously reviewed or cited by others researchingvarious aspects of community network interface design Although we did not considertheir evaluations before forming our own we thought it would be most interesting todemonstrate our design model around interfaces that already had earned researchinterest

Half of the interfaces were analyzed in the context of each scenario SP and SDAnalysis procedures invoked inspection of interface functions to assess support foreach design model stage described with a rating of ldquononerdquo ldquolowrdquo ldquosomerdquo or ldquostrongrdquodepending on the degree that interface artifacts instantiated the purpose andimplementation expectations (Figure 1) Ratings for each of the six communitynetworks are provided in Table II For most ratings a brief note describes the specificartifacts that support the stage Additionally a column is provided to noteimplementation details of any persistent virtual identity

INTR153

268

we are working under the assumption that the primary goal of a community network isto provide a source of social capital (Carroll and Rosson 2001) we revisit the socialcapital building processes which we cross-reference with the collective activitysupport strategies to reveal discrete stages of necessary user interaction facilitation

Feelings of membership result from understanding social conventions devotingtime to group efforts and using group symbols (Blanchard and Markus 2002) which isbest supported by notification for activity awareness and receipt of social cuesnecessary for visibility awareness and development of accountability Thereforeactivity notification is the first stage in our design model (Figure 1) Activitynotification leads to social translucence (the second stage) which primarily supportsthe second dimension of SOC ndash feelings of influence Here coherent communicationadvances the production of social capital especially network capital SOC andincreased perception of collective efficacy result creating a collective efficacy context(stage three) if supported by a sense of history this further inspires confidence in thedimension of integration and fulfillment of needs The final dimension sharedemotional connection is supported by activity notification social translucence and ahistorical context Coupled with this social capital can be focused into distributedcommunity activities our fourth stage that allows the cycle to be repeated indefinitelyFigure 1 provides a succinct statement of each stagersquos basic purpose andimplementation expectations This model represents the value chain of social capitalndash the links necessary for accumulation of SOC Understanding the value chain can beuseful for analysis of design implementations and issues inherent within each stage

Figure 1General design model of a

community networkhighlighting four stages of

social capital production

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

267

Typical scenarios of useTo simplify discussion of this model and further analysis we focus on two scenarioswhich may describe the most typical community network users one involving aldquoservice-providing actorrdquo and another involving a ldquoservice-demanding actorrdquo Possiblecommunity network needs at each design model stage are reflected in Table I

In the first scenario (scenario SP) the user asks ldquowhat can I do for my communityrdquowith a strong spirit of undirected volunteerism and consults the community network tofind out This user is likely to be interested in learning about various issues identifyingleaders or more experienced members fitting individual talents to community needsand carrying out and receiving recognition for valued actions

In contrast the user in the second scenario (scenario SD) asks ldquowhat can mycommunity do for merdquo demanding some type of action or service that he feels he isowed This user is likely to value feedback about his issue in the form ofacknowledgement and shared interest or identification of others with similar issues Hewill also value a forum that allows negotiation or planning and coordination of action

As we use the design model to analyze existing community networks and laterwhen we conduct user testing on our persistent virtual identity question we considerhow the design implementations support each of these two scenarios (SP and SD)These scenarios are carried over in our user testing example later in the paper

Analysis of existing community networksUsing our model we analyzed the designs of six existing community networks toidentify breakdowns in the social capital production process The main purpose of thiswas to exercise the model itself and get a sense of how well it helps focus attention oninterface elements that contribute to SOC However we also wanted to demonstrate amethodical review of existing systems to provide a more solid basis for a genericprototype design The six community networks reviewed (in Dec 2002) includeBlacksburg electronic village (wwwbevnet) columbiaMOcom (wwwcolumbiamocom) Danbury Community Network (wwwdanburyorg) Davis Community Network(www2dcnorgdavisorgsDCN) Hamilton CommunityNet (wwwfreenethamiltononca) and Prairienet (wwwprairienetorg) These six community networks were chosento represent a wide variety of community sizes geographic locations andelaborateness of interface functionality Each community network was pre-selectedfrom a pool of sites that had been previously reviewed or cited by others researchingvarious aspects of community network interface design Although we did not considertheir evaluations before forming our own we thought it would be most interesting todemonstrate our design model around interfaces that already had earned researchinterest

Half of the interfaces were analyzed in the context of each scenario SP and SDAnalysis procedures invoked inspection of interface functions to assess support foreach design model stage described with a rating of ldquononerdquo ldquolowrdquo ldquosomerdquo or ldquostrongrdquodepending on the degree that interface artifacts instantiated the purpose andimplementation expectations (Figure 1) Ratings for each of the six communitynetworks are provided in Table II For most ratings a brief note describes the specificartifacts that support the stage Additionally a column is provided to noteimplementation details of any persistent virtual identity

INTR153

268

Typical scenarios of useTo simplify discussion of this model and further analysis we focus on two scenarioswhich may describe the most typical community network users one involving aldquoservice-providing actorrdquo and another involving a ldquoservice-demanding actorrdquo Possiblecommunity network needs at each design model stage are reflected in Table I

In the first scenario (scenario SP) the user asks ldquowhat can I do for my communityrdquowith a strong spirit of undirected volunteerism and consults the community network tofind out This user is likely to be interested in learning about various issues identifyingleaders or more experienced members fitting individual talents to community needsand carrying out and receiving recognition for valued actions

In contrast the user in the second scenario (scenario SD) asks ldquowhat can mycommunity do for merdquo demanding some type of action or service that he feels he isowed This user is likely to value feedback about his issue in the form ofacknowledgement and shared interest or identification of others with similar issues Hewill also value a forum that allows negotiation or planning and coordination of action

As we use the design model to analyze existing community networks and laterwhen we conduct user testing on our persistent virtual identity question we considerhow the design implementations support each of these two scenarios (SP and SD)These scenarios are carried over in our user testing example later in the paper

Analysis of existing community networksUsing our model we analyzed the designs of six existing community networks toidentify breakdowns in the social capital production process The main purpose of thiswas to exercise the model itself and get a sense of how well it helps focus attention oninterface elements that contribute to SOC However we also wanted to demonstrate amethodical review of existing systems to provide a more solid basis for a genericprototype design The six community networks reviewed (in Dec 2002) includeBlacksburg electronic village (wwwbevnet) columbiaMOcom (wwwcolumbiamocom) Danbury Community Network (wwwdanburyorg) Davis Community Network(www2dcnorgdavisorgsDCN) Hamilton CommunityNet (wwwfreenethamiltononca) and Prairienet (wwwprairienetorg) These six community networks were chosento represent a wide variety of community sizes geographic locations andelaborateness of interface functionality Each community network was pre-selectedfrom a pool of sites that had been previously reviewed or cited by others researchingvarious aspects of community network interface design Although we did not considertheir evaluations before forming our own we thought it would be most interesting todemonstrate our design model around interfaces that already had earned researchinterest

Half of the interfaces were analyzed in the context of each scenario SP and SDAnalysis procedures invoked inspection of interface functions to assess support foreach design model stage described with a rating of ldquononerdquo ldquolowrdquo ldquosomerdquo or ldquostrongrdquodepending on the degree that interface artifacts instantiated the purpose andimplementation expectations (Figure 1) Ratings for each of the six communitynetworks are provided in Table II For most ratings a brief note describes the specificartifacts that support the stage Additionally a column is provided to noteimplementation details of any persistent virtual identity

INTR153

268

Nee

dfo

r

Sce

nar

ioA

ctiv

ity

not

ifica

tion

Soc

ial

tran

slu

cen

ceC

olle

ctiv

eef

fica

cyco

nte

xt

Dis

trib

ute

dac

tiv

itie

s

Ser

vic

e-p

rov

idin

gac

tor

Rec

eiv

en

ews

item

sD

isce

rnim

por

tan

tor

new

issu

es

Ass

ess

inte

rest

and

acti

vit

yon

issu

esD

eter

min

eg

ener

alre

acti

onco

nse

nsu

s

See

how

the

com

mu

nit

yrsquos

agen

da

may

be

adv

ance

dR

eali

zeh

owan

dto

wh

omm

yco

ntr

ibu

tion

wil

lm

atte

rm

ost

Rec

eiv

eac

tion

sup

por

tan

dco

nti

nu

eden

cou

rag

emen

tP

rov

ide

pro

gre

ssst

atu

s

Ser

vic

e-d

eman

din

gac

tor

An

nou

nce

ldquoI

hav

ean

imp

orta

nt

issu

erdquoO

bta

inis

sue

ack

now

led

gem

ent

Cre

ate

inte

rest

Iden

tify

resi

stan

ce

Dec

onfl

ict

per

son

alan

dco

mm

un

ity

agen

da

Cre

ate

orm

obil

ize

reso

luti

ong

oals

Lev

erag

eea

rned

reci

pro

city

An

nou

nce

pla

nC

oord

inat

eg

rou

pac

tion

Col

lect

resu

lts

Note

Nee

ds

are

iden

tifi

edac

cord

ing

tofo

ur

stag

esof

soci

alca

pit

alp

rod

uct

ion

sh

own

inF

igu

re1

Table IComparison of possible

needs of two typicalcommunity network

usage scenarios

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

269

Su

pp

ort

for

Inte

rfac

eA

ctiv

ity

not

ifica

tion

Soc

ial

tran

slu

cen

ceC

olle

ctiv

eef

fica

cyco

nte

xt

Dis

trib

ute

dac

tiv

itie

sV

irtu

alid

enti

tyan

dp

ersi

sten

ce

(1)

Bla

cksb

urg

elec

tron

icv

illa

ge

Som

ee-

New

se-

mai

ls

list

serv

sL

ow

foru

mth

read

sS

ome

use

net

gro

up

sfo

rum

sm

eeti

ng

arch

ives

Low

lis

tin

gof

cale

nd

arev

ents

Low

h

omep

age

dir

ecto

ryli

stin

g

(2)

Col

um

bia

MO

com

Low

st

atic

feat

ure

stor

ies

Non

eS

ome

cale

nd

ar

arch

ives

Som

ead

dca

len

d

even

ts

acti

onit

ems

Non

e

(3)

Dan

bu

ryC

omm

un

ity

Net

wor

kL

ow

old

even

tsN

one

Low

m

any

lin

ks

Low

no

sup

por

ton

site

Non

e

(4)

Dav

isC

omm

un

ity

Net

wor

kS

ome

DC

N-N

ews

list

serv

ca

len

dar

Low

fo

rum

thre

ads

and

read

mar

kin

g

Som

efo

rum

sca

len

d

arch

ives

n

eig

hb

orh

ood

s

Str

ong

fo

rum

ad

dca

len

de

ven

tad

dli

nk

sN

one

(5)

Ham

ilto

nco

mm

un

ity

net

Str

ong

GIS

info

an

nou

nce

men

ts

pri

vat

em

essa

ges

Som

eldquow

ho

ison

lin

erdquo

Som

en

ewsg

rou

ps

Info

rmH

amil

ton

Str

ong

g

ues

tboo

k

hit

cou

nte

rfo

rms

add

even

t

Som

efo

rum

log

ins

reg

iste

rin

-per

son

(6)

Pra

irie

net

Som

ee-

mai

ls

list

serv

sN

one

Som

ee-

mai

ls

list

serv

sin

foar

chiv

esL

ow

mai

lli

sts

Som

eau

then

tic

log

on

Notes

We

spec

ula

teth

atp

erfo

rman

ceb

reak

dow

nw

ith

inor

bet

wee

nan

yof

the

stag

esm

ayre

sult

ina

loss

ofef

fect

iven

ess

inth

eco

mm

un

ity

net

wor

krsquos

pro

du

ctio

nof

soci

alca

pit

al

Inte

rfac

esin

row

s1

34

wer

ean

aly

zed

usi

ng

scen

ario

sS

P

row

s2

46

wer

ean

aly

zed

usi

ng

scen

ario

SD

Table IIAssessment of sixcommunity interfaces tosupport for the stages inour general design modelthe question of virtualidentity

INTR153

270

To more clearly illustrate the analysis process we focus discussion on the Blacksburgelectronic village (BEV) using scenario SP Again ratings for the assessments appearin Table II but the case description below elaborates on details of the modelapplication and conceptual process

Example analysis ndash Blacksburg electronic villageThe BEV community network provides its local community with information forcontacting members a large catalog of business and organizational listings a ldquovirtualtown hallrdquo resources for seniors and links to area schools libraries and museumsVisitors can find out things to do and driving directions However in our assessmentscenario (SP) we assume the spirit of undirected volunteerism and search for a way wecan make a meaningful impact in the community

Activity notification In striving to become a more active part of the communitynotification can quickly enhance feelings of membership We look for mechanisms thatcan keep us abreast of BEV happenings during daily activities especially those thatwill help us learn about issues and activities of other community members Thisrequirement goes beyond the main page summaries of upcoming local events ndash wewant to be informed and reminded as events unfold Bi-weekly delivery of BlacksburgeNews e-mails provide a start as do community listservs (rating frac14 some support)However the interface lacks strong notification support such as pop-up alerts for webcasts or urgent community needs unobtrusive reminders about approaching eventschat facilities or dynamic information delivery that would invoke impromptureal-world interactions As a tentative new member push technologies like these maybe welcome (although they have been found to become quickly annoying) invitinginvolvement and encouraging informativeness necessary for feelings of membership

Socially translucent communication Assuming that the BEV helped focus ourinterest toward particular issues (as the comprehensive catalog of organizations iswont to do) we now require support for assessing community interest about particularevents and issues gauging consensus and understanding norms and conventions ofparticipation Coherent communication should be a by-product of visibility andawareness of other membersrsquo activities In this respect the BEV provides very little(rating frac14 low) support Perhaps the one feature we could find was the memberstatistics and list of ldquo10 most popular homepagesrdquo however these representations feltdated and insipid Simple iconic indications of others that are actively viewing the sitewould be a start toward social translucence but some of the social proxy ideas(Erickson et al 2002) voting interfaces and results (such as wwwcnncom QuickVote)or Amazoncom-style reviews and referrals would be most helpful While the siteclaims to provide some services that might enable social translucence ndash small groupcollaboration with shared calendars address books project management tools anddiscussion forums this seemed to cater toward established groups rather thanpromoting feelings of influence or SOC with our scenario actor

