Investigating User Experience for Local Community Platforms

Abstract

A strong local community is important for the well-being of its residents, and this can bring numerous benefits, both social as well as economic benefits. While this contributes to the development of a strong local community, technological advancements have allowed for the creation of community building through digital means. A local community platform is easily distributable and accessible for members of a community and helps to build connections, enables the sharing of skills and assets, and facilitates a local currency wallet. However, designing a community platform for everyone in a community is challenging since the platform and its interface must be accessible and understandable for all members of a community. Different users have different needs when using a local community platform, and there are specific design guidelines for different users which makes designing a platform difficult. So, there is a need for a set of design guidelines specifically developed for local community platforms. To establish these guidelines a systematic literature review was conducted, so the guidelines were based on relevant literature; this resulted in 5 design guidelines. However, the guidelines needed to be validated by practice as well, so a case study was done using an existing local community platform called LocalforLocal. In this case study, first a user test was done with the existing LocalforLocal platform, then the guidelines were applied to create an iterated version and the user test was conducted again. Then the results were compared to see if the guidelines had an impact on the user experience of the platform. The AttrakDiff survey showed a partially significant increase in usability and engagement, and the System Darkness Scale showed a non-significant decrease in the darkness of the system. Furthermore, the task results and the qualitative results showed an increase in user experience. The results from the case study showed that the guidelines had an overall positive impact on the user experience, which means that the guidelines are appropriate for designing local community platforms. Future work includes replicating the case study with other local community platforms with a more diverse sample of the population. By validating the guidelines even further they could become the norm for designing local community platforms.