Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability: Amazon.ca: Jenny Preece: Books

Product Description

From Amazon

If the phrase "planned community" makes you think of terrible homogenous suburbs, take another look at the Internet. Though there are unplanned aspects and emergent behaviours, for the most part every detail has been designed by someone who thought they knew what they were doing. Can we do better? Human-computer interactions expert Jenny Preece takes apart our preconceptions and suggests new ways to improve our virtual realities in Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability. Part sociological review, part design manual, the book is dry enough to appeal to techies and academics while still humanistic enough to touch the organisers and activists who will put her ideas further into action.

Beginning with basic concepts of community and online activities, Preece moves on to survey research on the use of virtual spaces and then focuses on techniques to design and build optimal cybervillages for given needs and people. Using plenty of examples and case studies from actual Web sites and other electronic communities, she sheds light on tools that work to make them sustainable. Whether the current generation of e-planners will heed her words--and whether they can create something liveable out of the weird suburb/wilderness hybrid we have now--will be key to determining how 21st-century humans live, work and communicate. --Rob Lightner

Review

"provides a good balance between theory and practise" (Software Focus, December 2001)

"I like the slightly zany drawings" "People will say I wish I'd had this book before now"." (Computer & Education, No. 36, 2001)

"…an excellent book…my best recommendations…" (Jnl of Computing and Information Technology, March 2003)

See all Product Description

Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
This tour introduces readers to online communities for health, education, and e-commerce. Read the first page

Explore More
Concordance

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

Customer Reviews

14 Reviews

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

Average Customer Review

3.8 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most helpful customer reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars One star is too much, Mar 27 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability (Paperback)

Another reviewer has written `online communities for dummies'. This
is essentially correct. A student from medium-high school would
have nor problem to follow this book. This is, however, not the
disapointing part. O.K., I still can accept that Jenny Preece explain
and reexplains even to most simplest notions again and again.
But what is unacceptable is, that everything written in this book is
just descriptive. Nowhere in the whole book there is a new idea,
a new insight or anything else that would make it worth reading.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

4.0 out of 5 stars Sociology of the Internet, Sep 3 2002

By

Pamela (Dubuque, IA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability (Paperback)

I thought this book was GREAT! Sure, it's dated, but every book about the Internet dates quickly. That's because the Internet is growing and changing faster than the book publishing business can publish a book.

The author takes us through many aspects of community building and group dynamics point-by-point. I had to take notes, I found it so useful. Ideas are taken from sociology and applied to the Internet. Dry in parts, yes, but very useful as far as clarifying one's ideas about online communities.

As the manager of a small women's community online, I found this book very useful. Much more practical than Amy Jo Kim's similar book, which mainly focuses on the monster-sized for-profit communities.

The ideas in this book can be applied to any size online community. It's clear thinking will help you understand participant/leader roles in order to delegate responsibility. There are also wonderful hints for keeping a community thriving and successful.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

1.0 out of 5 stars Online Communities for Dummies, Aug 29 2002

By

"leslielg" (Topanga, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability (Paperback)

This book appears to be written for those who are ignorant about online communities (and I can't imagine why such a person would pick up this book). I found no insights in this book that would not be obvious to an experienced user/member of online communities. I was recently given a new task at work to manage an online community of practice (for project managers) at my global company, and I was hoping that this book would offer some new insights and ideas. It was a complete disappointment. I found much better information in an article from the Harvard Business Review and from the IBM website.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 14 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Want to see more reviews on this item?

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 15 reviews 3.7 out of 5 stars

Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars How to make communities
Hi to everybody, I've recently read this book (in the italian version) for an university exam and I've found it very interesting. Read more

Published on Jun 25 2001 by Andrea

5.0 out of 5 stars Great reference source
Jenny has done a great job outlining a book that would be helpful to both the novice and the experienced user. Read more

Published on May 16 2001 by Kent C. Overly