Collective efficacy context In order for our service-providing actor to achieve the SOCnecessary to adopt common goals and engage in reciprocity they will be interested inbrowsing through a historical record of community activities sensing who is responsiblefor what and realizing how to contribute most effectively The BEV community networkimplementation does not readily provide an itemization of existing goals but it doesallow access to a history of collective accomplishment with Usenet newsgroup servers

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

271

Su

pp

ort

for

Inte

rfac

eA

ctiv

ity

not

ifica

tion

Soc

ial

tran

slu

cen

ceC

olle

ctiv

eef

fica

cyco

nte

xt

Dis

trib

ute

dac

tiv

itie

sV

irtu

alid

enti

tyan

dp

ersi

sten

ce

(1)

Bla

cksb

urg

elec

tron

icv

illa

ge

Som

ee-

New

se-

mai

ls

list

serv

sL

ow

foru

mth

read

sS

ome

use

net

gro

up

sfo

rum

sm

eeti

ng

arch

ives

Low

lis

tin

gof

cale

nd

arev

ents

Low

h

omep

age

dir

ecto

ryli

stin

g

(2)

Col

um

bia

MO

com

Low

st

atic

feat

ure

stor

ies

Non

eS

ome

cale

nd

ar

arch

ives

Som

ead

dca

len

d

even

ts

acti

onit

ems

Non

e

(3)

Dan

bu

ryC

omm

un

ity

Net

wor

kL

ow

old

even

tsN

one

Low

m

any

lin

ks

Low

no

sup

por

ton

site

Non

e

(4)

Dav

isC

omm

un

ity

Net

wor

kS

ome

DC

N-N

ews

list

serv

ca

len

dar

Low

fo

rum

thre

ads

and

read

mar

kin

g

Som

efo

rum

sca

len

d

arch

ives

n

eig

hb

orh

ood

s

Str

ong

fo

rum

ad

dca

len

de

ven

tad

dli

nk

sN

one

(5)

Ham

ilto

nco

mm

un

ity

net

Str

ong

GIS

info

an

nou

nce

men

ts

pri

vat

em

essa

ges

Som

eldquow

ho

ison

lin

erdquo

Som

en

ewsg

rou

ps

Info

rmH

amil

ton

Str

ong

g

ues

tboo

k

hit

cou

nte

rfo

rms

add

even

t

Som

efo

rum

log

ins

reg

iste

rin

-per

son

(6)

Pra

irie

net

Som

ee-

mai

ls

list

serv

sN

one

Som

ee-

mai

ls

list

serv

sin

foar

chiv

esL

ow

mai

lli

sts

Som

eau

then

tic

log

on

Notes

We

spec

ula

teth

atp

erfo

rman

ceb

reak

dow

nw

ith

inor

bet

wee

nan

yof

the

stag

esm

ayre

sult

ina

loss

ofef

fect

iven

ess

inth

eco

mm

un

ity

net

wor

krsquos

pro

du

ctio

nof

soci

alca

pit

al

Inte

rfac

esin

row

s1

34

wer

ean

aly

zed

usi

ng

scen

ario

sS

P

row

s2

46

wer

ean

aly

zed

usi

ng

scen

ario

SD

Table IIAssessment of sixcommunity interfaces tosupport for the stages inour general design modelthe question of virtualidentity

INTR153

270

To more clearly illustrate the analysis process we focus discussion on the Blacksburgelectronic village (BEV) using scenario SP Again ratings for the assessments appearin Table II but the case description below elaborates on details of the modelapplication and conceptual process

Example analysis ndash Blacksburg electronic villageThe BEV community network provides its local community with information forcontacting members a large catalog of business and organizational listings a ldquovirtualtown hallrdquo resources for seniors and links to area schools libraries and museumsVisitors can find out things to do and driving directions However in our assessmentscenario (SP) we assume the spirit of undirected volunteerism and search for a way wecan make a meaningful impact in the community

Activity notification In striving to become a more active part of the communitynotification can quickly enhance feelings of membership We look for mechanisms thatcan keep us abreast of BEV happenings during daily activities especially those thatwill help us learn about issues and activities of other community members Thisrequirement goes beyond the main page summaries of upcoming local events ndash wewant to be informed and reminded as events unfold Bi-weekly delivery of BlacksburgeNews e-mails provide a start as do community listservs (rating frac14 some support)However the interface lacks strong notification support such as pop-up alerts for webcasts or urgent community needs unobtrusive reminders about approaching eventschat facilities or dynamic information delivery that would invoke impromptureal-world interactions As a tentative new member push technologies like these maybe welcome (although they have been found to become quickly annoying) invitinginvolvement and encouraging informativeness necessary for feelings of membership

Socially translucent communication Assuming that the BEV helped focus ourinterest toward particular issues (as the comprehensive catalog of organizations iswont to do) we now require support for assessing community interest about particularevents and issues gauging consensus and understanding norms and conventions ofparticipation Coherent communication should be a by-product of visibility andawareness of other membersrsquo activities In this respect the BEV provides very little(rating frac14 low) support Perhaps the one feature we could find was the memberstatistics and list of ldquo10 most popular homepagesrdquo however these representations feltdated and insipid Simple iconic indications of others that are actively viewing the sitewould be a start toward social translucence but some of the social proxy ideas(Erickson et al 2002) voting interfaces and results (such as wwwcnncom QuickVote)or Amazoncom-style reviews and referrals would be most helpful While the siteclaims to provide some services that might enable social translucence ndash small groupcollaboration with shared calendars address books project management tools anddiscussion forums this seemed to cater toward established groups rather thanpromoting feelings of influence or SOC with our scenario actor

Collective efficacy context In order for our service-providing actor to achieve the SOCnecessary to adopt common goals and engage in reciprocity they will be interested inbrowsing through a historical record of community activities sensing who is responsiblefor what and realizing how to contribute most effectively The BEV community networkimplementation does not readily provide an itemization of existing goals but it doesallow access to a history of collective accomplishment with Usenet newsgroup servers

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

271

To more clearly illustrate the analysis process we focus discussion on the Blacksburgelectronic village (BEV) using scenario SP Again ratings for the assessments appearin Table II but the case description below elaborates on details of the modelapplication and conceptual process

Example analysis ndash Blacksburg electronic villageThe BEV community network provides its local community with information forcontacting members a large catalog of business and organizational listings a ldquovirtualtown hallrdquo resources for seniors and links to area schools libraries and museumsVisitors can find out things to do and driving directions However in our assessmentscenario (SP) we assume the spirit of undirected volunteerism and search for a way wecan make a meaningful impact in the community

Activity notification In striving to become a more active part of the communitynotification can quickly enhance feelings of membership We look for mechanisms thatcan keep us abreast of BEV happenings during daily activities especially those thatwill help us learn about issues and activities of other community members Thisrequirement goes beyond the main page summaries of upcoming local events ndash wewant to be informed and reminded as events unfold Bi-weekly delivery of BlacksburgeNews e-mails provide a start as do community listservs (rating frac14 some support)However the interface lacks strong notification support such as pop-up alerts for webcasts or urgent community needs unobtrusive reminders about approaching eventschat facilities or dynamic information delivery that would invoke impromptureal-world interactions As a tentative new member push technologies like these maybe welcome (although they have been found to become quickly annoying) invitinginvolvement and encouraging informativeness necessary for feelings of membership

Socially translucent communication Assuming that the BEV helped focus ourinterest toward particular issues (as the comprehensive catalog of organizations iswont to do) we now require support for assessing community interest about particularevents and issues gauging consensus and understanding norms and conventions ofparticipation Coherent communication should be a by-product of visibility andawareness of other membersrsquo activities In this respect the BEV provides very little(rating frac14 low) support Perhaps the one feature we could find was the memberstatistics and list of ldquo10 most popular homepagesrdquo however these representations feltdated and insipid Simple iconic indications of others that are actively viewing the sitewould be a start toward social translucence but some of the social proxy ideas(Erickson et al 2002) voting interfaces and results (such as wwwcnncom QuickVote)or Amazoncom-style reviews and referrals would be most helpful While the siteclaims to provide some services that might enable social translucence ndash small groupcollaboration with shared calendars address books project management tools anddiscussion forums this seemed to cater toward established groups rather thanpromoting feelings of influence or SOC with our scenario actor

Collective efficacy context In order for our service-providing actor to achieve the SOCnecessary to adopt common goals and engage in reciprocity they will be interested inbrowsing through a historical record of community activities sensing who is responsiblefor what and realizing how to contribute most effectively The BEV community networkimplementation does not readily provide an itemization of existing goals but it doesallow access to a history of collective accomplishment with Usenet newsgroup servers

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

271

for 12 local groups (free for all users) and provides links to archived web casts of TownCouncil meetings and government documents (rating frac14 some support)

Support for distributed activity accomplishment As community members worktoward common goals they need to be able to receive support for tasks andencouragement from others that are aware of their progress and provide feedback tothe larger community that will earn reciprocity rewards or other recognition Thiscommunity network implementation provides no explicit support for this althoughnewsgroups or discussions forums could fill such a role Listing calendar events dopromote community awareness of distributed activities but the overall support for thisstage can be improved (rating frac14 low)

Persistent virtual identity A user can establish a persistent virtual identity within thiscommunity network by registering and becoming a Villager which allows adding orupdating of community business and organization listings and homepages A userrsquose-mail address can also match the community domain but there is no authentication ofidentity or association of participation-relation actions with the identity so overallincorporation of persistent virtual identity within this community network is low

Overall the BEV community network appears to provide some support for buildingsocial capital although many improvements can be made Of particular note much canbe done with leveraging dynamic activity of community members through notificationand social proxies

Other community networksThe overall results for all six community networks are provided in Table II From this wecan see that a variety of ratings were achieved although community networks seem to beespecially weak in supporting social translucence and providing mechanisms for enactingdistributed activities In particular Hamilton CommunityNet seemed to be the strongestalthough the feature of adding links to any page found in the Davis Community Networkcertainly provides a lot of potential Policies for virtual identity and user accounts variedwidely ndash many sites include no support for e-mail accounts and require no logon at allOther sites particularly Prairienet require members to use authentic usernames that canbe traced back to real names Only the Hamiliton CommunityNet appeared to enforce localaccounts since accounts could only be established in person

A generic prototype based on our modelTo further exercise our design model we used it to develop a generic prototype of acommunity network Since our design model helps us consider and refer to specificinterface elements we were able to construct an interface that includes some type ofsupport for each stage of the social capital production process (Figure 2) The interfaceis purely conceptual developed to aid our understanding of the individual and holisticimpact of each feature in supporting various usage scenarios (described earlier)building and maintaining a SOC and balancing design choices (eg implementation ofpersistent virtual identity policies) Design elements and feature groups within thisprototype are meant to be entirely replaceable ndash perhaps a catalog of genericcomponents for each stage would allow browsing through various implementations toselect and test for ideal combinations Once a conceptual activity design is settled onthat would support all stages of social capital production other usability concerns suchas information and interaction design can be addressed in less formative prototypes

INTR153

272

Figure 2Generic prototype of a

community networkbased on Figure 1

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

273

Design conceptionFeatures within our generic prototype are discussed according to the social capitalproduction stages of the design model introduced earlier (Figure 1) starting withactivity notification Before arriving at this type of interface users of the communitynetwork would perhaps pass through a logon screen requiring an authenticated orunauthenticated username and password (these issues are explored in the next sectiondescribing the user study)

Activity notification Support for activity notification includes two primary featuresthe community announcements (Figure 2 (2)) and a notification settings screen (notpictured) Once users have accessed the site they might find a list of recent communityannouncements helpful Items in the list may link to detailed stories or eventdescriptions or perhaps to discussion forums Here users should be able to find out ifothers have similar needs or concerns and get a general idea of what is going on in thecommunity If they develop associations with groups within the community perhapsusers might want a link to group reactions for individual items in the list There mayalso be a mechanism to indicate preference for receiving updates on postings withincertain categories of information or information from particular people perhapsthrough an e-mail message notification a pop-up window or a taskbar icon that subtlychanges in appearance These notifications would ensure users are updated on sitechanges even if they do not visit the web site frequently

Socially translucent communication Two groups of features in this interface supportmembers of the community network in comparing views understanding patterns ofeach otherrsquos activity and developing norms and accountability for action the groupprofiles (Figure 2 (3)) and the MyGroups activity representation (Figure 2 (4))

To find out what other members of the community are concerned with anddiscussing users might access the group profiles As they browse through thecollection of groups registered within the community network they may notice thegroup reputations provided by the ldquocommunity ratingrdquo (votes from anyone in thecommunity) and the ldquomember ratingrdquo (votes from only members of the group) Groupscan have issues represented by icons (described by tool-tips and description links) thatare important to them (eg the desire not to be harassed about using a crosswalk) andthey can also be known for offering certain resources to the community at large (egcarpooling space or babysitting services) Groups may also visibly indicate oppositionto the policies or actions of another group From this part of the interface users can joinor create new groups

Once users join a group they may want to be aware of group membersrsquo activitywithin the community network With a small graphical representation (we includethose found in Erickson et al (2002) they can get a sense of who else is currently loggedon and participating in discussion forums Icons represent users that are logged on oroff the site (inside the circle) and convey the recency of activities like chatting withindiscussion forums (central icons indicate very recent activity as inactive time passesthey drift to the edges) A small timeline can also show a line for each personrepresenting when and how long they were logged on during a given period of timeThese features should allow users to know a little bit about when group members areactive within the community network and what active concerns they have

Evidence of collective efficacy The prototype contains two elements that shouldprovide the historical context and evidence of reciprocity necessary for development of

