Designing Online Knowledge Communities: Developing a Usability Evaluation Criteria Catalogue
Tobias Mueller-Prothmann, Carsten Siedentopf · 2003
Abstract. Usability is a key factor for the effectiveness, efficiency and acceptance of Online Knowledge Communities (OKCs). It is also a critical issue for their existence, success and future evolution. This paper aims at laying a foundation for the devel-opment of a usability evaluation criteria catalogue. Usability for online communities is outlined first. A systematic overview of facility-types and technical components of OKCs provides the basis for the development of usability criteria. As main find-ings of our research extracts from the OKC Usability Evaluation Criteria Catalogue are presented. This OKC Usability Evaluation Criteria Catalogue supports summa-tive evaluation of OKCs as well as the development of heuristics for the designing of OKCs. 1