A FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGNING SOCIAL
INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS
Di Loreto Ines
Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy
Gouaich Abdelkader
LIRMM, Université Montpellier 2, Montpellier, France
Keywords: Digital Natives, Social Web, Design Methods.
Abstract: Digital natives are the potential users of many applications designed and built today. For this generation
most of state of the art features related to social interactions and ubiquitous computing will be taken as
granted. For this reason, we have to provide design frameworks and methodologies that integrate these
features at early design stages. In this paper we propose a framework for designing Social Interactive
Systems (SIS) based on four criteria: identity, space, persistence and action. In order to demonstrate the
usefulness of the framework the paper will describe an experiment we held with a Social Virtual World
developed using the above-mentioned framework.
1 INTRODUCTION
Our era is characterized by the convergence of social
and ubiquitous computing. From one hand we have
the emergence of the social web paradigm (with
social sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and
social ’worlds’ such as Second Life). On the other
we have the massive use of ubiquitous interfaces
that allows computers to live out here in the world
with people. It is our opinion that the mix between
social and pervasive computing is an issue that
prompts us to rethink Interactive Systems Design. In
fact, the capacity to integrate social elements at early
design stages will make the difference between
successful or not applications. For this reason in this
paper we propose a framework based on four
elements: identity, space, persistence and actions
that are the means for building Social Interactive
Systems. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of
the framework the paper will describe an experiment
we held with a Social Virtual World developed
using the above-mentioned framework.
2 A FRAMEWORK FOR SOCIAL
INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS
DESIGN
This section of the paper presents the core elements
of the framework that can be used to design Social
Interactive Systems (SIS). The framework is based
on four elements: identity, space, persistence, and
actions. These elements are motivated by an
empirical analysis of current and past social software
and supported by major findings from psychology
and sociology. Actually, these elements represent
core features of any Social Interactive Systems (SIS)
targeted towards young generations (see Di Loreto,
2010). Hereafter, the semantics of each element of
the framework is described more in details.
Identity
Our point of view about Identity is the same as
social psychology’s approaches (Hogg, 1987), which
consider individual and social identity not as stable
characteristics, but rather as a dynamic phenomenon
(Harré et al., 1991). In these approaches, the choice
about what possible self to show is driven by
strategic moves (e.g., what features are more
relevant and effective for self-presentation) which
137
Loreto Ines D. and Abdelkader G. (2010).
A FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGNING SOCIAL INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS.
In Proceedings of the Multi-Conference on Innovative Developments in ICT, pages 137-144
DOI: 10.5220/0003034401370144
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

participants can make within a particular situation.
In describing everyday interactions, Goffman
(Goffman, 1959) distinguished between two ways of
expressing information: information that is given
and information that is given off. Information that is
given is the conscious content of communication,
the voluntary symbolic actions that are mutually
understood. For example, a person who describes
their anger is giving information about their
emotional state. In talking about their anger
however, the person also gives off information,
through para-verbal characteristics such as tone,
volume, the choice of words, and non-verbal cues.
While information that is given is considered to be
within the actor’s control, information that is given
off is perceived by the audience to be
unintentionally communicated. A classical example
of ’identity announcement’ that has intentionally and
unintentionally elements is avatar personalization.
While we will not enter in detail here on its
implications the avatar is a visual claim for personal
expression that is constantly worked on. This
continuous work reinforces the concept of presence
and thus social presence. As another example of
collateral information, we can use the explicit
specification of a social network of acquaintance.
While it is true that social networks are built via a
series of invitations, usually members also have
some control over the visibility of their network for
others. This means that, for impression management,
a user will show only networks he/she wants to
show. For instance, some members can decide to
make their social networks visible only to their
direct acquaintances. In this case, there is a ’given’
information (the user chooses what to show about
his/her identity), but also a ’given off’ information
(derived e.g., from the kind of groups a user
showed/joined). From a design point of view, we
can say that allowing both the kinds of identity
representation becomes the starting point for a social
evolving identity.
Space
If we look carefully, the language we use to describe
our experience of the virtual environment is a
reflection of an underlying conceptual metaphor:
’Cyberspace as Place’ (Lakoff et al., 1988). This
means that we are transferring certain spatial
characteristics from our real world experience over
the virtual environment. The metaphor ’Cyberspace
as Place’ leads to a series of other metaphorical
inferences: cyberspace is like the physical world, it
can be ’zoned’, trespassed upon, interfered with, and
divided up into a series of small landholdings that
are just like real world property holdings.
In this little presentation the term space was
joined with the term place. In reality, for the good
functioning of a SIS it is important to distinguish
between the two terms. Actually, the literature about
space and place is fairly massive and diverse. A
converging definition of the difference between
space and place does not exist, however in his book
about urban spaces and places, Carmona (Carmona
et al., 2002) distinguishes among dimensions of an
urban space. While space is divisible, place is not.
