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This is the original M.Sc. Dissertation project concerning the UK League Snooker Community, it was completed in 4 months at the start of 2003, receiving the prize for 'The Best M.Sc Computing Dissertation 2003'. Since then the website has been expanded extensively with new functionality and refined to suit the needs of UK Snooker Leagues 1.6.2 Determining the User Requirements - Interviews,
questionnaires and observing.
10
2.1.1 Online Community Theory.
14
2.1.2.2 User and Task Analysis
16
2.1.2.4 Usability Evaluation.
17
2.1.3.4 Sociability and Usability.
19
2.1.4.1 Software Life Cycle.
20
2.1.4.4 Social Impact of Software Design.
22
2.2 Research Methodology -
Community-Centred Development.
23
2.2.3 Participatory design.
25
2.2.4 Assessing community needs and analysing user
tasks
26
2.2.5 Selecting technology and planning sociability.
26
2.2.6 Designing, implementing, and testing prototypes
26
2.2.7 Refining and tuning sociability and usability.
26
2.2.8 Welcoming and nurturing the community.
27
3 ASSESSING COMMUNITY NEEDS AND ANALYSING USER TASKS.
28
3.1 Requirements gathering.
28
3.2 Survey design and
distribution.
29
3.3 Analysis of the survey
results.
31
3.3.1 Demographics – Age, gender, location, years of
league snooker experience.
32
3.3.2 Current league information sources and
availability.
36
3.3.3 Internet – access, location, frequency, browser,
PC or MAC.
38
3.3.5 Willingness to participate in developing the
community.
44
3.3.6 Community features suggestions
45
3.3.7 Willingness to participate in the community once
it is developed.
47
3.4.1 League Administrators
49
4 SELECTING TECHNOLOGY AND PLANNING SOCIABILITY.
53
4.1.2.2 ASP (Active Server Pages)
56
4.1.2.3 PHP (Personal Home Page)
56
4.1.2.4 Perl (Practical Extraction and Report
Language)
56
4.1.2.6 Language comparison.
57
4.1.2.7 Database Management System (DBMS)
58
5 DESIGNING, IMPLEMENTING AND TESTING PROTOTYPES.
62
5.1 Entity Relationship
Modelling (See Figure 27)
62
5.2.2 League Administration Area (See Figures 28 and
29)
65
5.2.3 League Participants Area (See Figure 30)
65
5.2.4 Community Administration Area (See Figure 31)
66
5.3 Programming the
Interface.
71
5.4.1 Existing problems with the site design.
73
5.5 League Participants
view..
74
5.6 League Administrators
view..
74
5.7 Community
Administration view..
74
5.8.2 Usability Testing – Ethics
74
5.8.3 Usability Testing – Format
74
5.8.4 Usability Testing – Results
74
6 conclusions and further research.
74
6.1 Research Methodology –
Community-centred development.
74
6.4 Online Community Theory.
74
6.5 Further
Research/Activities.
74
6.5.1 League Committees and Administrators
74
6.5.2 Adaptation of the community.
74
FIGURES
Figure
2 - The three domains of Online Communities.
14
Figure
4 - Community-centred development.
25
Figure
5 - Questionnaire Source.
31
Figure
6 - Age of UK Snooker League Participants.
33
Figure
7 - The locations of the UK Snooker league survey respondents.
35
Figure
8 - League participation length.
36
Figure
9 - League information source.
37
Figure
10 - League information availability.
37
Figure
11 - League participants Internet access.
38
Figure
12 - Internet access location.
39
Figure
13 - How frequently participants access the Internet.
39
Figure
14 - Internet usage - Longevity.
40
Figure
15 – Computing skill – Paper survey results only.
41
Figure
16 - Internet access - Paper survey results only.
41
Figure
17 - League participant’s computer skills.
42
Figure
18 - Computing skill by age.
42
Figure
19 - Previous participation in an online community.
43
Figure
20 - Possesses an Email account.
44
Figure
21 - Willing to help test and refine the website.
45
Figure
22 - Website features suggestions.
46
Figure
23 - Preferred method of online community communication.
46
Figure
24 - Participants who would be willing to access league information via a
website
47
Figure
25 - How frequently would the participants access the website.
48
Figure
26 - Willing to participate in an online discussion Forum.
49
Figure
27 - The community Entity Relationship Model and Attributes.
64
Figure
28 – League Administrators pages (Part 1)
67
Figure
29 - League Administrators pages (Part 2)
68
Figure
30 – League Participants pages.
69
Figure
31 – Community Administrators pages.
70
Figure
32 – Prototype Template.
74
Figure
34 - League in Staffordshire.
74
Figure
35 - The Stafford and District Snooker League Home Page.
74
Figure
36 - The Stafford and District Snooker League - Division 3 Table.
74
Figure
37 - Player Statistics.
74
Figure
38 - Discussion Forum Topics.
74
Figure
40 - League Administration Home Page.
74
Figure
41 - Add a League Fixture.
74
Figure
43 – Delete a person.
74
Figure
45 – Community Administration.
