Design for network communities
Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Annette Adler, Mizuko Ito, Vicki L. O’Day · 1997
Collaboration has long been of considerable interest in the CHI community. This paper proposes and explores the concept of network communities as a crucial part of this discussion. Network communities are a form of technologymediated environment that foster a sense of community among users. We consider several familiar systems and describe the shared characteristics these systems have developed to deal with critical concerns of collaboration. Based on our own experience as designers and users of a variety of network communities, we extend this initial design space along three dimensions: the articulation of a persistent sense of location, the boundary tensions between real and virtual worlds, and the emergence and evolution of community. KEYWORDS: media space, MUDs, network community, shared space, metaphor, identity, virtual world INTRODUCTION There has long been interest in the CHI community in supporting groups of people collaborating, in particular, the informal, awareness-rich,...