INTR153

274

collective efficacy and ultimately new social capital the community archives(Figure 2 (5)) and the community profile (Figure 2(6)) The community archives arefairly standard within existing interfaces typically including a list of resources thatcan be accessed by anyone in the community such as a common calendar of townevents formal documents detailing plans or complaints and permanent discussionboards on a variety of topics Our conception differs in the inclusion of ldquoMyGroupReactionsrdquo If a user is a member of a group group-owned links may also appear (eg toa group calendar or to document annotations) indicating related resources that areonly available to members of the group or those given access permissions

The community profile is included to help users understand how their concerns fitin with community-wide concerns Here they can see things like the total communitymembership and how the community is rated by all members or various groupsCommunity members are also able to see how community leaders have prioritizedissues within the community that need supporting (such as a leaf-removal project orcross-walk enforcement movement) and the types of community support available togroups or individuals (such as food and clothing that has just been donated) Inaddition some issues that require multiple phases to complete can be represented interms of a progress state indicator (Erickson et al 2002)

Support for distributed activity accomplishment Many of the elements included in theother features support distributed activity accomplishment For example users can postmessages on group or community discussion forums rate the community or othergroups submit requests to include issues in QuickVote (Figure 2 (7)) or documents in thecommunity archives Many of the notification options (eg associating certain eventsgroups or individuals with preferences to receive e-mail instant messages or subtlechanges to taskbar icons) provide the feedback necessary to restart the cycle providingprompt reaction from group or community members related to a memberrsquos actions

We expect that this model can be useful for testing how user attitudes are formed byindividual interface components We can obtain user responses to investigate how eachcomponent enhances SOC and social capital using the indicators provided in OrsquoNeilrsquos(2002) work Furthermore we can use this model to frame other research such as ourquestion related to the role of persistent virtual identity within a community network

Exemplar user studyReferring back to our original research questions we feel our design model and genericprototype provide us with tools necessary to assess the impact of design elements onthe support of social capital production ndash demonstrating linkages between theory anddesign artifacts These linkages allow us to address specific questions related to designcomponents within a community network ndash requiring new analysis techniques forassessing quality of interfaces and interface features Such an analysis technique musthelp us consider the additive effect of a variety of theoretical indicators and identifybreakdowns in complex interface objectives like supporting social capital production

The value chain analysisBusiness disciplines related to strategic and operations management use the concept ofa value chain to describe the linked set of value-creating and value-adding activitiesinvolved in product production or marketing Fundamental activities such as RampD orprocessing of raw materials are necessary to create value while later activities like

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

275

marketing and retailing add value to the final product Often many differentorganizations and firms contribute to these activities so value chain analysis involvesexamination of the linkages and identification of key activities per organization (Shankand Govindarajan 1993) (eg activity-based costing accounting) Without this type ofanalysis final product value (or cost) components are rarely distinguishable bycontributing value chain activities ndash the collective effect blends efficiencies andinefficiencies throughout the chain While perhaps the bottom line matters most thisprocess is often relied on to provide focus for competitive strategic resourcemanagement and synergistic product growth Our approach posits that the interfacedesign community can benefit from similar analyses especially as we considerchallenges brought on by collaborative ubiquitous notification and othernon-traditional interfaces Value chain analysis can provide usability insight relatedto the progressive effect of components in larger more complex usage experiences

HypothesesTo illustrate how the value chain analysis can be used with our design model andgeneric prototype tools the specific question that we focus on in this exemplar userstudy related to member policies for virtual identity authentication and persistenceVirtual identity policy options range from open access to a strict authentication policythat may involve a physical account issuing authority within the community (like thetown library) ensuring members reside locally and account names conform to actualidentity (authentic logon) Promoting trust and accountability seems to be a tradeoff forprivacy and anonymity We hypothesize

(1) user attitude toward using community networks differs under authenticatedand unauthenticated logon conditions

(2) these differences vary between those with usage concerns relying onestablishment of accountability or anonymity and

(3) differences between groups are traceable through user perception of individualfeature usefulness and appeal

To test these hypotheses we used our community network prototype to demonstrateeight key features sequentially (Figure 2) The features and the order of presentationwere carefully selected according to the value chain model described earlier (Figure 1)

MethodologyWe demonstrated our prototype to 40 participants (male aged 18-23 with similarcomputing experience) obtaining feedback immediately after explaining each featureUsing a 2 pound 2 between-subjects design we varied logon policy and usage concern Thetwo logon policy treatments were an authentic logon (A) and an unauthentic logon (U)explanation of the logon screen For each we mentioned the different implications ofthe logon policy to membership validity and association of actions with real identityWe also asked participants to imagine having one of two different concerns relating totheir initial community network usage as they considered the interface ndash a serviceproviding (SP) or service demanding (SD) concern SP concern participants were to actas if they were trying to find a way to volunteer within the community but were unsurehow to begin SD participants were to act as if they want to invoke authority responseto vehicle vandalism incidents

INTR153

276

Just after learning about their concern and the logon feature participants provided abaseline indication of their attitude toward using the community network After eachsubsequent feature was introduced participants indicated how much they like itwhether they thought it was useful their most important concern related to it andwhether it changed their attitude about the overall community network From theseresponses we are able to conduct the most basic assessment of the social capital valuechain within the interface The posttest questions included exactly the same questionas the initial question (ldquoWhat is your general attitude toward using the communitynetworkrdquo) as well as questions that probed the effect of the community network onparticipation within the physical community and willingness to use the network

Results and discussionThere are several interesting initial results Surprisingly our first hypothesis was notsupported by answers on the posttest attitude question However our second hypothesiswas supported ethFeth1 19THORN frac14 238 MSE frac14 11 p frac14 0025THORN SD-U and SP-A participants(those with logon policies compatible to accountability or privacy need) liked the generalidea of the community network more In order to approach our third hypothesis welooked at how attitude levels changed over the course of the feature demonstrationsFigure 3 shows how the value chain increased differently for each condition (sometimesdecreasing) based on average responses to how each feature impacted attitudes towardthe community network A perfect set of features would increase one-point at each stepThe differences between groups (note group profiles) provide a basis for reengineering

Extensions of this approach can benefit the research community We have shownhow decomposing the system goal to key activities suggests value chain links and canreveal feature differences between design and situation variables User evaluationshould assess the holistic effect of individual links on system goals allowing designersto understand which components are most important and which implementationsshould be used in various situations

ConclusionsBased on the analysis of existing systems the prototype design conception and themethodological contributions to our user study we believe that our model of social capitalproduction is a step in the right direction toward understanding how to improve the

Figure 3ldquoValue chainrdquo user study

analysis of the communitynetwork

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

277

design effectiveness of community networks Our design model was helpful for identifyingcritical aspects of the design and should focus feature development and usability testingin a way that will fulfill the community networkrsquos purpose ndash social capital

Using the model to isolate features of an interface for progressive analysis and userfeedback allows a value chain to be identified ndash revealing how value or the sense ofworth is manifested through use We focused on a question relating to logon policy withour initial study but similar issues related to persistent virtual identity can be probedwith this technique allowing breakdowns in the social capital production process to beexposed Value chaining also allows claims about features which are alreadywell-grounded in theory to be related to synergistic multidimensional concepts such associal capital This can help designers select appropriate interface elements usabilityengineers prioritize reengineering efforts based on cost-benefit data and communityleaders appreciate specific elements of an a community network interface

There is much to do in the way of future work At this time we have not instantiatedor implemented a version of the generic prototype although that is a likely next stepCertainly we have an interest in identifying communities that would benefit from acommunity network designed or redesigned according to our model Although our casestudies have demonstrated an early analytical effort we are interested in developingimproved evaluation methods and criteria to complement critical incident reporting(Neale et al 2000) throughout all stages Since our prototype can support the evaluationof many different questions additional user testing may provide much more insight intoquestions about persistent virtual identity We are especially focused on improving thedesign of specific interface elements particularly those that support activity notificationand enhance activity awareness We also hope to extend our modeling process and valuechaining technique introduced here to other areas of interface development

References

Ackerman MS and Starr B (1995) ldquoSocial activity indicators interface components for CSCWsystemsrdquo Proceedings of Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UISTrsquo95) ACM Press New York NY pp 159-68

Blanchard AL and Markus ML (2002) ldquoSense of virtual community ndash maintaining theexperience of belongingrdquo Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference onSystem Sciences IEEE Press Piscataway NJ

Budzik J Bradshaw S Fu X and Hammond KJ (2002) ldquoClustering for opportunisticcommunicationrdquo Proceedings of International World Wide Web Conference (WWW rsquo02)ACM Press New York NY pp 726-35

Carroll JM and Rosson MB (2001) ldquoBetter home shopping or new democracy Evaluatingcommunity network outcomesrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors inComputing Systems (CHI rsquo01) ACM Press New York NY pp 372-9

Carroll JM Neale DC Isenhour PL Rosson MB and McCrickard DS (2003) ldquoNotificationand awareness synchronizing task-oriented collaborative activityrdquo International Journalof Human-Computer Studies Vol 8 No 5 pp 605-32

Cohill AM and Kavanaugh AL (Eds) (1997) Community Networks Lessons from BlacksburgVirginia Artech House Boston MA

Edelman LF Bresnen M Newell S Scarbrough H and Swan J (2004) ldquoThe benefits andpitfalls of social capital empirical evidence from two organizations in the UnitedKingdomrdquo British Journal of Management Vol 15 No S1 pp S59-S69

INTR153

278

Erickson T and Kellogg WA (2000) ldquoSocial translucence an approach to designing systemsthat support social processesrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Vol 7No 1 pp 59-83

Erickson T Halverson C Kellogg WA Laff M and Wolf T (2002) ldquoSocial translucencedesigning social infrastructures that make collective activity visiblerdquo Communications ofthe ACM Vol 45 No 4 pp 40-4

Erickson T Smith DN Kellogg WA Laff M Richards JT and Bradner E (2000) ldquoSociallytranslucent systems social proxies persistent conversation and the design of lsquoBabblersquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCWrsquo00) ACM Press New York NY pp 97-105

Goecks J and Cosley D (2002) ldquoNuggetMine intelligent groupware for opportunisticallysharing information nuggetsrdquo Proceedings of the International Conference on IntelligentUser Interfaces (IUI rsquo02) ACM Press New York NY pp 87-94

Haase AQ Wellman B Witte J and Hampton K (2002) ldquoCapitalizing on the internet socialcontact civic engagement and sense of communityrdquo in Wellman B and HaythornthwaiteC (Eds) The Internet and Everyday Life Blackwell Oxford

Hallnas L and Redstrom J (2002) ldquoFrom use to presence on the expressions and aesthetics ofeveryday computational thingsrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human InteractionVol 9 No 2 pp 106-24

Ishii H and Ullmer B (1997) ldquoTangible bits towards seamless interfaces between people bitsand atomsrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 234-41

Kindberg T Barton J Morgan J Becker G Caswell D Debaty P Gopal G Frid MKrishnan V Morris H Schettino J Serra B and Spasojevi M (2002) ldquoPeople placethings web presence for the real worldrdquo Mobile Networks and Applications No 7 KluwerAcademic Publishers Boston MA pp 365-76

McCrickard DS and Chewar CM (2003) ldquoAttuning notification design to user goals andattention costsrdquo Communications of the ACM Vol 46 No 3 pp 67-72

McCrickard DS Czerwinski M and Bartram L (2003) ldquoIntroduction design and evaluation ofnotification user interfacesrdquo International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Vol 8No 5 pp 509-14

Mynatt ED Adler A Ito M and OrsquoDay V (1997) ldquoDesign for network communitiesrdquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI rsquo97)ACM Press New York NY pp 210-17

Neale DC Dunlap D Isenhour P and Carroll JM (2000) ldquoCollaborative critical incidentdevelopmentrdquo Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society (HFES rsquo00)pp 598-601

OrsquoNeil D (2002) ldquoAssessing community informatics a review of methodological approaches forevaluating community networks and community technology centersrdquo Internet ResearchElectronic Networking Applications and Policy Vol 12 No 1 pp 76-102

Pedersen E and Sokoler T (1997) ldquoAROMA abstract representations of presence supportingmutual awarenessrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in ComputingSystems (CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 51-8

Preece J and Maloney-Krichmar D (2003) ldquoOnline communities focusing on sociability andusabilityrdquo in Jacko JA and Sears A (Eds) The Human-Computer Interaction HandbookLawrence Erlbaum Association London pp 583-95

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

279

Figure 2Generic prototype of a

community networkbased on Figure 1

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

273

Design conceptionFeatures within our generic prototype are discussed according to the social capitalproduction stages of the design model introduced earlier (Figure 1) starting withactivity notification Before arriving at this type of interface users of the communitynetwork would perhaps pass through a logon screen requiring an authenticated orunauthenticated username and password (these issues are explored in the next sectiondescribing the user study)

Activity notification Support for activity notification includes two primary featuresthe community announcements (Figure 2 (2)) and a notification settings screen (notpictured) Once users have accessed the site they might find a list of recent communityannouncements helpful Items in the list may link to detailed stories or eventdescriptions or perhaps to discussion forums Here users should be able to find out ifothers have similar needs or concerns and get a general idea of what is going on in thecommunity If they develop associations with groups within the community perhapsusers might want a link to group reactions for individual items in the list There mayalso be a mechanism to indicate preference for receiving updates on postings withincertain categories of information or information from particular people perhapsthrough an e-mail message notification a pop-up window or a taskbar icon that subtlychanges in appearance These notifications would ensure users are updated on sitechanges even if they do not visit the web site frequently

Socially translucent communication Two groups of features in this interface supportmembers of the community network in comparing views understanding patterns ofeach otherrsquos activity and developing norms and accountability for action the groupprofiles (Figure 2 (3)) and the MyGroups activity representation (Figure 2 (4))