74
TABLES
Table 1
- The leagues that the survey
respondents have played in………………………… 33 Table 2 - Semi quantitative comparison of features of four programming
environments…. 57 APPENDICES
APPENDIX
A Online Survey I APPENDIX
B Sample
of Paper Surveys – League participants II APPENDIX
C Paper Surveys – League administrators III APPENDIX
D Usability Tasks V APPENDIX
E Sample of the application code VI APPENDIX
F Database queries VII ABSTRACT
There are up to one thousand
snooker leagues that exist in the 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Problem
We
have worked for the last 2 years and still work on a website which acts as an
online portal for IT Companies throughout the world (http://www.tsanet.org),
during this time an understanding of the workings of an online community was
gained. We also have an interest in UK
snooker leagues and from playing in various UK snooker leagues for the past
twelve years we have identified a common problem, this being that there is a
distinct lack of information available to what is happening within the leagues
i.e. results, news, league tables, fixtures, etc. Snooker
leagues are widespread throughout the UK, how many we can only guess, there is
no single directory, according to the BBC website the county of Lancashire
possesses twenty eight snooker leagues alone, the population of Lancashire is
approximately one and a half million (3% of the population of the UK),
therefore an estimation can be made that there are up to one thousand snooker
leagues in the UK. Generally a league
consists of between one and seven divisions of snooker teams that are based on
a specific geographical area. There are
usually eight to twelve teams in each division, who play each other home and
away in a season, often during the winter months. The teams are based at a club, usually a
workingmen’s or social club, although actual snooker clubs participate within
the leagues. Each team generally
consists of between five and six players, who play a single frame of snooker
against an opponent during a match on a weekly basis. Alongside the league matches there are many knockout
competitions throughout a season, which involve teams, individuals, doubles and
even triple players. Many players take
part in the leagues as it gives them a chance to enjoy competing and
socialising on a regular basis. We
estimate that there are between one hundred thousand and one hundred and fifty
thousand players participating in UK snooker leagues each year. The
information availability varies greatly, the most typical source of information
is available from a local newspaper that is often published on a weekly basis,
but the detail of information is generally very poor. At the one extreme there is the West Midlands
snooker league which has an excellent website that is updated on a weekly basis
http://www.cued-up.co.uk. The site provides a wealth of information, as
detailed as individual player scores per match, although the majority of sites
are very poorly designed and not very usable.
While at the other end of the scale is the Stirchley and District Snooker
league also based in the West Midlands, who’s league information is made
available only once a month when the league committee convenes, thus league
participants have a very vague idea on what is happening within their league in
terms of league details, competitions and much more. Based on this knowledge, a good method of
addressing this problem would be to create an online community that can provide
information for any snooker league in the UK. “Although
definitions of an online community vary, a general definition of an online
community is a group of people who share a similar interest, share networked
resources, and communicate using a computer-mediated communication tool” (Lazar
and Preece, 2000, p.20). In the case of
the proposed online community there is certainly a common interest, but the
primary issue that needs to be addressed is the fact that at present the many
UK snooker leagues are greatly isolated, it will be relatively straight-forward
to develop an application to provide up to date information for the
participants, but it will be a far greater challenge to investigate the process
of developing and implementing a successful online community for UK snooker
leagues. The creation of a successful
online community in terms of uniting the isolated league participants in some
form may not be possible. Thus the
designing and building of online communities will be researched to establish
whether this is feasible. The
areas of research that are essential for building an online community are focused
on designing usability and supporting sociability. “In creating web-based resources, the focus
still needs to be on user-centred design” (Lazar and Preece, 2000, p.20). The methods employed for gathering user
requirements needs to be considered carefully, especially since the population
of the league participants are geographically dispersed throughout the UK. Traditional techniques of observation,
interviews and focus groups will not be possible on a national basis, so a
portion of the research will focus on establishing the most appropriate methods
of gathering user requirements. The
planning of sociability within an online community is not trivial, from the
research undertaken so far it seems that the greater the number of participants
the more successful the community becomes.
To plan sociability policies for: Membership, Codes of Conduct,
Security, Privacy, Copyright, and Free Speech, Moderators will need to be
considered and much more. 1.2 Project Background
From
the research carried out so far on online communities, Jenny Preece, Professor
of Information Systems at the University of Maryland and Jonathan Lazar
Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at
Towson University are the key authors in the chosen area of study. They have written many journal articles on
online communities and on occasions worked together on the same project, for
example, they both helped to research and develop an online community for
parents whose children have Down Syndrome.
Two papers in particular will be a very useful resource for our
research; they deal with the problem of gathering user requirements over a wide
geographical area. Jenny Preece has also
written a comprehensive book on Online Communities – Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability that is an excellent resource for this research
project. The
primary text we will use when considering the usability aspects of designing
the online community will be that of Jakob Nielsen’s, his 1993 book on Usability Engineering is a well-respected source on the principles of usability. 1.3 Aim
The
aim of the project is to solve the problem of the lack of information available
to snooker league participants throughout the 1.4 Objectives
The
purpose of the study is: -
To research past and current work in the
area. -
To assess community needs and analyse
user tasks -
To select technology and plan sociability -
To design, implement, and test prototypes -
To refine and tune sociability and
usability -
To critically analyse the overall project -
To put forward the future of the online
community -
To adhere to ethical codes of conduct. 1.5 Intellectual challenge
Earnshaw
et al (2001) compiled a report on the related areas of human centred
interaction, online communities, and virtual environments. A key finding was that “directions for
research and development are needed that address usability and sociability
problems so that better online communities can be developed. There is a particular strong need to involve
social scientists as well as computer scientists. Successful online communities will result
from a blend of good usability and carefully guided social policies that
encourage social interaction. Theory and
better research methods are also needed to support Internet research and system
development” (Earnshaw et al., 2001, p.264).
