The study of online communities looks at how HCI design affects community development.

Preece

encourages looking at sociability and usability separately to allow designers to focus on specific issues separately.

In addition, her book (chapter 9) offers guidelines for sociability and usability. The following diagram (Preece 2000)

demonstrates the sociability and usability needs that should be addressed when developing communities.

Usability & Sociability

Support evolving community

Design usability Plan sociability

e.g. Interaction dialog

e.g. Policies for:
Navigation
Membership
Registration forms
Codes of conduct
Feedback
Security
Representations of users
Privacy
Message format
Copyright
Achievers
Free speech
Support tools, etc.
Moderators, etc.

Assess community needs

Figure 1.1 Usability and sociability

According to Whittaker, core attributes of an online community are: (Whittaker 1997)

 Members have some shared goal, interest, need, or activity that provides the primary reason for belonging

to the community

 Members engage in repeated active participation and there are often intense interactions, strong emotional

ties and shared activities occurring between participants

 Members have access to shared resources and there are policies for determining access to those resources

 Reciprocity of information, support and services between members

 Shared context (social conventions, language, protocols).

Stakeholders

Table 3 enumerates the stakeholders and their tasks to be played on the system operation. The system

needs a system administrator and a user. SMS client and web client are the persons who will benefits on the services

of the system. Task of each defined stakeholder is defined intended for testing and deployment plan to Partido State

University.

Table 3. Stakeholders

Stakeholder Task

System Administrator Responsible for update, maintenance of the system

SMS public client Any extension enthusiasts who want to inquire for a schedules line-

activity of extension programs of the university.

Personnel or staff of the extension division who will take charge of

User
updating, and report generation from the data of the system.
Web Client
Any individual who want to browse the www.parsu.edu.ph, as the

official website of Partido State University, where Extension link is

available for Extension related information that includes the lined

activities of the University Extension Services Division.