To find out what other members of the community are concerned with anddiscussing users might access the group profiles As they browse through thecollection of groups registered within the community network they may notice thegroup reputations provided by the ldquocommunity ratingrdquo (votes from anyone in thecommunity) and the ldquomember ratingrdquo (votes from only members of the group) Groupscan have issues represented by icons (described by tool-tips and description links) thatare important to them (eg the desire not to be harassed about using a crosswalk) andthey can also be known for offering certain resources to the community at large (egcarpooling space or babysitting services) Groups may also visibly indicate oppositionto the policies or actions of another group From this part of the interface users can joinor create new groups

Once users join a group they may want to be aware of group membersrsquo activitywithin the community network With a small graphical representation (we includethose found in Erickson et al (2002) they can get a sense of who else is currently loggedon and participating in discussion forums Icons represent users that are logged on oroff the site (inside the circle) and convey the recency of activities like chatting withindiscussion forums (central icons indicate very recent activity as inactive time passesthey drift to the edges) A small timeline can also show a line for each personrepresenting when and how long they were logged on during a given period of timeThese features should allow users to know a little bit about when group members areactive within the community network and what active concerns they have

Evidence of collective efficacy The prototype contains two elements that shouldprovide the historical context and evidence of reciprocity necessary for development of

INTR153

274

collective efficacy and ultimately new social capital the community archives(Figure 2 (5)) and the community profile (Figure 2(6)) The community archives arefairly standard within existing interfaces typically including a list of resources thatcan be accessed by anyone in the community such as a common calendar of townevents formal documents detailing plans or complaints and permanent discussionboards on a variety of topics Our conception differs in the inclusion of ldquoMyGroupReactionsrdquo If a user is a member of a group group-owned links may also appear (eg toa group calendar or to document annotations) indicating related resources that areonly available to members of the group or those given access permissions

The community profile is included to help users understand how their concerns fitin with community-wide concerns Here they can see things like the total communitymembership and how the community is rated by all members or various groupsCommunity members are also able to see how community leaders have prioritizedissues within the community that need supporting (such as a leaf-removal project orcross-walk enforcement movement) and the types of community support available togroups or individuals (such as food and clothing that has just been donated) Inaddition some issues that require multiple phases to complete can be represented interms of a progress state indicator (Erickson et al 2002)

Support for distributed activity accomplishment Many of the elements included in theother features support distributed activity accomplishment For example users can postmessages on group or community discussion forums rate the community or othergroups submit requests to include issues in QuickVote (Figure 2 (7)) or documents in thecommunity archives Many of the notification options (eg associating certain eventsgroups or individuals with preferences to receive e-mail instant messages or subtlechanges to taskbar icons) provide the feedback necessary to restart the cycle providingprompt reaction from group or community members related to a memberrsquos actions

We expect that this model can be useful for testing how user attitudes are formed byindividual interface components We can obtain user responses to investigate how eachcomponent enhances SOC and social capital using the indicators provided in OrsquoNeilrsquos(2002) work Furthermore we can use this model to frame other research such as ourquestion related to the role of persistent virtual identity within a community network

Exemplar user studyReferring back to our original research questions we feel our design model and genericprototype provide us with tools necessary to assess the impact of design elements onthe support of social capital production ndash demonstrating linkages between theory anddesign artifacts These linkages allow us to address specific questions related to designcomponents within a community network ndash requiring new analysis techniques forassessing quality of interfaces and interface features Such an analysis technique musthelp us consider the additive effect of a variety of theoretical indicators and identifybreakdowns in complex interface objectives like supporting social capital production

The value chain analysisBusiness disciplines related to strategic and operations management use the concept ofa value chain to describe the linked set of value-creating and value-adding activitiesinvolved in product production or marketing Fundamental activities such as RampD orprocessing of raw materials are necessary to create value while later activities like

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

275

marketing and retailing add value to the final product Often many differentorganizations and firms contribute to these activities so value chain analysis involvesexamination of the linkages and identification of key activities per organization (Shankand Govindarajan 1993) (eg activity-based costing accounting) Without this type ofanalysis final product value (or cost) components are rarely distinguishable bycontributing value chain activities ndash the collective effect blends efficiencies andinefficiencies throughout the chain While perhaps the bottom line matters most thisprocess is often relied on to provide focus for competitive strategic resourcemanagement and synergistic product growth Our approach posits that the interfacedesign community can benefit from similar analyses especially as we considerchallenges brought on by collaborative ubiquitous notification and othernon-traditional interfaces Value chain analysis can provide usability insight relatedto the progressive effect of components in larger more complex usage experiences

HypothesesTo illustrate how the value chain analysis can be used with our design model andgeneric prototype tools the specific question that we focus on in this exemplar userstudy related to member policies for virtual identity authentication and persistenceVirtual identity policy options range from open access to a strict authentication policythat may involve a physical account issuing authority within the community (like thetown library) ensuring members reside locally and account names conform to actualidentity (authentic logon) Promoting trust and accountability seems to be a tradeoff forprivacy and anonymity We hypothesize

(1) user attitude toward using community networks differs under authenticatedand unauthenticated logon conditions

(2) these differences vary between those with usage concerns relying onestablishment of accountability or anonymity and

(3) differences between groups are traceable through user perception of individualfeature usefulness and appeal

To test these hypotheses we used our community network prototype to demonstrateeight key features sequentially (Figure 2) The features and the order of presentationwere carefully selected according to the value chain model described earlier (Figure 1)

MethodologyWe demonstrated our prototype to 40 participants (male aged 18-23 with similarcomputing experience) obtaining feedback immediately after explaining each featureUsing a 2 pound 2 between-subjects design we varied logon policy and usage concern Thetwo logon policy treatments were an authentic logon (A) and an unauthentic logon (U)explanation of the logon screen For each we mentioned the different implications ofthe logon policy to membership validity and association of actions with real identityWe also asked participants to imagine having one of two different concerns relating totheir initial community network usage as they considered the interface ndash a serviceproviding (SP) or service demanding (SD) concern SP concern participants were to actas if they were trying to find a way to volunteer within the community but were unsurehow to begin SD participants were to act as if they want to invoke authority responseto vehicle vandalism incidents

INTR153

276

Just after learning about their concern and the logon feature participants provided abaseline indication of their attitude toward using the community network After eachsubsequent feature was introduced participants indicated how much they like itwhether they thought it was useful their most important concern related to it andwhether it changed their attitude about the overall community network From theseresponses we are able to conduct the most basic assessment of the social capital valuechain within the interface The posttest questions included exactly the same questionas the initial question (ldquoWhat is your general attitude toward using the communitynetworkrdquo) as well as questions that probed the effect of the community network onparticipation within the physical community and willingness to use the network

Results and discussionThere are several interesting initial results Surprisingly our first hypothesis was notsupported by answers on the posttest attitude question However our second hypothesiswas supported ethFeth1 19THORN frac14 238 MSE frac14 11 p frac14 0025THORN SD-U and SP-A participants(those with logon policies compatible to accountability or privacy need) liked the generalidea of the community network more In order to approach our third hypothesis welooked at how attitude levels changed over the course of the feature demonstrationsFigure 3 shows how the value chain increased differently for each condition (sometimesdecreasing) based on average responses to how each feature impacted attitudes towardthe community network A perfect set of features would increase one-point at each stepThe differences between groups (note group profiles) provide a basis for reengineering

Extensions of this approach can benefit the research community We have shownhow decomposing the system goal to key activities suggests value chain links and canreveal feature differences between design and situation variables User evaluationshould assess the holistic effect of individual links on system goals allowing designersto understand which components are most important and which implementationsshould be used in various situations

ConclusionsBased on the analysis of existing systems the prototype design conception and themethodological contributions to our user study we believe that our model of social capitalproduction is a step in the right direction toward understanding how to improve the

Figure 3ldquoValue chainrdquo user study

analysis of the communitynetwork

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

277

design effectiveness of community networks Our design model was helpful for identifyingcritical aspects of the design and should focus feature development and usability testingin a way that will fulfill the community networkrsquos purpose ndash social capital

Using the model to isolate features of an interface for progressive analysis and userfeedback allows a value chain to be identified ndash revealing how value or the sense ofworth is manifested through use We focused on a question relating to logon policy withour initial study but similar issues related to persistent virtual identity can be probedwith this technique allowing breakdowns in the social capital production process to beexposed Value chaining also allows claims about features which are alreadywell-grounded in theory to be related to synergistic multidimensional concepts such associal capital This can help designers select appropriate interface elements usabilityengineers prioritize reengineering efforts based on cost-benefit data and communityleaders appreciate specific elements of an a community network interface

There is much to do in the way of future work At this time we have not instantiatedor implemented a version of the generic prototype although that is a likely next stepCertainly we have an interest in identifying communities that would benefit from acommunity network designed or redesigned according to our model Although our casestudies have demonstrated an early analytical effort we are interested in developingimproved evaluation methods and criteria to complement critical incident reporting(Neale et al 2000) throughout all stages Since our prototype can support the evaluationof many different questions additional user testing may provide much more insight intoquestions about persistent virtual identity We are especially focused on improving thedesign of specific interface elements particularly those that support activity notificationand enhance activity awareness We also hope to extend our modeling process and valuechaining technique introduced here to other areas of interface development

References

Ackerman MS and Starr B (1995) ldquoSocial activity indicators interface components for CSCWsystemsrdquo Proceedings of Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UISTrsquo95) ACM Press New York NY pp 159-68

Blanchard AL and Markus ML (2002) ldquoSense of virtual community ndash maintaining theexperience of belongingrdquo Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference onSystem Sciences IEEE Press Piscataway NJ

Budzik J Bradshaw S Fu X and Hammond KJ (2002) ldquoClustering for opportunisticcommunicationrdquo Proceedings of International World Wide Web Conference (WWW rsquo02)ACM Press New York NY pp 726-35

Carroll JM and Rosson MB (2001) ldquoBetter home shopping or new democracy Evaluatingcommunity network outcomesrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors inComputing Systems (CHI rsquo01) ACM Press New York NY pp 372-9

Carroll JM Neale DC Isenhour PL Rosson MB and McCrickard DS (2003) ldquoNotificationand awareness synchronizing task-oriented collaborative activityrdquo International Journalof Human-Computer Studies Vol 8 No 5 pp 605-32

Cohill AM and Kavanaugh AL (Eds) (1997) Community Networks Lessons from BlacksburgVirginia Artech House Boston MA

Edelman LF Bresnen M Newell S Scarbrough H and Swan J (2004) ldquoThe benefits andpitfalls of social capital empirical evidence from two organizations in the UnitedKingdomrdquo British Journal of Management Vol 15 No S1 pp S59-S69

INTR153

278

Erickson T and Kellogg WA (2000) ldquoSocial translucence an approach to designing systemsthat support social processesrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Vol 7No 1 pp 59-83

Erickson T Halverson C Kellogg WA Laff M and Wolf T (2002) ldquoSocial translucencedesigning social infrastructures that make collective activity visiblerdquo Communications ofthe ACM Vol 45 No 4 pp 40-4

Erickson T Smith DN Kellogg WA Laff M Richards JT and Bradner E (2000) ldquoSociallytranslucent systems social proxies persistent conversation and the design of lsquoBabblersquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCWrsquo00) ACM Press New York NY pp 97-105

Goecks J and Cosley D (2002) ldquoNuggetMine intelligent groupware for opportunisticallysharing information nuggetsrdquo Proceedings of the International Conference on IntelligentUser Interfaces (IUI rsquo02) ACM Press New York NY pp 87-94

Haase AQ Wellman B Witte J and Hampton K (2002) ldquoCapitalizing on the internet socialcontact civic engagement and sense of communityrdquo in Wellman B and HaythornthwaiteC (Eds) The Internet and Everyday Life Blackwell Oxford

Hallnas L and Redstrom J (2002) ldquoFrom use to presence on the expressions and aesthetics ofeveryday computational thingsrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human InteractionVol 9 No 2 pp 106-24

Ishii H and Ullmer B (1997) ldquoTangible bits towards seamless interfaces between people bitsand atomsrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 234-41

Kindberg T Barton J Morgan J Becker G Caswell D Debaty P Gopal G Frid MKrishnan V Morris H Schettino J Serra B and Spasojevi M (2002) ldquoPeople placethings web presence for the real worldrdquo Mobile Networks and Applications No 7 KluwerAcademic Publishers Boston MA pp 365-76

McCrickard DS and Chewar CM (2003) ldquoAttuning notification design to user goals andattention costsrdquo Communications of the ACM Vol 46 No 3 pp 67-72

McCrickard DS Czerwinski M and Bartram L (2003) ldquoIntroduction design and evaluation ofnotification user interfacesrdquo International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Vol 8No 5 pp 509-14

Mynatt ED Adler A Ito M and OrsquoDay V (1997) ldquoDesign for network communitiesrdquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI rsquo97)ACM Press New York NY pp 210-17

Neale DC Dunlap D Isenhour P and Carroll JM (2000) ldquoCollaborative critical incidentdevelopmentrdquo Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society (HFES rsquo00)pp 598-601

OrsquoNeil D (2002) ldquoAssessing community informatics a review of methodological approaches forevaluating community networks and community technology centersrdquo Internet ResearchElectronic Networking Applications and Policy Vol 12 No 1 pp 76-102

Pedersen E and Sokoler T (1997) ldquoAROMA abstract representations of presence supportingmutual awarenessrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in ComputingSystems (CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 51-8

Preece J and Maloney-Krichmar D (2003) ldquoOnline communities focusing on sociability andusabilityrdquo in Jacko JA and Sears A (Eds) The Human-Computer Interaction HandbookLawrence Erlbaum Association London pp 583-95

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

279

Design conceptionFeatures within our generic prototype are discussed according to the social capitalproduction stages of the design model introduced earlier (Figure 1) starting withactivity notification Before arriving at this type of interface users of the communitynetwork would perhaps pass through a logon screen requiring an authenticated orunauthenticated username and password (these issues are explored in the next sectiondescribing the user study)