This report, that involved leading authorities in the area, identified
the directions of key future research, the aim is to add to this ongoing
research by creating a highly usable and sociable online community that other
researchers can review and hopefully gain knowledge and understanding from the
work produced. 1.6 Research Programme
1.6.1 Methodology
The
nature of the problem suggests that a qualitative research method be taken to
address the issues of researching and developing an online community. The community will ultimately provide a
service for people; so the aim is to attempt to look through the eyes of the
people that will potentially use the community in order “to construe the
attitudes, beliefs and motivations within a subject” (Walliman, 2001, p.
203). The qualitative method demands
that the research “obtain an inside view of phenomenon, getting as close as
possible to the subject of the research in order to collect resonant, fertile
data to enable the development of a social construct through the dynamic
process of research” (Walliman, 2001, p. 203).
The quantitative method of research is quite the opposite, in that the
researcher chooses to remain distant from the users in order to collect hard,
reliable data. This method of research
is thus not suitable to what we aim to achieve, the key to building a
successful online community demands that we work closely with the users, in
order to establish their requirements. The
research methods that will be used during the project are: evaluation and
action research. (try putting “evaluation” and “action” in bold??) The evaluation
method is suitable because the method is “specifically designed to deal with
complex social issues” (Walliman, 2001, p. 94), thus suits the context of the
creating an online community. The action
research method can be utilised when conducting observation and behavioural
research, as in the case of observing a user using the prototype to gain
feedback on the applications usability
1.6.2 Determining the User
Requirements - Interviews, questionnaires and observing
User requirements can be gathered locally in 1.6.3 Project Plan
Figure
1
– Project Plan
1.7 Deliverables
-
A review of work in the subject area.
(put full stops after each of these deliverables) -
A theoretical background of Online
Communities. -
An assessment of community needs and
analysis of user tasks. -
Software selection and sociability plan. -
A generic database driven website
developed to suit the requirements of the diverse communities. -
A critical analysis of the project. -
A discussion of the ethical issues
involved in this dissertation. -
Dissertation document. 1.8 Constraints
There is no
single directory of
1.9 Ethical issues
Special
consideration needs to be considered for users when usability studies are
conducted, the deepest respect for the users well-being and emotions will be
the most important factor during a usability test. The
information that is obtained from the 1.10 Resources
1.11 Summary
The
research problem has been identified, and how to address the problem
proposed. The intellectual challenge can
be met through a structured research programme, by adhering to ethical codes of
conduct and by following the project plan.
Each project objective is met by a deliverable. The next chapter looks at the theory behind
online community development. 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Online
community theory needs to be addressed before a community is developed. Literature needs to be reviewed to identify
the key domains of designing an online community, and a research methodology to
provide online community development guidelines are identified in the following
chapter. 2.1 Literature Review
The
literature review will critically evaluate the past and current work on the
researching and developing of online communities. The aim is to outline research possibilities
that have either been explicitly identified by authors or have possibly been overlooked
in the past, and also to identify research methods and strategies that may be
usefully applied to the research project.
The
project can be considered from the perspective of three domains – Usability,
Sociability, and Software Development (see figure 2). From the research done, these three domains
are the key areas that need to be considered when developing an online
community. We will look at the important
work that has been carried out in each separate domain, the work of the main
authors, models, the major theories, and examples of where the particular
domain fits into existing online communities.
The aim is to add value to the above by making a personal response to
past and current work by establishing our own view and position on the subject.
Figure
2
- The three domains of Online
Communities
Each
domain will be critically evaluated; the intersection between each domain will
be identified with the conclusion summing up the intersection between all three
domains. 2.1.1 Online
Community Theory
Jenny
Preece, arguably the most well respected author on the subject of online
communities argues: “Many candidate
theories exist that are partially relevant to online communities. High-level theories are needed that are
directly relevant to online communities.
The value of such theories is to: §
Understand communication in different types of communities. §
Make predictions. §
Inform online community design. Current theories fall into the following three categories: §
One-to-one or small
group communication via different media. §
Social interaction and
community networks. §
Relationship between
software design and social behaviour”. (Preece, J
Chapter 17, Frontiers of human-centred computing, online communities and
virtual environments. 2001, p.270). Peter
Kollock, joint author to the book ‘Communities in cyberspace’ offers his
opinion on building online communities.