Place is complex, inextricably multi-dimensional,
lived, experienced, meaningful (with of course multi
- meanings).
This means that while space is a well-defined
topographical entity, place is the result of human
inhabitation, (social) interaction, and the like. We
are located in spaces, but we act and develop
individual and social experiences in places. We
claim that in order to design a social application, it is
essential to allow by design the creation of public (at
different levels) places for aggregation but also the
creation of private places (Wenger et al., 2002).
Besides, the lever of personalization can be used in
order to allow the shift from spaces to places. Only
taking possession of the space, and manipulating it
to turn it in something we like, we can transform it
in a place.
Persistence
As we have seen, in order to create a social identity
in an online environment several elements are
required. An additional element is persistence (of
personal identity in the system). In a non-persistent
world, it is not possible to have a history of actions
and thus allow, for example, the creation of a
reputation like in real life. Moreover, Danet (Danet
et al., 1997) argued that synchronicity is associated
with ’flow experiences’, a state of total absorption,
and a lack of awareness of time passing. This idea of
synchronicity is linked to the idea of temporality, a
linear procession of past, present, future. This
particular nuance (synchronicity as process) is very
interesting if we think that interaction with media
and media perception is changed. In fact, advances
in technology and the speed of network connections
are blurring distinctions between synchronous and
asynchronous communications (Joison, 2003).
Synchronous and asynchronous communications are
thus processes that happen during time. The idea of
communication as a process is very consistent with
the idea of persistence and is another element
supporting social awareness.
Actions
In this part, we discuss physical and psychological
INNOV 2010 - International Multi-Conference on Innovative Developments in ICT
138

mechanisms that regulate human actions in order to
understand why the action element has to be
considered as a pillar in the design of social
software. The first theory we want to describe is the
so-called ‘thinking through doing’. This theory
describes how thought (mind) and action (body) are
deeply integrated and how they co-produce learning
and reasoning (Klemmer et al., 2006). Jean Piaget
(Piaget, 1952) postulated that cognitive structuring
requires both physical and mental activity. In a very
basic sense, humans learn about the world and its
properties by interacting within it. As a second
support, we can cite embodied cognition. Theories
and research of embodied cognition regard bodily
activity as being essential to understanding human
cognition (Pecher et al., 2005). While these theories
address cognition through action in physical
environments, they also have important implications
for designing interactive systems. In fact, body
engagement with virtual environments constitutes an
important aspect of cognitive work. For example,
one might expect that the predominant task in Tetris
is piece movement with the pragmatic effect of
aligning the piece with the optimal available space.
However, contrary to intuitions, the proportion of
shape rotations later undone by backtracking
increases (not decreases) with increasing Tetris-
playing skill level. In fact, players manipulate pieces
to understand how different options would work
(Maglio et al., 1996).
To summarize, because an action is always an
action-over- something, the kind of interaction
spaces and objects we create in a Social System will
influence which cognitive work the user will do over
the system.
2.1 The Overall Framework
While we presented the four elements in a separate
way, their usefulness in the construction and
evaluation of social environments is mostly linked to
the interaction between these elements.
In a way each element can be thought of as a line
(an axis) that starts from the absence of the element
to the fulfillment of its presence for a Social
Interactive System. For example, for the concept of
identity its total absence is anonymity while its
fulfillment is social presence (with intermediate
points such as personal identity construction).
For the concept of space its total absence is
topographical space while its fulfillment is social
places (with intermediate points such as third places
and personal places). For the concept of persistence
its total absence is system 'amnesia' while its
Figure 1: The graphical representation of the 4 elements
as axis
fulfillment is memory (with intermediate points
linked more or less to the concept of persistence).
Finally, for the concept of action its total absence is
the obstruction of action (i.e., my user can only look
at my application) while its fulfillment is social
actions (with intermediate points such as public
personal actions and the like). Figure1 shows the
above-described axis graphically. This way to
represent the four elements has an additional value.
In fact a designer can create an ‘Expected Profile’
for an application using the four axis. For example,
if he/she decides that his/her to be developed
application has to have a high level of self-
presentation elements (an avatar, a profile, and so
on) he/she will give a high value for the identity
axis. Same thing happens for the persistence axis.
For example, a social network based on micro
actions such as Facebook, does not require the same
level of persistence as a virtual world such as
Second Life. In the first case the persistence axis
will have a medium value, in the second a high
value. And so on.