Activity notification Support for activity notification includes two primary featuresthe community announcements (Figure 2 (2)) and a notification settings screen (notpictured) Once users have accessed the site they might find a list of recent communityannouncements helpful Items in the list may link to detailed stories or eventdescriptions or perhaps to discussion forums Here users should be able to find out ifothers have similar needs or concerns and get a general idea of what is going on in thecommunity If they develop associations with groups within the community perhapsusers might want a link to group reactions for individual items in the list There mayalso be a mechanism to indicate preference for receiving updates on postings withincertain categories of information or information from particular people perhapsthrough an e-mail message notification a pop-up window or a taskbar icon that subtlychanges in appearance These notifications would ensure users are updated on sitechanges even if they do not visit the web site frequently

Socially translucent communication Two groups of features in this interface supportmembers of the community network in comparing views understanding patterns ofeach otherrsquos activity and developing norms and accountability for action the groupprofiles (Figure 2 (3)) and the MyGroups activity representation (Figure 2 (4))

To find out what other members of the community are concerned with anddiscussing users might access the group profiles As they browse through thecollection of groups registered within the community network they may notice thegroup reputations provided by the ldquocommunity ratingrdquo (votes from anyone in thecommunity) and the ldquomember ratingrdquo (votes from only members of the group) Groupscan have issues represented by icons (described by tool-tips and description links) thatare important to them (eg the desire not to be harassed about using a crosswalk) andthey can also be known for offering certain resources to the community at large (egcarpooling space or babysitting services) Groups may also visibly indicate oppositionto the policies or actions of another group From this part of the interface users can joinor create new groups

Once users join a group they may want to be aware of group membersrsquo activitywithin the community network With a small graphical representation (we includethose found in Erickson et al (2002) they can get a sense of who else is currently loggedon and participating in discussion forums Icons represent users that are logged on oroff the site (inside the circle) and convey the recency of activities like chatting withindiscussion forums (central icons indicate very recent activity as inactive time passesthey drift to the edges) A small timeline can also show a line for each personrepresenting when and how long they were logged on during a given period of timeThese features should allow users to know a little bit about when group members areactive within the community network and what active concerns they have

Evidence of collective efficacy The prototype contains two elements that shouldprovide the historical context and evidence of reciprocity necessary for development of

INTR153

274

collective efficacy and ultimately new social capital the community archives(Figure 2 (5)) and the community profile (Figure 2(6)) The community archives arefairly standard within existing interfaces typically including a list of resources thatcan be accessed by anyone in the community such as a common calendar of townevents formal documents detailing plans or complaints and permanent discussionboards on a variety of topics Our conception differs in the inclusion of ldquoMyGroupReactionsrdquo If a user is a member of a group group-owned links may also appear (eg toa group calendar or to document annotations) indicating related resources that areonly available to members of the group or those given access permissions

The community profile is included to help users understand how their concerns fitin with community-wide concerns Here they can see things like the total communitymembership and how the community is rated by all members or various groupsCommunity members are also able to see how community leaders have prioritizedissues within the community that need supporting (such as a leaf-removal project orcross-walk enforcement movement) and the types of community support available togroups or individuals (such as food and clothing that has just been donated) Inaddition some issues that require multiple phases to complete can be represented interms of a progress state indicator (Erickson et al 2002)

Support for distributed activity accomplishment Many of the elements included in theother features support distributed activity accomplishment For example users can postmessages on group or community discussion forums rate the community or othergroups submit requests to include issues in QuickVote (Figure 2 (7)) or documents in thecommunity archives Many of the notification options (eg associating certain eventsgroups or individuals with preferences to receive e-mail instant messages or subtlechanges to taskbar icons) provide the feedback necessary to restart the cycle providingprompt reaction from group or community members related to a memberrsquos actions

We expect that this model can be useful for testing how user attitudes are formed byindividual interface components We can obtain user responses to investigate how eachcomponent enhances SOC and social capital using the indicators provided in OrsquoNeilrsquos(2002) work Furthermore we can use this model to frame other research such as ourquestion related to the role of persistent virtual identity within a community network

Exemplar user studyReferring back to our original research questions we feel our design model and genericprototype provide us with tools necessary to assess the impact of design elements onthe support of social capital production ndash demonstrating linkages between theory anddesign artifacts These linkages allow us to address specific questions related to designcomponents within a community network ndash requiring new analysis techniques forassessing quality of interfaces and interface features Such an analysis technique musthelp us consider the additive effect of a variety of theoretical indicators and identifybreakdowns in complex interface objectives like supporting social capital production

The value chain analysisBusiness disciplines related to strategic and operations management use the concept ofa value chain to describe the linked set of value-creating and value-adding activitiesinvolved in product production or marketing Fundamental activities such as RampD orprocessing of raw materials are necessary to create value while later activities like

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

275

marketing and retailing add value to the final product Often many differentorganizations and firms contribute to these activities so value chain analysis involvesexamination of the linkages and identification of key activities per organization (Shankand Govindarajan 1993) (eg activity-based costing accounting) Without this type ofanalysis final product value (or cost) components are rarely distinguishable bycontributing value chain activities ndash the collective effect blends efficiencies andinefficiencies throughout the chain While perhaps the bottom line matters most thisprocess is often relied on to provide focus for competitive strategic resourcemanagement and synergistic product growth Our approach posits that the interfacedesign community can benefit from similar analyses especially as we considerchallenges brought on by collaborative ubiquitous notification and othernon-traditional interfaces Value chain analysis can provide usability insight relatedto the progressive effect of components in larger more complex usage experiences

HypothesesTo illustrate how the value chain analysis can be used with our design model andgeneric prototype tools the specific question that we focus on in this exemplar userstudy related to member policies for virtual identity authentication and persistenceVirtual identity policy options range from open access to a strict authentication policythat may involve a physical account issuing authority within the community (like thetown library) ensuring members reside locally and account names conform to actualidentity (authentic logon) Promoting trust and accountability seems to be a tradeoff forprivacy and anonymity We hypothesize

(1) user attitude toward using community networks differs under authenticatedand unauthenticated logon conditions

(2) these differences vary between those with usage concerns relying onestablishment of accountability or anonymity and

(3) differences between groups are traceable through user perception of individualfeature usefulness and appeal

To test these hypotheses we used our community network prototype to demonstrateeight key features sequentially (Figure 2) The features and the order of presentationwere carefully selected according to the value chain model described earlier (Figure 1)

MethodologyWe demonstrated our prototype to 40 participants (male aged 18-23 with similarcomputing experience) obtaining feedback immediately after explaining each featureUsing a 2 pound 2 between-subjects design we varied logon policy and usage concern Thetwo logon policy treatments were an authentic logon (A) and an unauthentic logon (U)explanation of the logon screen For each we mentioned the different implications ofthe logon policy to membership validity and association of actions with real identityWe also asked participants to imagine having one of two different concerns relating totheir initial community network usage as they considered the interface ndash a serviceproviding (SP) or service demanding (SD) concern SP concern participants were to actas if they were trying to find a way to volunteer within the community but were unsurehow to begin SD participants were to act as if they want to invoke authority responseto vehicle vandalism incidents

INTR153

276

Just after learning about their concern and the logon feature participants provided abaseline indication of their attitude toward using the community network After eachsubsequent feature was introduced participants indicated how much they like itwhether they thought it was useful their most important concern related to it andwhether it changed their attitude about the overall community network From theseresponses we are able to conduct the most basic assessment of the social capital valuechain within the interface The posttest questions included exactly the same questionas the initial question (ldquoWhat is your general attitude toward using the communitynetworkrdquo) as well as questions that probed the effect of the community network onparticipation within the physical community and willingness to use the network

Results and discussionThere are several interesting initial results Surprisingly our first hypothesis was notsupported by answers on the posttest attitude question However our second hypothesiswas supported ethFeth1 19THORN frac14 238 MSE frac14 11 p frac14 0025THORN SD-U and SP-A participants(those with logon policies compatible to accountability or privacy need) liked the generalidea of the community network more In order to approach our third hypothesis welooked at how attitude levels changed over the course of the feature demonstrationsFigure 3 shows how the value chain increased differently for each condition (sometimesdecreasing) based on average responses to how each feature impacted attitudes towardthe community network A perfect set of features would increase one-point at each stepThe differences between groups (note group profiles) provide a basis for reengineering

Extensions of this approach can benefit the research community We have shownhow decomposing the system goal to key activities suggests value chain links and canreveal feature differences between design and situation variables User evaluationshould assess the holistic effect of individual links on system goals allowing designersto understand which components are most important and which implementationsshould be used in various situations

ConclusionsBased on the analysis of existing systems the prototype design conception and themethodological contributions to our user study we believe that our model of social capitalproduction is a step in the right direction toward understanding how to improve the

Figure 3ldquoValue chainrdquo user study

analysis of the communitynetwork

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

277

design effectiveness of community networks Our design model was helpful for identifyingcritical aspects of the design and should focus feature development and usability testingin a way that will fulfill the community networkrsquos purpose ndash social capital

Using the model to isolate features of an interface for progressive analysis and userfeedback allows a value chain to be identified ndash revealing how value or the sense ofworth is manifested through use We focused on a question relating to logon policy withour initial study but similar issues related to persistent virtual identity can be probedwith this technique allowing breakdowns in the social capital production process to beexposed Value chaining also allows claims about features which are alreadywell-grounded in theory to be related to synergistic multidimensional concepts such associal capital This can help designers select appropriate interface elements usabilityengineers prioritize reengineering efforts based on cost-benefit data and communityleaders appreciate specific elements of an a community network interface

There is much to do in the way of future work At this time we have not instantiatedor implemented a version of the generic prototype although that is a likely next stepCertainly we have an interest in identifying communities that would benefit from acommunity network designed or redesigned according to our model Although our casestudies have demonstrated an early analytical effort we are interested in developingimproved evaluation methods and criteria to complement critical incident reporting(Neale et al 2000) throughout all stages Since our prototype can support the evaluationof many different questions additional user testing may provide much more insight intoquestions about persistent virtual identity We are especially focused on improving thedesign of specific interface elements particularly those that support activity notificationand enhance activity awareness We also hope to extend our modeling process and valuechaining technique introduced here to other areas of interface development

References

Ackerman MS and Starr B (1995) ldquoSocial activity indicators interface components for CSCWsystemsrdquo Proceedings of Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UISTrsquo95) ACM Press New York NY pp 159-68

Blanchard AL and Markus ML (2002) ldquoSense of virtual community ndash maintaining theexperience of belongingrdquo Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference onSystem Sciences IEEE Press Piscataway NJ

Budzik J Bradshaw S Fu X and Hammond KJ (2002) ldquoClustering for opportunisticcommunicationrdquo Proceedings of International World Wide Web Conference (WWW rsquo02)ACM Press New York NY pp 726-35

Carroll JM and Rosson MB (2001) ldquoBetter home shopping or new democracy Evaluatingcommunity network outcomesrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors inComputing Systems (CHI rsquo01) ACM Press New York NY pp 372-9

Carroll JM Neale DC Isenhour PL Rosson MB and McCrickard DS (2003) ldquoNotificationand awareness synchronizing task-oriented collaborative activityrdquo International Journalof Human-Computer Studies Vol 8 No 5 pp 605-32

Cohill AM and Kavanaugh AL (Eds) (1997) Community Networks Lessons from BlacksburgVirginia Artech House Boston MA

Edelman LF Bresnen M Newell S Scarbrough H and Swan J (2004) ldquoThe benefits andpitfalls of social capital empirical evidence from two organizations in the UnitedKingdomrdquo British Journal of Management Vol 15 No S1 pp S59-S69

INTR153

278

Erickson T and Kellogg WA (2000) ldquoSocial translucence an approach to designing systemsthat support social processesrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Vol 7No 1 pp 59-83

Erickson T Halverson C Kellogg WA Laff M and Wolf T (2002) ldquoSocial translucencedesigning social infrastructures that make collective activity visiblerdquo Communications ofthe ACM Vol 45 No 4 pp 40-4

Erickson T Smith DN Kellogg WA Laff M Richards JT and Bradner E (2000) ldquoSociallytranslucent systems social proxies persistent conversation and the design of lsquoBabblersquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCWrsquo00) ACM Press New York NY pp 97-105

Goecks J and Cosley D (2002) ldquoNuggetMine intelligent groupware for opportunisticallysharing information nuggetsrdquo Proceedings of the International Conference on IntelligentUser Interfaces (IUI rsquo02) ACM Press New York NY pp 87-94

Haase AQ Wellman B Witte J and Hampton K (2002) ldquoCapitalizing on the internet socialcontact civic engagement and sense of communityrdquo in Wellman B and HaythornthwaiteC (Eds) The Internet and Everyday Life Blackwell Oxford

Hallnas L and Redstrom J (2002) ldquoFrom use to presence on the expressions and aesthetics ofeveryday computational thingsrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human InteractionVol 9 No 2 pp 106-24

Ishii H and Ullmer B (1997) ldquoTangible bits towards seamless interfaces between people bitsand atomsrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 234-41

Kindberg T Barton J Morgan J Becker G Caswell D Debaty P Gopal G Frid MKrishnan V Morris H Schettino J Serra B and Spasojevi M (2002) ldquoPeople placethings web presence for the real worldrdquo Mobile Networks and Applications No 7 KluwerAcademic Publishers Boston MA pp 365-76

McCrickard DS and Chewar CM (2003) ldquoAttuning notification design to user goals andattention costsrdquo Communications of the ACM Vol 46 No 3 pp 67-72

McCrickard DS Czerwinski M and Bartram L (2003) ldquoIntroduction design and evaluation ofnotification user interfacesrdquo International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Vol 8No 5 pp 509-14

Mynatt ED Adler A Ito M and OrsquoDay V (1997) ldquoDesign for network communitiesrdquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI rsquo97)ACM Press New York NY pp 210-17

Neale DC Dunlap D Isenhour P and Carroll JM (2000) ldquoCollaborative critical incidentdevelopmentrdquo Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society (HFES rsquo00)pp 598-601