“There is no algorithm for community. That is, there is no step-by-step
recipe that can be followed that will guarantee a specific outcome. Building
community is a fundamentally different activity than writing computer code:
code does not write back and code does not respond strategically to one’s
actions” Kollock (1996), (
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/design.htm,
Last Accessed 14/01/03). Online communities are a relatively new phenomenon;
therefore theory is still in its infancy. Preece highlights the key areas that
are needed to understand sociability and inform online community
development. She believes the key areas
to create online community theory are: sociology, psychology, social
psychology, linguistics, communication research and psychotherapy. From our research Professor Jenny Preece’s
opinion is highly regarded, she is an established academic in the field of
Human Computer Interaction and has researched online communities extensively,
the aim is to utilise her work comprehensively during the project. 2.1.2 Usability
Good
usability is a fundamental aspect of online communities, poorly designed
software can cause hours of endless frustration for users, often due to
developers making assumptions about how the interface they design will be
interpreted. Preece gives a good
definition of usability and why it is important. “Software with good usability supports rapid
learning, high skill retention, low error rates, and high productivity. It is consistent, controllable, and predictable,
making it pleasant and effective to use” (Preece, 2000 p.133). Good usability comes part and parcel of
designing online communities, especially because many of the users may be
novices, poor usability could stop a community from getting off the
ground. 2.1.2.1 Consistency
The
keyword that Preece uses is ‘Consistent’. Jakob Nielsen often described, as a
‘Usability Guru’ believes that consistency is one of the most basic usability principles.
He uses a quote by Lewis to emphasise his viewpoint. “If users know that the same command or the
same action will always have the same effect, they will feel more confident in
using the system, and they will be encouraged to try out exploratory learning
strategies because they will already have part of the knowledge needed to
operate new parts of the system” (Nielsen 1993, p.132). Our own research will focus strongly at
looking at examples of online communities and assessing how consistently they
are designed, and then using the better examples to influence the design of a
prototype application.
2.1.2.2 User and Task Analysis
Hackos
and Reddish (1998, p. 7) claim that “designers who spend time with users,
observing how they work, understanding who they are, testing design concepts
and prototypes, are most likely to be successful in creating interfaces that
are a delight to use”. Although the aim is to design specific questionnaires
for the 2.1.2.3 Usability Testing
Nielsen’s
advice on usability engineering is renowned as being excellent, he illustrates
his ideas clearly and explicitly, and emphasises the importance of taking into
account a users actions and opinions early on in the usability lifecycle. He points out that “Individual user
characteristics and variability in tasks are the two factors with the largest
impact on Usability” (Nielsen, 1993 p.73).
We are firm believers in the importance of user participation when
designing a system. We have designed and conducted five usability tests in the
past two years following the methodology set out by Nielsen in his book Usability Engineering, in which users were given a number of tasks to complete and
then timed and observed whilst they performed the system tasks. This methodology proved to be an excellent
way of improving the usability of all the systems that we had helped to
develop. 2.1.2.4 Usability Evaluation
Usability
testing as detailed above consists of using metrics to test a system’s
performance, thus some of the information gathered tends to be
quantitative. “However, in order to
evaluate a system thoroughly it is necessary to gain qualitative information as
well” Faulkner (2000) p.137. Hewitt in
1986 produced a good paper that states that evaluation is iterative and should
therefore be conducted at the end of each design stage. He details two types of evaluation – Formative
and Summative. Formative and Summative
evaluations are an integral part of the design process. Formative evaluation is mainly concerned with
getting the opinions of the users, whilst Summative evaluation is more to do
with collecting quantitative data, its purpose is to assess “the impact,
usability and effectiveness of the system – the overall performance” (Faulkner,
2000 p.138). These two types of
evaluation have very different goals, and will be used at different stages of
the design process. 2.1.3 Sociability
The
purpose of an online community, its members, and policies all influence how
individuals interact and determine the character of the community. Jenny Preece introduces three components of
sociability – purpose, people, and policy.
The purpose of a community is what draws people to the community, people
are the pulse of a community, and policies are required to direct behaviour within
online communities. Based on these three
components, Preece gives detailed explanations of the importance of sociability;
the key issues for supporting sociability within an online community are
discussed below. 2.1.3.1 Purpose
The
purpose of the proposed community is to unite the greatly isolated UK snooker
leagues through an online community.
What will draw people to the community will be a common interest in the
sport snooker. The aim is not only to
provide members with information from their own particular leagues, but also to
encourage sociability on a national scale. 2.1.3.2 People
Sociability
in online communities is achieved by looking primarily at the requirements of
people, and in the case of our research, migrating up to a thousand already
existing geographically dispersed physical communities into a single online
community. We need to discover how to
map the requirements of the people who participate in UK snooker leagues to a
computer-mediated communication tool – a Website. Jonathan Lazar and Jenny Preece, together,
have written two excellent papers in which they attempted to do the above. In the paper ‘Collecting User Requirements In
A Virtual Population’, they mention that there is an increasing number of
online communities that focus on special interest topics such as sport, “where
web-based resources are being developed for a focus population, but there is no
physical component to the population of the users” Lazar et al. (2000). The paper goes on to mention that the typical
methods of gathering user requirements cannot be adopted in such cases,
traditional techniques of observation, interviews and focus groups will not be
possible on a national basis, so a portion of our research will concentrate on
establishing the most appropriate methods of gathering user requirements. We
possess an inside knowledge of two UK snooker leagues because we have
participated in the two leagues for over twelve years, thus this gives a good
insight into the user requirements of the league participants. True sociability and proficient usability in
the proposed online community cannot be established until the many participants
are contacted to discover whether they would get any value from an online community,
if this is so, and we believe it probably is the case, the work of the authors
mentioned in this report can be utilised to create a usable, sociable online
community by designing software specific to the community member needs. 2.1.3.3 Policy
Based
on the major author’s advice, (Jenny Preece), the aim is to devise several
policies. These may include: membership to those that are members of UK snooker
leagues only, a privacy policy to comply with the UK Data Protection Act of 1998,
and moderators to ensure that problems such as flaming do not occur. There will certainly be other policies
required, but more research is currently required. 2.1.3.4 Sociability and Usability
Preece points out
in the paper below, the intersection between usability and sociability, and how
important it is to understand the nature of the particular community that you
aim to create. “The relationships and
synergy between people, practices, and technology to achieve a goal is often
approached using combinations of research paradigms. The intersection of usability and social
structures - leads to fundamental questions about the nature of communities and
communication and applied questions derived from the 'build and test' paradigm
of engineering. For instance, the behaviour and needs of people in scholarly
discussion groups are different from patient support groups. Consequently,
understanding the focus and culture of each kind of community is important”
(Preece, J. 2000. Shaping Communities: Empathy, hostility, lurking, participation.
