Creating Successful Online Communities: Supporting Members of Online Communities Through the Use of Visualisations

Growing numbers of people around the world are using online communities to stay in touch with each other. Online communities are now widespread, enabling meaningful communication, around various domains of interest, between users who are separated by time and distance. Despite the increasing numbers of people using online communities, there are many examples of communities which suffer from problems of falling levels of contributions from members. This book presents the use of visualisations as a means of supporting users of online communities. The results of the experiments contained within this work show that different visualisations are useful in different circumstances, pointing to the fact that the needs and requirements of users, and the tasks they undertake, should be considered when designing the exact nature of any potential visualisation intended to support users of online communities.