OrsquoNeil D (2002) ldquoAssessing community informatics a review of methodological approaches forevaluating community networks and community technology centersrdquo Internet ResearchElectronic Networking Applications and Policy Vol 12 No 1 pp 76-102

Pedersen E and Sokoler T (1997) ldquoAROMA abstract representations of presence supportingmutual awarenessrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in ComputingSystems (CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 51-8

Preece J and Maloney-Krichmar D (2003) ldquoOnline communities focusing on sociability andusabilityrdquo in Jacko JA and Sears A (Eds) The Human-Computer Interaction HandbookLawrence Erlbaum Association London pp 583-95

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

279

collective efficacy and ultimately new social capital the community archives(Figure 2 (5)) and the community profile (Figure 2(6)) The community archives arefairly standard within existing interfaces typically including a list of resources thatcan be accessed by anyone in the community such as a common calendar of townevents formal documents detailing plans or complaints and permanent discussionboards on a variety of topics Our conception differs in the inclusion of ldquoMyGroupReactionsrdquo If a user is a member of a group group-owned links may also appear (eg toa group calendar or to document annotations) indicating related resources that areonly available to members of the group or those given access permissions

The community profile is included to help users understand how their concerns fitin with community-wide concerns Here they can see things like the total communitymembership and how the community is rated by all members or various groupsCommunity members are also able to see how community leaders have prioritizedissues within the community that need supporting (such as a leaf-removal project orcross-walk enforcement movement) and the types of community support available togroups or individuals (such as food and clothing that has just been donated) Inaddition some issues that require multiple phases to complete can be represented interms of a progress state indicator (Erickson et al 2002)

Support for distributed activity accomplishment Many of the elements included in theother features support distributed activity accomplishment For example users can postmessages on group or community discussion forums rate the community or othergroups submit requests to include issues in QuickVote (Figure 2 (7)) or documents in thecommunity archives Many of the notification options (eg associating certain eventsgroups or individuals with preferences to receive e-mail instant messages or subtlechanges to taskbar icons) provide the feedback necessary to restart the cycle providingprompt reaction from group or community members related to a memberrsquos actions

We expect that this model can be useful for testing how user attitudes are formed byindividual interface components We can obtain user responses to investigate how eachcomponent enhances SOC and social capital using the indicators provided in OrsquoNeilrsquos(2002) work Furthermore we can use this model to frame other research such as ourquestion related to the role of persistent virtual identity within a community network

Exemplar user studyReferring back to our original research questions we feel our design model and genericprototype provide us with tools necessary to assess the impact of design elements onthe support of social capital production ndash demonstrating linkages between theory anddesign artifacts These linkages allow us to address specific questions related to designcomponents within a community network ndash requiring new analysis techniques forassessing quality of interfaces and interface features Such an analysis technique musthelp us consider the additive effect of a variety of theoretical indicators and identifybreakdowns in complex interface objectives like supporting social capital production

The value chain analysisBusiness disciplines related to strategic and operations management use the concept ofa value chain to describe the linked set of value-creating and value-adding activitiesinvolved in product production or marketing Fundamental activities such as RampD orprocessing of raw materials are necessary to create value while later activities like

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

275

marketing and retailing add value to the final product Often many differentorganizations and firms contribute to these activities so value chain analysis involvesexamination of the linkages and identification of key activities per organization (Shankand Govindarajan 1993) (eg activity-based costing accounting) Without this type ofanalysis final product value (or cost) components are rarely distinguishable bycontributing value chain activities ndash the collective effect blends efficiencies andinefficiencies throughout the chain While perhaps the bottom line matters most thisprocess is often relied on to provide focus for competitive strategic resourcemanagement and synergistic product growth Our approach posits that the interfacedesign community can benefit from similar analyses especially as we considerchallenges brought on by collaborative ubiquitous notification and othernon-traditional interfaces Value chain analysis can provide usability insight relatedto the progressive effect of components in larger more complex usage experiences

HypothesesTo illustrate how the value chain analysis can be used with our design model andgeneric prototype tools the specific question that we focus on in this exemplar userstudy related to member policies for virtual identity authentication and persistenceVirtual identity policy options range from open access to a strict authentication policythat may involve a physical account issuing authority within the community (like thetown library) ensuring members reside locally and account names conform to actualidentity (authentic logon) Promoting trust and accountability seems to be a tradeoff forprivacy and anonymity We hypothesize

(1) user attitude toward using community networks differs under authenticatedand unauthenticated logon conditions

(2) these differences vary between those with usage concerns relying onestablishment of accountability or anonymity and

(3) differences between groups are traceable through user perception of individualfeature usefulness and appeal

To test these hypotheses we used our community network prototype to demonstrateeight key features sequentially (Figure 2) The features and the order of presentationwere carefully selected according to the value chain model described earlier (Figure 1)

MethodologyWe demonstrated our prototype to 40 participants (male aged 18-23 with similarcomputing experience) obtaining feedback immediately after explaining each featureUsing a 2 pound 2 between-subjects design we varied logon policy and usage concern Thetwo logon policy treatments were an authentic logon (A) and an unauthentic logon (U)explanation of the logon screen For each we mentioned the different implications ofthe logon policy to membership validity and association of actions with real identityWe also asked participants to imagine having one of two different concerns relating totheir initial community network usage as they considered the interface ndash a serviceproviding (SP) or service demanding (SD) concern SP concern participants were to actas if they were trying to find a way to volunteer within the community but were unsurehow to begin SD participants were to act as if they want to invoke authority responseto vehicle vandalism incidents

INTR153

276

Just after learning about their concern and the logon feature participants provided abaseline indication of their attitude toward using the community network After eachsubsequent feature was introduced participants indicated how much they like itwhether they thought it was useful their most important concern related to it andwhether it changed their attitude about the overall community network From theseresponses we are able to conduct the most basic assessment of the social capital valuechain within the interface The posttest questions included exactly the same questionas the initial question (ldquoWhat is your general attitude toward using the communitynetworkrdquo) as well as questions that probed the effect of the community network onparticipation within the physical community and willingness to use the network

Results and discussionThere are several interesting initial results Surprisingly our first hypothesis was notsupported by answers on the posttest attitude question However our second hypothesiswas supported ethFeth1 19THORN frac14 238 MSE frac14 11 p frac14 0025THORN SD-U and SP-A participants(those with logon policies compatible to accountability or privacy need) liked the generalidea of the community network more In order to approach our third hypothesis welooked at how attitude levels changed over the course of the feature demonstrationsFigure 3 shows how the value chain increased differently for each condition (sometimesdecreasing) based on average responses to how each feature impacted attitudes towardthe community network A perfect set of features would increase one-point at each stepThe differences between groups (note group profiles) provide a basis for reengineering

Extensions of this approach can benefit the research community We have shownhow decomposing the system goal to key activities suggests value chain links and canreveal feature differences between design and situation variables User evaluationshould assess the holistic effect of individual links on system goals allowing designersto understand which components are most important and which implementationsshould be used in various situations

ConclusionsBased on the analysis of existing systems the prototype design conception and themethodological contributions to our user study we believe that our model of social capitalproduction is a step in the right direction toward understanding how to improve the

Figure 3ldquoValue chainrdquo user study

analysis of the communitynetwork

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

277

design effectiveness of community networks Our design model was helpful for identifyingcritical aspects of the design and should focus feature development and usability testingin a way that will fulfill the community networkrsquos purpose ndash social capital

Using the model to isolate features of an interface for progressive analysis and userfeedback allows a value chain to be identified ndash revealing how value or the sense ofworth is manifested through use We focused on a question relating to logon policy withour initial study but similar issues related to persistent virtual identity can be probedwith this technique allowing breakdowns in the social capital production process to beexposed Value chaining also allows claims about features which are alreadywell-grounded in theory to be related to synergistic multidimensional concepts such associal capital This can help designers select appropriate interface elements usabilityengineers prioritize reengineering efforts based on cost-benefit data and communityleaders appreciate specific elements of an a community network interface

There is much to do in the way of future work At this time we have not instantiatedor implemented a version of the generic prototype although that is a likely next stepCertainly we have an interest in identifying communities that would benefit from acommunity network designed or redesigned according to our model Although our casestudies have demonstrated an early analytical effort we are interested in developingimproved evaluation methods and criteria to complement critical incident reporting(Neale et al 2000) throughout all stages Since our prototype can support the evaluationof many different questions additional user testing may provide much more insight intoquestions about persistent virtual identity We are especially focused on improving thedesign of specific interface elements particularly those that support activity notificationand enhance activity awareness We also hope to extend our modeling process and valuechaining technique introduced here to other areas of interface development

References

Ackerman MS and Starr B (1995) ldquoSocial activity indicators interface components for CSCWsystemsrdquo Proceedings of Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UISTrsquo95) ACM Press New York NY pp 159-68

Blanchard AL and Markus ML (2002) ldquoSense of virtual community ndash maintaining theexperience of belongingrdquo Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference onSystem Sciences IEEE Press Piscataway NJ

Budzik J Bradshaw S Fu X and Hammond KJ (2002) ldquoClustering for opportunisticcommunicationrdquo Proceedings of International World Wide Web Conference (WWW rsquo02)ACM Press New York NY pp 726-35

Carroll JM and Rosson MB (2001) ldquoBetter home shopping or new democracy Evaluatingcommunity network outcomesrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors inComputing Systems (CHI rsquo01) ACM Press New York NY pp 372-9

Carroll JM Neale DC Isenhour PL Rosson MB and McCrickard DS (2003) ldquoNotificationand awareness synchronizing task-oriented collaborative activityrdquo International Journalof Human-Computer Studies Vol 8 No 5 pp 605-32

Cohill AM and Kavanaugh AL (Eds) (1997) Community Networks Lessons from BlacksburgVirginia Artech House Boston MA

Edelman LF Bresnen M Newell S Scarbrough H and Swan J (2004) ldquoThe benefits andpitfalls of social capital empirical evidence from two organizations in the UnitedKingdomrdquo British Journal of Management Vol 15 No S1 pp S59-S69

INTR153

278

Erickson T and Kellogg WA (2000) ldquoSocial translucence an approach to designing systemsthat support social processesrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Vol 7No 1 pp 59-83

Erickson T Halverson C Kellogg WA Laff M and Wolf T (2002) ldquoSocial translucencedesigning social infrastructures that make collective activity visiblerdquo Communications ofthe ACM Vol 45 No 4 pp 40-4

Erickson T Smith DN Kellogg WA Laff M Richards JT and Bradner E (2000) ldquoSociallytranslucent systems social proxies persistent conversation and the design of lsquoBabblersquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCWrsquo00) ACM Press New York NY pp 97-105

Goecks J and Cosley D (2002) ldquoNuggetMine intelligent groupware for opportunisticallysharing information nuggetsrdquo Proceedings of the International Conference on IntelligentUser Interfaces (IUI rsquo02) ACM Press New York NY pp 87-94

Haase AQ Wellman B Witte J and Hampton K (2002) ldquoCapitalizing on the internet socialcontact civic engagement and sense of communityrdquo in Wellman B and HaythornthwaiteC (Eds) The Internet and Everyday Life Blackwell Oxford

Hallnas L and Redstrom J (2002) ldquoFrom use to presence on the expressions and aesthetics ofeveryday computational thingsrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human InteractionVol 9 No 2 pp 106-24

Ishii H and Ullmer B (1997) ldquoTangible bits towards seamless interfaces between people bitsand atomsrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 234-41

Kindberg T Barton J Morgan J Becker G Caswell D Debaty P Gopal G Frid MKrishnan V Morris H Schettino J Serra B and Spasojevi M (2002) ldquoPeople placethings web presence for the real worldrdquo Mobile Networks and Applications No 7 KluwerAcademic Publishers Boston MA pp 365-76

McCrickard DS and Chewar CM (2003) ldquoAttuning notification design to user goals andattention costsrdquo Communications of the ACM Vol 46 No 3 pp 67-72

McCrickard DS Czerwinski M and Bartram L (2003) ldquoIntroduction design and evaluation ofnotification user interfacesrdquo International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Vol 8No 5 pp 509-14

Mynatt ED Adler A Ito M and OrsquoDay V (1997) ldquoDesign for network communitiesrdquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI rsquo97)ACM Press New York NY pp 210-17

Neale DC Dunlap D Isenhour P and Carroll JM (2000) ldquoCollaborative critical incidentdevelopmentrdquo Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society (HFES rsquo00)pp 598-601

OrsquoNeil D (2002) ldquoAssessing community informatics a review of methodological approaches forevaluating community networks and community technology centersrdquo Internet ResearchElectronic Networking Applications and Policy Vol 12 No 1 pp 76-102

Pedersen E and Sokoler T (1997) ldquoAROMA abstract representations of presence supportingmutual awarenessrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in ComputingSystems (CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 51-8

Preece J and Maloney-Krichmar D (2003) ldquoOnline communities focusing on sociability andusabilityrdquo in Jacko JA and Sears A (Eds) The Human-Computer Interaction HandbookLawrence Erlbaum Association London pp 583-95

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

279

marketing and retailing add value to the final product Often many differentorganizations and firms contribute to these activities so value chain analysis involvesexamination of the linkages and identification of key activities per organization (Shankand Govindarajan 1993) (eg activity-based costing accounting) Without this type ofanalysis final product value (or cost) components are rarely distinguishable bycontributing value chain activities ndash the collective effect blends efficiencies andinefficiencies throughout the chain While perhaps the bottom line matters most thisprocess is often relied on to provide focus for competitive strategic resourcemanagement and synergistic product growth Our approach posits that the interfacedesign community can benefit from similar analyses especially as we considerchallenges brought on by collaborative ubiquitous notification and othernon-traditional interfaces Value chain analysis can provide usability insight relatedto the progressive effect of components in larger more complex usage experiences

HypothesesTo illustrate how the value chain analysis can be used with our design model andgeneric prototype tools the specific question that we focus on in this exemplar userstudy related to member policies for virtual identity authentication and persistenceVirtual identity policy options range from open access to a strict authentication policythat may involve a physical account issuing authority within the community (like thetown library) ensuring members reside locally and account names conform to actualidentity (authentic logon) Promoting trust and accountability seems to be a tradeoff forprivacy and anonymity We hypothesize