DIAC2000 Seattle). Amy Jo Kim backs up
Preece by stating that “to create a successful online community, you’ll need to
first understand why you’re building it and who you’re building it for” Kim
(2000). Sociability will be extremely
important if the community is to succeed. Sociability
and usability are closely related to each other, and can impact one another,
“for example, deciding whether to have a registration policy and what its
content should be is a sociability concern; determining how to present the
policy (deciding which font type and size and interaction style to use) are
usability concerns” (Preece 2000, p.269). 2.1.4 Software
Development
Software
development needs to be carefully planned to create a successful online
community, it is crucial that when an online community is being researched and
developed that the users are at the heart of the project. Software implementation must be based wholly
on what the future members of an online community require. If this is not the case, and users begin to
use an online community and find it unusable or it does not satisfy their
needs, they will just stop using that community. Thousands of communities have
just disappeared due to their poor software design. 2.1.4.1 Software Life Cycle
Alan
Dix and others in their book ‘Human Computer Interaction’ give a detailed
explanation of the relationship between usability and software
development. They explain that modern
computer applications are highly interactive, in that, systems are no longer
solely designed for batch processing, but the advent of personal computers has
brought much more interaction between people and computers. They challenge the traditional software life
cycle by arguing that usability is a crucial aspect of the life cycle;
usability should not be segmented into a separate segment in the life cycle but
should be continually considered throughout the development process. The traditional life cycle is “in a somewhat
pipeline order. In reality, even for
batch processing systems, the actual design process is iterative” (Dix et al, 1993 p.157). 2.1.4.2 Prototyping
Prototyping
is a very important part of the software development process and therefore we intend
to use this method extensively during the project in order to better understand
the requirements for the next stage of the software development process. The ‘W’ model put forward by John Harrison at
the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in 1992 (see figure 3) possesses a
number of features that can be utilised during the prototyping stage of the
project. Jenny Preece sums up the
advantages of the model, and where she uses the word ‘expensive’, we are
considering ‘time consumption’. “In this
model a single ‘design in miniature’ is undertaken and tested. Following this, the requirements are fixed
and a traditional approach to development is undertaken. The advantage of this model is that it is
less expensive than the spiral approach, as just one iteration is
undertaken. It also helps with project
control and in identifying accurately user requirements” (Preece et al, 1994,
p.359).
Figure
3
- The W model of system development
(from a talk by John Harrison at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI),
UK, 22 June 1992).
Source:
(Preece et al, 1994, p.359) 2.1.4.3 Software Options
There
are several software options that can be considered for the online
community. Software can be purchased,
downloaded for free, or developed in-house.
This is a list of the typical types of software used to enhance online
communities in terms of asynchronous and synchronous forms of communication
adapted from Preece (2000). Synchronous
means that community members would be communicating in real time, whilst
asynchronous communication does not have to be real time. Synchronous
Asynchronous Instant
Messaging Bulletin
Board Chat
Rooms Email Mutli
User Dungeons (MUD) List
Servs MOO’s
(Object Orientated MUD’s) Use
Net News Websites
Websites The
nature of a UK snooker league online community determines that the most
suitable software options are probably to use a bulletin board, email, and
website. Research will need to be
conducted to establish whether the above asynchronous forms of communication
are the most suitable for the community, but going off the opinions of the
authors Kim and Preece it seems likely that the above software options will be
a sound choice. Amy Jo Kim sums up the
reason why a bulletin board would be suitable.
