Success for whom? A probe into user experiences of online communities of interests
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2020
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
International Design Business Management
Language
en
Pages
83
Series
Abstract
The online community (OC) plays an important role in modern people's daily lives. Successful OCs can meet users' needs for interest, relationship, fantasy, or transaction, and can create information value, experiential value, social value, or transaction value for the organizers. However, it's not easy to explain why some OCs are successful and some are not. OC success has been examined by researchers from different perspectives, such as the social perspective, the system perspective, or the organizer perspective. Studies from these perspectives have suggested that users play a key role in the success of an OC. Yet, understanding of user experiences in OCs from their own perspective was insufficient and fragmented. Most studies often presumed that the users share the same goal and perspective as organizers regarding OC success, while some empirical findings suggested otherwise. The research aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of OC success from the user perspective. Emphasizing users' active and subjective participation, this research applied design probe to delve deeper and closer into user activities, thoughts, and emotions that traditional research methods were rarely able to. The research yielded rich and texturized information on user experiences about OCs of interests. The research findings showed: 1) the user experience of OCs of interests is an interactive combination of various OCs, offline events, and activities around their own interests or goals, instead of an isolated experience in each OC as previous studies tend to consider; 2) users' perceived success of an OC is also based on the holistic experience around their interests or goals, instead of based on a single OC; 3) online and offline activities are interconnected in the building of users’ social relationships. The research suggests more researches of OC success from the user perspective, separate from the organizer perspective. The research also suggests future studies to aim at a clearer definition and measurement of OC success from the user perspective.Description
Thesis advisor
Lehtonen, MiikkaKeywords
online community, success, user experience, design probe, user perspective