(1) user attitude toward using community networks differs under authenticatedand unauthenticated logon conditions

(2) these differences vary between those with usage concerns relying onestablishment of accountability or anonymity and

(3) differences between groups are traceable through user perception of individualfeature usefulness and appeal

To test these hypotheses we used our community network prototype to demonstrateeight key features sequentially (Figure 2) The features and the order of presentationwere carefully selected according to the value chain model described earlier (Figure 1)

MethodologyWe demonstrated our prototype to 40 participants (male aged 18-23 with similarcomputing experience) obtaining feedback immediately after explaining each featureUsing a 2 pound 2 between-subjects design we varied logon policy and usage concern Thetwo logon policy treatments were an authentic logon (A) and an unauthentic logon (U)explanation of the logon screen For each we mentioned the different implications ofthe logon policy to membership validity and association of actions with real identityWe also asked participants to imagine having one of two different concerns relating totheir initial community network usage as they considered the interface ndash a serviceproviding (SP) or service demanding (SD) concern SP concern participants were to actas if they were trying to find a way to volunteer within the community but were unsurehow to begin SD participants were to act as if they want to invoke authority responseto vehicle vandalism incidents

INTR153

276

Just after learning about their concern and the logon feature participants provided abaseline indication of their attitude toward using the community network After eachsubsequent feature was introduced participants indicated how much they like itwhether they thought it was useful their most important concern related to it andwhether it changed their attitude about the overall community network From theseresponses we are able to conduct the most basic assessment of the social capital valuechain within the interface The posttest questions included exactly the same questionas the initial question (ldquoWhat is your general attitude toward using the communitynetworkrdquo) as well as questions that probed the effect of the community network onparticipation within the physical community and willingness to use the network

Results and discussionThere are several interesting initial results Surprisingly our first hypothesis was notsupported by answers on the posttest attitude question However our second hypothesiswas supported ethFeth1 19THORN frac14 238 MSE frac14 11 p frac14 0025THORN SD-U and SP-A participants(those with logon policies compatible to accountability or privacy need) liked the generalidea of the community network more In order to approach our third hypothesis welooked at how attitude levels changed over the course of the feature demonstrationsFigure 3 shows how the value chain increased differently for each condition (sometimesdecreasing) based on average responses to how each feature impacted attitudes towardthe community network A perfect set of features would increase one-point at each stepThe differences between groups (note group profiles) provide a basis for reengineering

Extensions of this approach can benefit the research community We have shownhow decomposing the system goal to key activities suggests value chain links and canreveal feature differences between design and situation variables User evaluationshould assess the holistic effect of individual links on system goals allowing designersto understand which components are most important and which implementationsshould be used in various situations

ConclusionsBased on the analysis of existing systems the prototype design conception and themethodological contributions to our user study we believe that our model of social capitalproduction is a step in the right direction toward understanding how to improve the

Figure 3ldquoValue chainrdquo user study

analysis of the communitynetwork

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

277

design effectiveness of community networks Our design model was helpful for identifyingcritical aspects of the design and should focus feature development and usability testingin a way that will fulfill the community networkrsquos purpose ndash social capital

Using the model to isolate features of an interface for progressive analysis and userfeedback allows a value chain to be identified ndash revealing how value or the sense ofworth is manifested through use We focused on a question relating to logon policy withour initial study but similar issues related to persistent virtual identity can be probedwith this technique allowing breakdowns in the social capital production process to beexposed Value chaining also allows claims about features which are alreadywell-grounded in theory to be related to synergistic multidimensional concepts such associal capital This can help designers select appropriate interface elements usabilityengineers prioritize reengineering efforts based on cost-benefit data and communityleaders appreciate specific elements of an a community network interface

There is much to do in the way of future work At this time we have not instantiatedor implemented a version of the generic prototype although that is a likely next stepCertainly we have an interest in identifying communities that would benefit from acommunity network designed or redesigned according to our model Although our casestudies have demonstrated an early analytical effort we are interested in developingimproved evaluation methods and criteria to complement critical incident reporting(Neale et al 2000) throughout all stages Since our prototype can support the evaluationof many different questions additional user testing may provide much more insight intoquestions about persistent virtual identity We are especially focused on improving thedesign of specific interface elements particularly those that support activity notificationand enhance activity awareness We also hope to extend our modeling process and valuechaining technique introduced here to other areas of interface development

References

Ackerman MS and Starr B (1995) ldquoSocial activity indicators interface components for CSCWsystemsrdquo Proceedings of Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UISTrsquo95) ACM Press New York NY pp 159-68

Blanchard AL and Markus ML (2002) ldquoSense of virtual community ndash maintaining theexperience of belongingrdquo Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference onSystem Sciences IEEE Press Piscataway NJ

Budzik J Bradshaw S Fu X and Hammond KJ (2002) ldquoClustering for opportunisticcommunicationrdquo Proceedings of International World Wide Web Conference (WWW rsquo02)ACM Press New York NY pp 726-35

Carroll JM and Rosson MB (2001) ldquoBetter home shopping or new democracy Evaluatingcommunity network outcomesrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors inComputing Systems (CHI rsquo01) ACM Press New York NY pp 372-9

Carroll JM Neale DC Isenhour PL Rosson MB and McCrickard DS (2003) ldquoNotificationand awareness synchronizing task-oriented collaborative activityrdquo International Journalof Human-Computer Studies Vol 8 No 5 pp 605-32

Cohill AM and Kavanaugh AL (Eds) (1997) Community Networks Lessons from BlacksburgVirginia Artech House Boston MA

Edelman LF Bresnen M Newell S Scarbrough H and Swan J (2004) ldquoThe benefits andpitfalls of social capital empirical evidence from two organizations in the UnitedKingdomrdquo British Journal of Management Vol 15 No S1 pp S59-S69

INTR153

278

Erickson T and Kellogg WA (2000) ldquoSocial translucence an approach to designing systemsthat support social processesrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Vol 7No 1 pp 59-83

Erickson T Halverson C Kellogg WA Laff M and Wolf T (2002) ldquoSocial translucencedesigning social infrastructures that make collective activity visiblerdquo Communications ofthe ACM Vol 45 No 4 pp 40-4

Erickson T Smith DN Kellogg WA Laff M Richards JT and Bradner E (2000) ldquoSociallytranslucent systems social proxies persistent conversation and the design of lsquoBabblersquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCWrsquo00) ACM Press New York NY pp 97-105

Goecks J and Cosley D (2002) ldquoNuggetMine intelligent groupware for opportunisticallysharing information nuggetsrdquo Proceedings of the International Conference on IntelligentUser Interfaces (IUI rsquo02) ACM Press New York NY pp 87-94

Haase AQ Wellman B Witte J and Hampton K (2002) ldquoCapitalizing on the internet socialcontact civic engagement and sense of communityrdquo in Wellman B and HaythornthwaiteC (Eds) The Internet and Everyday Life Blackwell Oxford

Hallnas L and Redstrom J (2002) ldquoFrom use to presence on the expressions and aesthetics ofeveryday computational thingsrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human InteractionVol 9 No 2 pp 106-24

Ishii H and Ullmer B (1997) ldquoTangible bits towards seamless interfaces between people bitsand atomsrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 234-41

Kindberg T Barton J Morgan J Becker G Caswell D Debaty P Gopal G Frid MKrishnan V Morris H Schettino J Serra B and Spasojevi M (2002) ldquoPeople placethings web presence for the real worldrdquo Mobile Networks and Applications No 7 KluwerAcademic Publishers Boston MA pp 365-76

McCrickard DS and Chewar CM (2003) ldquoAttuning notification design to user goals andattention costsrdquo Communications of the ACM Vol 46 No 3 pp 67-72

McCrickard DS Czerwinski M and Bartram L (2003) ldquoIntroduction design and evaluation ofnotification user interfacesrdquo International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Vol 8No 5 pp 509-14

Mynatt ED Adler A Ito M and OrsquoDay V (1997) ldquoDesign for network communitiesrdquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI rsquo97)ACM Press New York NY pp 210-17

Neale DC Dunlap D Isenhour P and Carroll JM (2000) ldquoCollaborative critical incidentdevelopmentrdquo Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society (HFES rsquo00)pp 598-601

OrsquoNeil D (2002) ldquoAssessing community informatics a review of methodological approaches forevaluating community networks and community technology centersrdquo Internet ResearchElectronic Networking Applications and Policy Vol 12 No 1 pp 76-102

Pedersen E and Sokoler T (1997) ldquoAROMA abstract representations of presence supportingmutual awarenessrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in ComputingSystems (CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 51-8

Preece J and Maloney-Krichmar D (2003) ldquoOnline communities focusing on sociability andusabilityrdquo in Jacko JA and Sears A (Eds) The Human-Computer Interaction HandbookLawrence Erlbaum Association London pp 583-95

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

279

Just after learning about their concern and the logon feature participants provided abaseline indication of their attitude toward using the community network After eachsubsequent feature was introduced participants indicated how much they like itwhether they thought it was useful their most important concern related to it andwhether it changed their attitude about the overall community network From theseresponses we are able to conduct the most basic assessment of the social capital valuechain within the interface The posttest questions included exactly the same questionas the initial question (ldquoWhat is your general attitude toward using the communitynetworkrdquo) as well as questions that probed the effect of the community network onparticipation within the physical community and willingness to use the network

Results and discussionThere are several interesting initial results Surprisingly our first hypothesis was notsupported by answers on the posttest attitude question However our second hypothesiswas supported ethFeth1 19THORN frac14 238 MSE frac14 11 p frac14 0025THORN SD-U and SP-A participants(those with logon policies compatible to accountability or privacy need) liked the generalidea of the community network more In order to approach our third hypothesis welooked at how attitude levels changed over the course of the feature demonstrationsFigure 3 shows how the value chain increased differently for each condition (sometimesdecreasing) based on average responses to how each feature impacted attitudes towardthe community network A perfect set of features would increase one-point at each stepThe differences between groups (note group profiles) provide a basis for reengineering

Extensions of this approach can benefit the research community We have shownhow decomposing the system goal to key activities suggests value chain links and canreveal feature differences between design and situation variables User evaluationshould assess the holistic effect of individual links on system goals allowing designersto understand which components are most important and which implementationsshould be used in various situations

ConclusionsBased on the analysis of existing systems the prototype design conception and themethodological contributions to our user study we believe that our model of social capitalproduction is a step in the right direction toward understanding how to improve the

Figure 3ldquoValue chainrdquo user study

analysis of the communitynetwork

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

277

design effectiveness of community networks Our design model was helpful for identifyingcritical aspects of the design and should focus feature development and usability testingin a way that will fulfill the community networkrsquos purpose ndash social capital

Using the model to isolate features of an interface for progressive analysis and userfeedback allows a value chain to be identified ndash revealing how value or the sense ofworth is manifested through use We focused on a question relating to logon policy withour initial study but similar issues related to persistent virtual identity can be probedwith this technique allowing breakdowns in the social capital production process to beexposed Value chaining also allows claims about features which are alreadywell-grounded in theory to be related to synergistic multidimensional concepts such associal capital This can help designers select appropriate interface elements usabilityengineers prioritize reengineering efforts based on cost-benefit data and communityleaders appreciate specific elements of an a community network interface

There is much to do in the way of future work At this time we have not instantiatedor implemented a version of the generic prototype although that is a likely next stepCertainly we have an interest in identifying communities that would benefit from acommunity network designed or redesigned according to our model Although our casestudies have demonstrated an early analytical effort we are interested in developingimproved evaluation methods and criteria to complement critical incident reporting(Neale et al 2000) throughout all stages Since our prototype can support the evaluationof many different questions additional user testing may provide much more insight intoquestions about persistent virtual identity We are especially focused on improving thedesign of specific interface elements particularly those that support activity notificationand enhance activity awareness We also hope to extend our modeling process and valuechaining technique introduced here to other areas of interface development

References

Ackerman MS and Starr B (1995) ldquoSocial activity indicators interface components for CSCWsystemsrdquo Proceedings of Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UISTrsquo95) ACM Press New York NY pp 159-68

Blanchard AL and Markus ML (2002) ldquoSense of virtual community ndash maintaining theexperience of belongingrdquo Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference onSystem Sciences IEEE Press Piscataway NJ

Budzik J Bradshaw S Fu X and Hammond KJ (2002) ldquoClustering for opportunisticcommunicationrdquo Proceedings of International World Wide Web Conference (WWW rsquo02)ACM Press New York NY pp 726-35

Carroll JM and Rosson MB (2001) ldquoBetter home shopping or new democracy Evaluatingcommunity network outcomesrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors inComputing Systems (CHI rsquo01) ACM Press New York NY pp 372-9

Carroll JM Neale DC Isenhour PL Rosson MB and McCrickard DS (2003) ldquoNotificationand awareness synchronizing task-oriented collaborative activityrdquo International Journalof Human-Computer Studies Vol 8 No 5 pp 605-32

Cohill AM and Kavanaugh AL (Eds) (1997) Community Networks Lessons from BlacksburgVirginia Artech House Boston MA

Edelman LF Bresnen M Newell S Scarbrough H and Swan J (2004) ldquoThe benefits andpitfalls of social capital empirical evidence from two organizations in the UnitedKingdomrdquo British Journal of Management Vol 15 No S1 pp S59-S69

INTR153

278

Erickson T and Kellogg WA (2000) ldquoSocial translucence an approach to designing systemsthat support social processesrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Vol 7No 1 pp 59-83

Erickson T Halverson C Kellogg WA Laff M and Wolf T (2002) ldquoSocial translucencedesigning social infrastructures that make collective activity visiblerdquo Communications ofthe ACM Vol 45 No 4 pp 40-4