“A message board can unite geographically distant people and enhance
their sense of belonging” (Kim, 2000, p.34). The
options available for developing a bulletin board need to be considered. Kim points out that online community builders
can download the software and configure it for themselves. “You can sign up for free, easy-to-use
services such as Delphi Forums (http://
www.delphi.com), eCircles (http://www.ecircles.com)
or Yahoo Clubs (clubs.yahoo.com)” (Kim, 2000, p.37). She points out that with free bulletin boards
your members would be required to register with the service thus your database
would be not be your own and that advertising comes part and parcel with free
services. Bulletin Boards can also be
purchased or built in-house; these options are good if you would like to have
more control over your interface and member database. Preece mentions that moderators can configure
a bulletin board to suit member needs, read messages before they are published,
and ban users in the case of abusive activity (Flaming). 2.1.4.4 Social Impact of Software Design
Preece
in her book ‘Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting
Sociability’ clarifies the social impact of software on online
communities. It may seem obvious that
the software that a developer designs influences how it is used. Less obvious
is that the impact of certain software design features online communities may
be far greater than recognised. For
example, a member of a community may wish to have a private conversation with
another member, if this is not possible, then the software design has had a
profound effect on its participants and how they communicate and interact with
each other. 2.1.5 Summary
The
successful design and implementation of an online community demands that the
domains of usability, sociability, and software development are considered not
as single entities but as a whole.
Software design occurs alongside the usability and sociability aspects
of the iterative design process and vice versa.
One domain cannot be created without first consulting the other two
domains. Future
research is certainly essential because “physical communities will become
increasingly networked. Synergy between physical and virtual activities will
increase and the seams between being online and in the physical world will
become less obvious as many activities involve both” (http://www.eimc.brad.ac.uk/news/8_2.htm,
Last Accessed 14/01/03). 2.2 Research Methodology -
Community-Centred Development
Community-centred
development is the methodology chosen for the design of the UK league snooker community.
The reason the methodology was chosen was mainly due to Preece putting forward
this method for designing a successful online community. Preece is the leading
author in the field of online communities and so her opinions are, for obvious
reasons, highly regarded. She points out
that, “no clear formula for developing successful online communities has been
defined, but the community-centred development process paves a path to follow”
(Preece 2000, p.268). “Community-centred
development must focus on the community’s needs prior to making decisions about
the technology and social planning.
There are two main parts to the process: software design or selection and tailoring, and sociability
planning” (Preece, 2000, p.208). Both usability and sociability are important
to the success of the community, and become more and more closely linked as
development proceeds iteratively. Also
vital is the involvement of future users to test and refine the software built
for the online community. Preece
points out that community-centred development “borrows ideas from user-centred
design, contextual inquiry, and participatory design” (Preece 2000,
p.208). User-centred design concentrates
on the user rather than on software development, “contextual enquiry
emphasises the importance of understanding the user context” (Preece 2000,
p.209) and participatory design heavily involves future community
participants in the design process. 2.2.1 User-centred design
Hix
and Hartson highlight the importance of the methodology, “user-centred design
has emerged as one of the most compelling mandates for developing user
interaction. It is closely related to
the notion of behavioural design, producing the interaction from the view of
the user, rather than the view of the system” (Hix and Hartson, 1993,
p.29). The authors go on to say that
what the user wants from a system is very difficult to achieve from a designers
perspective, this can be due to several reasons, for example a designer not
possessing sufficient programming skills to implement the users’ requirements,
and reasons such as these often lead to poorly designed systems. What user-centred design does is promote the
importance of producing a system that is clear and simple to use, this may take
twice as much time and effort to implement but it will produce a system that
will be much more efficient and productive for the future users. 2.2.2 Contextual inquiry
Observing
and analysing the league administrators’ tasks is an essential part of the
online community development strategy.
“The core premise of Contextual Inquiry is very simple: go where the
customer works, observe the customer as he or she works, and talk to the
customer about the work. Do that, and
you can’t help but gain a better understanding of your customer” (Holtzblatt
1999, p.41). In order to improve the way
that league administrators complete their tasks, it is crucial to observe them
in their work context, so that their tasks can be mapped into the software
application that will be developed. Once
the tasks are mapped, we can contemplate how to improve the way that league
administrators go about their tasks, ultimately aiming to reduce their workloads
significantly. Once this is achieved it
will hopefully encourage the administrators to utilise the league snooker
community as tool to go about their work. 2.2.3 Participatory design
Participatory
design is a relatively new approach to software systems design, “in which
people destined to use the system play a critical role in designing it. It rejects the assumption that the goal of
computerisation is to automate the skills of human workers, instead seeing it
as an attempt to give workers better tools for doing their jobs” (Schuler and
Namioka, 1993, preface, xi). This is one
of the key aims of the project, the vast majority of league secretaries in UK
snooker leagues are most likely to be using such tools as spreadsheets and
notebooks to record and manipulate league data.
By involving administrators in the design process it can be established
whether a website can improve their current methods of recording and
manipulating data. Participatory design
has a proven track record in a variety of online community developments; hence
it would be beneficial to use the methodology during the design of the online
community. Preece
stresses the importance of community-centred development being an iterative
process of development and-test cycles.
Within the process are the five stages illustrated below in figure 4.
Figure
4
- Community-centred development
Adapted
from Hix and Hartson, 1993 2.2.4 Assessing community needs and analysing user tasks
The
first stage of the community-centred development process involves understanding
the needs of the community. This will be achieved through a national survey of
UK league participants and administrators and by the actual observation of the
league administrators going about their tasks.
Through these measures, the community’s purpose can be defined, along
with who will make up the community itself.
This is very similar to requirements analysis, but it concentrates on
the community’s needs. (Preece, 2000) 2.2.5 Selecting technology and
planning sociability
The
second stage involves mapping the community’s needs to generic technologies, as
in the case of say a discussion Forum that can be downloaded and installed on
the community’s server, new software can also be designed or a combination of
the two. “Sociability planning is done
in parallel, and policies and social structures are planned” (Preece, 2000,
p.210). 2.2.6 Designing, implementing, and
testing prototypes
In the
third stage the community’s needs are integrated “with the features of possible
software and the overall conceptual design is determined” (Preece, 2000,
p.210). Software is designed rapidly and
then tested with users to see if it is usable in small iterations of build and test. This helps to verify the community’s purpose
to the developer(s), discover different design ideas, and to test their design
by involving users in the design process. 2.2.7 Refining and tuning
sociability and usability
The
fourth stage is a refinement of the third stage, an attempt to iron out any
final problems before the community is released by formally conducting
usability tests and sociability tests. 2.2.8 Welcoming and nurturing the
community
The
final stage involves publicising the community to encourage membership, and
later on offering support to the new members of the community. Help systems will need to be put in place to
deal with misunderstandings and software problems, along with the ability for
users to offer feature suggestions to the community developer(s). Database backups are going to be crucial to
the community. If hours and hours of data entries are lost, the community
itself may be lost. “Nurturing is
important not only early on in the community’s life, but throughout its
existence. Again, communities are dynamic,
and change as people join and leave, so ongoing support is necessary” (Preece,
2000, p.211). 2.3 Summary
“Community-centred
development, as the name implies, focuses on the community rather than the
technology. Developing online
communities involves a blend of technical and social development” (Preece,
2000, p.229). It is crucial that the
future members of the community get involved in the development process.
Technical developers alone cannot design software to accommodate the needs of
an online community that they may know little or nothing about. The only way
the online community can be designed successfully is by testing and reviewing
the new community site with future members.
The next section assesses the needs of the community and analyses user
tasks.
3 ASSESSING COMMUNITY NEEDS AND ANALYSING
USER TASKS
3.1 Requirements gathering
It is essential to discover how to map
the requirements of the people who participate in UK snooker leagues to a
computer-mediated communication tool – a website. The research aims to migrate
up to a thousand already existing geographically dispersed physical communities
into a single online community. The
first task a developer must do is to find out who the users will be and what
they expect. Lazar and Preece (1999 and
2000) wrote two very useful papers on assessing community needs over a wide
geographical area, therefore their work was utilised for guidance. In 1999, Jonathan Lazar et al wrote a
paper on analysis and design issues in a hybrid virtual and physical community,
they point out that methods of gathering requirements and understanding user
needs have been established for many years, but new research is needed to
gather the requirements of users from an inaccessible population that is a
virtual community. So the researchers
set out to gather user requirements of such a community called the Quiz Bowl Community
in the USA. They highlight that there are three
traditional approaches for gathering user requirements “(1) ethnography (2)
interviewing users and (3) surveys” (Lazar et al. 1999, p.50). They believe that ethnography is not a suitable
method for gathering requirements for an online community because the method is
more suited towards researching ground breaking area’s where researchers become
“immersed in the community in order to experience it” (Lazar et al. 1999,
p.50). This could only be achieved to a
certain extent within UK snooker leagues; researchers would not have enough
time to take part in hundreds of separate snooker leagues throughout the
country. Although our twelve years
participation in two separate leagues gives a good insight into what league
participants would like to gain from an online community. “Interviews can gain large amounts of
data, however, users must be easily accessible and very cooperative” (cited in
Lazar et al. 1999, p.50). There are
several types of interview situations: structured, semi-structured, and
unstructured. Each type can be utilised
for different scenarios, depending on the situation. When Tony Keeling, a retired Stafford snooker
league administrator and Neville Ward the current administrator were
interviewed, the interview was semi-structured in that there were a “mixture of
questions with predefined answers as well as those where the respondent is free
to say whatever is liked” (Hague 1993, p.21).
This method was chosen because very specific information from the two
administrators needed to be obtained, for example how many years had they been
a league administrator and also to find out their opinions on the value of an
online community for UK snooker leagues. A. N. Oppenheim wrote a book in 1992 on
questionnaire design, the book is highly respected and provides useful
information for designing and analysing questionnaires. He explains that there needs to be logic
behind the strategy of the research so that valid conclusions can be drawn from
the questionnaire results. “Good
research design should above all make it possible for us to draw valid
inferences from our data in terms of generalisation, association and causality”
(Oppenheim, 1992, p.6). Hague backs this up by suggesting that the researcher
apply a relevance test to each question.
“Is the information nice to have or necessary to have? What will be done with the information when
it has been collected? If the question
fails on either of the these two counts, it is questionable that it should be
asked” (Hague 1993, p.37). Therefore
careful consideration was given to the questions that were asked in the
survey. 3.2 Survey design and
distribution
Surveys according to Lazar et al are the
best method of gathering user requirements in a virtual population for an
online community. They are very good at gathering lots of information that can
be analysed in a short space of time, they can also be distributed online,
which will save on costs. A survey was
designed based on Oppenheim’s advice; our twelve years of inside knowledge of
UK snooker leagues and Lazar et al’s advice from the two papers. Particularly useful were the sample questions
listed in one of the papers that were used when they surveyed users of the Quiz
Bowl community. The survey targeted UK
snooker league participants and administrators, each group were given a
separate questionnaire, the league participants were questioned about
demographics, people’s needs in terms of information and communication, their
computing and Internet experience, willingness to participate in the online community,
and what features they would like to see in an online community (See Appendix
A). Whilst administrators were
questioned about all the above they were also questioned about their methods of
administrating their league’s information, and their skills/willingness to
input data into a website so that participants within their leagues could
access detailed information online (See Appendix C). The questionnaires that
were designed also offered users the opportunity to get involved in the
development process, by asking them if they were willing to test and refine the
new system. The
survey results were then collected through a number of mediums.