Erickson T Smith DN Kellogg WA Laff M Richards JT and Bradner E (2000) ldquoSociallytranslucent systems social proxies persistent conversation and the design of lsquoBabblersquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCWrsquo00) ACM Press New York NY pp 97-105

Goecks J and Cosley D (2002) ldquoNuggetMine intelligent groupware for opportunisticallysharing information nuggetsrdquo Proceedings of the International Conference on IntelligentUser Interfaces (IUI rsquo02) ACM Press New York NY pp 87-94

Haase AQ Wellman B Witte J and Hampton K (2002) ldquoCapitalizing on the internet socialcontact civic engagement and sense of communityrdquo in Wellman B and HaythornthwaiteC (Eds) The Internet and Everyday Life Blackwell Oxford

Hallnas L and Redstrom J (2002) ldquoFrom use to presence on the expressions and aesthetics ofeveryday computational thingsrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human InteractionVol 9 No 2 pp 106-24

Ishii H and Ullmer B (1997) ldquoTangible bits towards seamless interfaces between people bitsand atomsrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 234-41

Kindberg T Barton J Morgan J Becker G Caswell D Debaty P Gopal G Frid MKrishnan V Morris H Schettino J Serra B and Spasojevi M (2002) ldquoPeople placethings web presence for the real worldrdquo Mobile Networks and Applications No 7 KluwerAcademic Publishers Boston MA pp 365-76

McCrickard DS and Chewar CM (2003) ldquoAttuning notification design to user goals andattention costsrdquo Communications of the ACM Vol 46 No 3 pp 67-72

McCrickard DS Czerwinski M and Bartram L (2003) ldquoIntroduction design and evaluation ofnotification user interfacesrdquo International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Vol 8No 5 pp 509-14

Mynatt ED Adler A Ito M and OrsquoDay V (1997) ldquoDesign for network communitiesrdquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI rsquo97)ACM Press New York NY pp 210-17

Neale DC Dunlap D Isenhour P and Carroll JM (2000) ldquoCollaborative critical incidentdevelopmentrdquo Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society (HFES rsquo00)pp 598-601

OrsquoNeil D (2002) ldquoAssessing community informatics a review of methodological approaches forevaluating community networks and community technology centersrdquo Internet ResearchElectronic Networking Applications and Policy Vol 12 No 1 pp 76-102

Pedersen E and Sokoler T (1997) ldquoAROMA abstract representations of presence supportingmutual awarenessrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in ComputingSystems (CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 51-8

Preece J and Maloney-Krichmar D (2003) ldquoOnline communities focusing on sociability andusabilityrdquo in Jacko JA and Sears A (Eds) The Human-Computer Interaction HandbookLawrence Erlbaum Association London pp 583-95

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

279

design effectiveness of community networks Our design model was helpful for identifyingcritical aspects of the design and should focus feature development and usability testingin a way that will fulfill the community networkrsquos purpose ndash social capital

Using the model to isolate features of an interface for progressive analysis and userfeedback allows a value chain to be identified ndash revealing how value or the sense ofworth is manifested through use We focused on a question relating to logon policy withour initial study but similar issues related to persistent virtual identity can be probedwith this technique allowing breakdowns in the social capital production process to beexposed Value chaining also allows claims about features which are alreadywell-grounded in theory to be related to synergistic multidimensional concepts such associal capital This can help designers select appropriate interface elements usabilityengineers prioritize reengineering efforts based on cost-benefit data and communityleaders appreciate specific elements of an a community network interface

There is much to do in the way of future work At this time we have not instantiatedor implemented a version of the generic prototype although that is a likely next stepCertainly we have an interest in identifying communities that would benefit from acommunity network designed or redesigned according to our model Although our casestudies have demonstrated an early analytical effort we are interested in developingimproved evaluation methods and criteria to complement critical incident reporting(Neale et al 2000) throughout all stages Since our prototype can support the evaluationof many different questions additional user testing may provide much more insight intoquestions about persistent virtual identity We are especially focused on improving thedesign of specific interface elements particularly those that support activity notificationand enhance activity awareness We also hope to extend our modeling process and valuechaining technique introduced here to other areas of interface development

References

Ackerman MS and Starr B (1995) ldquoSocial activity indicators interface components for CSCWsystemsrdquo Proceedings of Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UISTrsquo95) ACM Press New York NY pp 159-68

Blanchard AL and Markus ML (2002) ldquoSense of virtual community ndash maintaining theexperience of belongingrdquo Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference onSystem Sciences IEEE Press Piscataway NJ

Budzik J Bradshaw S Fu X and Hammond KJ (2002) ldquoClustering for opportunisticcommunicationrdquo Proceedings of International World Wide Web Conference (WWW rsquo02)ACM Press New York NY pp 726-35

Carroll JM and Rosson MB (2001) ldquoBetter home shopping or new democracy Evaluatingcommunity network outcomesrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors inComputing Systems (CHI rsquo01) ACM Press New York NY pp 372-9

Carroll JM Neale DC Isenhour PL Rosson MB and McCrickard DS (2003) ldquoNotificationand awareness synchronizing task-oriented collaborative activityrdquo International Journalof Human-Computer Studies Vol 8 No 5 pp 605-32

Cohill AM and Kavanaugh AL (Eds) (1997) Community Networks Lessons from BlacksburgVirginia Artech House Boston MA

Edelman LF Bresnen M Newell S Scarbrough H and Swan J (2004) ldquoThe benefits andpitfalls of social capital empirical evidence from two organizations in the UnitedKingdomrdquo British Journal of Management Vol 15 No S1 pp S59-S69

INTR153

278

Erickson T and Kellogg WA (2000) ldquoSocial translucence an approach to designing systemsthat support social processesrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Vol 7No 1 pp 59-83

Erickson T Halverson C Kellogg WA Laff M and Wolf T (2002) ldquoSocial translucencedesigning social infrastructures that make collective activity visiblerdquo Communications ofthe ACM Vol 45 No 4 pp 40-4

Erickson T Smith DN Kellogg WA Laff M Richards JT and Bradner E (2000) ldquoSociallytranslucent systems social proxies persistent conversation and the design of lsquoBabblersquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCWrsquo00) ACM Press New York NY pp 97-105

Goecks J and Cosley D (2002) ldquoNuggetMine intelligent groupware for opportunisticallysharing information nuggetsrdquo Proceedings of the International Conference on IntelligentUser Interfaces (IUI rsquo02) ACM Press New York NY pp 87-94

Haase AQ Wellman B Witte J and Hampton K (2002) ldquoCapitalizing on the internet socialcontact civic engagement and sense of communityrdquo in Wellman B and HaythornthwaiteC (Eds) The Internet and Everyday Life Blackwell Oxford

Hallnas L and Redstrom J (2002) ldquoFrom use to presence on the expressions and aesthetics ofeveryday computational thingsrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human InteractionVol 9 No 2 pp 106-24

Ishii H and Ullmer B (1997) ldquoTangible bits towards seamless interfaces between people bitsand atomsrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 234-41

Kindberg T Barton J Morgan J Becker G Caswell D Debaty P Gopal G Frid MKrishnan V Morris H Schettino J Serra B and Spasojevi M (2002) ldquoPeople placethings web presence for the real worldrdquo Mobile Networks and Applications No 7 KluwerAcademic Publishers Boston MA pp 365-76

McCrickard DS and Chewar CM (2003) ldquoAttuning notification design to user goals andattention costsrdquo Communications of the ACM Vol 46 No 3 pp 67-72

McCrickard DS Czerwinski M and Bartram L (2003) ldquoIntroduction design and evaluation ofnotification user interfacesrdquo International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Vol 8No 5 pp 509-14

Mynatt ED Adler A Ito M and OrsquoDay V (1997) ldquoDesign for network communitiesrdquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI rsquo97)ACM Press New York NY pp 210-17

Neale DC Dunlap D Isenhour P and Carroll JM (2000) ldquoCollaborative critical incidentdevelopmentrdquo Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society (HFES rsquo00)pp 598-601

OrsquoNeil D (2002) ldquoAssessing community informatics a review of methodological approaches forevaluating community networks and community technology centersrdquo Internet ResearchElectronic Networking Applications and Policy Vol 12 No 1 pp 76-102

Pedersen E and Sokoler T (1997) ldquoAROMA abstract representations of presence supportingmutual awarenessrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in ComputingSystems (CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 51-8

Preece J and Maloney-Krichmar D (2003) ldquoOnline communities focusing on sociability andusabilityrdquo in Jacko JA and Sears A (Eds) The Human-Computer Interaction HandbookLawrence Erlbaum Association London pp 583-95

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

279

Erickson T and Kellogg WA (2000) ldquoSocial translucence an approach to designing systemsthat support social processesrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Vol 7No 1 pp 59-83

Erickson T Halverson C Kellogg WA Laff M and Wolf T (2002) ldquoSocial translucencedesigning social infrastructures that make collective activity visiblerdquo Communications ofthe ACM Vol 45 No 4 pp 40-4

Erickson T Smith DN Kellogg WA Laff M Richards JT and Bradner E (2000) ldquoSociallytranslucent systems social proxies persistent conversation and the design of lsquoBabblersquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCWrsquo00) ACM Press New York NY pp 97-105

Goecks J and Cosley D (2002) ldquoNuggetMine intelligent groupware for opportunisticallysharing information nuggetsrdquo Proceedings of the International Conference on IntelligentUser Interfaces (IUI rsquo02) ACM Press New York NY pp 87-94

Haase AQ Wellman B Witte J and Hampton K (2002) ldquoCapitalizing on the internet socialcontact civic engagement and sense of communityrdquo in Wellman B and HaythornthwaiteC (Eds) The Internet and Everyday Life Blackwell Oxford

Hallnas L and Redstrom J (2002) ldquoFrom use to presence on the expressions and aesthetics ofeveryday computational thingsrdquo ACM Transactions on Computer-Human InteractionVol 9 No 2 pp 106-24

Ishii H and Ullmer B (1997) ldquoTangible bits towards seamless interfaces between people bitsand atomsrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 234-41

Kindberg T Barton J Morgan J Becker G Caswell D Debaty P Gopal G Frid MKrishnan V Morris H Schettino J Serra B and Spasojevi M (2002) ldquoPeople placethings web presence for the real worldrdquo Mobile Networks and Applications No 7 KluwerAcademic Publishers Boston MA pp 365-76

McCrickard DS and Chewar CM (2003) ldquoAttuning notification design to user goals andattention costsrdquo Communications of the ACM Vol 46 No 3 pp 67-72

McCrickard DS Czerwinski M and Bartram L (2003) ldquoIntroduction design and evaluation ofnotification user interfacesrdquo International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Vol 8No 5 pp 509-14

Mynatt ED Adler A Ito M and OrsquoDay V (1997) ldquoDesign for network communitiesrdquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI rsquo97)ACM Press New York NY pp 210-17

Neale DC Dunlap D Isenhour P and Carroll JM (2000) ldquoCollaborative critical incidentdevelopmentrdquo Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society (HFES rsquo00)pp 598-601

OrsquoNeil D (2002) ldquoAssessing community informatics a review of methodological approaches forevaluating community networks and community technology centersrdquo Internet ResearchElectronic Networking Applications and Policy Vol 12 No 1 pp 76-102

Pedersen E and Sokoler T (1997) ldquoAROMA abstract representations of presence supportingmutual awarenessrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in ComputingSystems (CHI rsquo97) ACM Press New York NY pp 51-8

Preece J and Maloney-Krichmar D (2003) ldquoOnline communities focusing on sociability andusabilityrdquo in Jacko JA and Sears A (Eds) The Human-Computer Interaction HandbookLawrence Erlbaum Association London pp 583-95

Analyzing thesocial capital

value chain

279

Schuler D (1996a) ldquoHow to kill community networks Hint we may have already startedrdquoThe Network Observer

Schuler D (1996b) New Community Networks Wired for Change Addison-Wesley Glen ViewIL available at wwwscnorgncn

Shank JK and Govindarajan V (1993) Strategic Cost Management The Free Press New York NY

Smith M Cadiz J and Burkhalter B (2000) ldquoConversation trees and threaded chatsrdquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCWrsquo00) ACM Press New York NY pp 97-105

Smith MA and Fiore AT (2001) ldquoVisualization components for persistent conversationsrdquoProceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CH rsquo01)ACM Press New York NY pp 136-43

Stathis K de Brujin O and Macedo S (2002) ldquoLiving memory agent-based informationmanagement for connected local communitiesrdquo Interacting with Computers Vol 14 No 6pp 663-88

Tersquoeni D (2001) ldquoReview a cognitive-affective model of organizational communication fordesigning ITrdquo MIS Quarterly Vol 25 No 2 pp 251-313

Vronay D Smith M and Drucker S (1999) ldquoAlternative interfaces for chatrdquo Proceedings ofSymposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST rsquo99) ACM Press NewYork NY pp 19-26

Walters GJ (2001) ldquoPrivacy and security an ethical analysisrdquo Computers and Society Vol 31pp 8-23

Whittaker S (1996) ldquoTalking to strangers an evaluation of the factors affecting electroniccollaborationrdquo Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported CooperativeWork (CSCW rsquo96) ACM Press New York NY pp 409-18

Further reading

Bandura A (2002) ldquoGrowing primacy of human agency in adaptation and change in theelectronic erardquo European Psychologist Vol 7 No 1 pp 2-16

Munson JP and Gupta VK (2002) ldquoLocation-based notification as a general-purpose servicerdquoProceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Mobile Commerce (WCM rsquo02) ACMPress New York NY pp 40-4

Olson GM and Olson JS (2003) ldquoGroupware and computer-supported cooperative workrdquoin Jacko JA and Sears A (Eds) The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook LawrenceErlbaum Associates London pp 583-95

Putnam RD (2000) Bowling Alone The Crumbling and Revival of American Community Simonamp Schuster New York NY

Wellman B (2001) ldquoDoes the internet increase decrease or supplement social capital Socialnetworks participation and community commitmentrdquo American Behavioral ScientistVol 45 No 3 pp 437-56

INTR153

280