3.3 Analysis of the
survey results
Analysis of the results shows that an
online community for UK snooker league participants would be greatly valued
because it would combat the problem of the lack of information available to
league participants and also connect the isolated UK snooker leagues via a
Forum that could possibly lead to the organisation of inter-league
tournaments. Between the paper surveys
and the online surveys, a total of 49 survey responses were received. This number is satisfactory as certain
conclusions can be drawn from the response. Lazar and Preece received 112
responses to their survey, but this was from all over the USA, whose population
is five times greater than that of the UK.
The sample has pro’s and cons, the response is good in that it gets
information from a wide geographical area, but it fails in some respects
because a large proportion of the respondents already access information via their
own league websites, thus the lack of information problem is not so apparent. More surveys were filled in online, than
on paper, and therefore this has had dramatic effects on the analysis of the
results. Each effect will be explained in
the appropriate section below.
Figure
5
- Questionnaire Source
The survey results can be grouped by:
3.3.1
Demographics – Age, Gender, Location, Years of league snooker experience
The goal of the first set of questions
was to determine whether the respondents to the survey truly represented the UK
snooker league participants. No
directory of league participants exists, so it’s impossible to establish how
many league participants there are.
“Since it would be impossible to statistically test whether the sample
represents the proportions in the actual population, no statistical comparisons
can be made” (Lazar et al. 1999, p.53).
Instead the demographic questions helped to determine whether the sample
was diverse and represented fairly the typical league participant. From the results this seems to be the case,
for instance 100% of the survey respondents were male, responses came from a
wide age range, 17 – 75 (see figure 6), the average age being 43, respondents have
played in 32 (see table 1) different snooker leagues all over England rather
than the UK, from as far south as Cornwall to as far north as Carlisle (see
figure 7).
Figure
6
- Age of UK Snooker League Participants
The survey response did not cover the
whole of the UK, but covered a good sample of England as seen in figure 7. Here is a list of the 33 snooker leagues that
survey respondents have and currently participate in. Table
1 - The leagues that the individual survey respondents have played in
Figure
7
- The locations of the UK Snooker league survey
respondents
The sample of users is certainly well
balanced; figure 8 below demonstrates that the survey respondents have
participated in UK snooker leagues from 1 – 40+ years.
Figure
8
- League participation length
3.3.2
Current league information sources and availability
The most common league information
sources are local newspapers and from snooker leagues website (see figure 9).
The high proportion of participants accessing information from their leagues
website is not a representative result of the nation as a whole. The reason being is that we contacted a large
proportion of the league respondents via a league website directory, this directory
probably contains the majority of UK snooker league websites that exist, and so
the high number of respondents who filled in the questionnaire online (34/49)
typically access their league information via their own leagues websites. If a more representative sample of the
leagues on a national basis could have been achieved then a higher proportion
of league participants would access league information via the local press,
thus giving even greater value for a national UK snooker league online community
to be developed than the results from the survey suggest.
Figure
9
- League information source
The majority of the survey respondents
said that league information is always available, but only 10% of those who
said that information was always available said that the source was the local
newspaper. The other 90% got the
information via a website, thus it seems encouraging that value would certainly
be gained from developing the community.
The great majority of respondents who said that information was either
sometimes or rarely available identified the source as the local press or
friends.
Figure
10
- League information availability
3.3.3
Internet – access, location, frequency, browser, PC or MAC
Another encouraging result from the
survey is the high number of people who have access to the Internet (42/49)
(see figure 11), although this certainly would not be the average figure if a
better sample was taken of the leagues on a national basis, but the result
remains very high even so. The majority
of respondents access the Internet from home on a daily basis (see figures 12
and 13), thus the online community could potentially be regularly utilised by
future members. The overwhelming
majority of Internet users access the Internet using Internet Explorer (34/37),
thus the design of the site should be tailored towards this browser, although
the site will certainly need to be usable in browsers such as Netscape. Every single respondent who has access to a
computer uses a PC, thus again the design of the site can concentrate on how a
PC displays a website.
Figure
11
- League participants Internet access
Figure
12
- Internet access location
Figure
13
- How frequently participants access the Internet
3.3.4 Computing and Internet experience – Internet
longevity and frequency of use, Computing skill, Possession of an email
account, and Participation in online communities
This group of questions was designed to
discover what computing and Internet experience league participants possess, to
discover what proportions of potential future members are able to utilise the
community. The result will not represent
the UK league participants’ skills accurately, due to the fact that many
respondents completed the survey online, thus their computing and Internet
skills already exist. If the majority of
the respondents possess little or no Internet experience then their usability
requirements will be different from those who do possess more experience.
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