Note that the total framework is not simply a list
of elements (i.e., its application does not mean to put
one after the other the four elements in your system)
but it is created through the delicate balancing
between them. Actually, it is up to the designer to
choose which element of the framework to stress or
not during the creation of a dynamic experience such
as in a social application. In addition, only once the
‘Expected Profile’ of the application is decided, the
designer chooses which features add to the system.
This means that what is important is the balancing
between the elements not which features the
designer puts in his/her system.
A FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGNING SOCIAL INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS
139

3 THE SCHOOL SOCIETY
WORLD
As mentioned in the introduction of this paper social
elements really influence the use of an application in
our era. In order to support the above-mentioned
assertion we will describe a Serious Virtual World
we developed using the framework: School Society.
From a practical point of view, the environment
used in this experiment was able to support our
students both in online learning, and in recreational
experience. Note that due to the subject of this paper
we will not analyze the virtual world as a learning
environment, but as a social environment. Apart
from studying, there is no final aim in School
Society. Each Resident can find his own way to
inhabit this word.
The Gameplay for the School Society World
When the user enters the world for the first time, an
animated intro scene describes how the world was
created. Sometime in the future mankind has
managed to practically destroy the world via
magnetic weapons. The world was knocked off its
axis and continents have sunk into the ocean. Only
small islets remain. Several decades later, the
survivors have managed to remodel their lives. They
have built homes on the islets, as well as shops and a
school. The top, elite students of this school are
recognized worldwide as the best people in the
world: the Legendary Eagles.
4 THE FRAMEWORK IN
ACTION
The first step in this experiment was to determine an
'Expected Profile' for the to be developed
application. In this case the choice was a balanced
'Expected Profile' (see Figure 2. In order to
understand how the profile was evaluated see Di
Loreto, 2010). This means that the virtual world has
to enable deep personalization, in both the space and
the identity aspects. The world has to be a persistent
one and it has to enable the creation of a community
memory.
Hereafter the most interesting elements (both
from the framework application and from gameplay
point of view) are described in more detail.
Space in Action
First of all, as an element of identification, the
Resident's home is indicated as 'My home'. In
addition, when the Resident reaches a public place,
Figure 2: The Expected profile for the School Society
virtual world.
an NPC (Non Playing Character) welcomes him
(with 'special attention' if he is the winner of some
world competition - an element also linked to
identity construction).
At this moment the public buildings in the world
are: the Pub, the Market, and the School.
The basic idea was to use the Pub as a potential
'third place' for the world. In fact the Pub is a place
where the Resident can 'informally' meet people he
does not know. On the contrary, the Market is only a
space to buy items for competitions. The school is
the more 'formal' space. In this ‘space‘ there is a
different section for each different quiz the students
can take.
A Particular Space: The Gazette
School Society's world has its own newspaper called
the 'Gazette'. The 'Gazette' is the 'voice' of the world.
Every interesting event that has occurred in the
world can be found in it. This journal is a kind of
herald that publicizes 'public' activities (in-world
events such as tournaments) but also 'private'
activities (what your friends have done). The result
is a dynamic public and private space that changes
over time and is the 'memory' of the interactions
within the world.
Identity in Action
Each student can personalize the avatar he chose
when he entered the world whenever he wants.
Each avatar possesses the following attributes:
Name: When the student enters the world for the
first time he is asked to choose a name for his avatar.
Body Attributes: When the student enters the
world for the first time, he is asked to construct his
avatar that will represent him during the interactions.
However, he can change his appearance whenever
he wants during the inhabitation of the world.
INNOV 2010 - International Multi-Conference on Innovative Developments in ICT
140

Finally, a student can use the gold he has earned
through quizzes to buy objects in the market that he
can use to add personal items on his avatar.
Activity in Action
As said the Pub is a particular space. In fact, in the
pub the student can chat with people who are in it
even if they are not on his buddy list (i.e., if they are
not his friends).
In the School building students can take part in a
set of social actions (apart from taking the quizzes
the professors have created). In particular they can
take part in two interesting social activities:
participate in tournaments and challenge the
professor.
For the first activity the student is alone against
others students. If he can beat all the other
participants his success is published on the world
journal, the 'Gazette'. In this case the social aspect is
driven through competition.
The other activity is literally a social one. If a
professor is available, students can organize
themselves in groups and challenge the teacher.
Practically, while the students will take quizzes
created by the teacher, the teacher will answer to a
quiz created by the students. For each answer the
team gives, the time available to the teacher to solve
the quiz increases or decreases (based on wrong or
right answers). If the team is able to leave the
teacher no time to solve the quiz, it will be the
winner of the contest, rewarded with the Medal of
Honor 'Where eagles dare'. In this case their bravery
will also be publicized in the 'Gazette' (and so will
be publicly visible).
Time in Action
First of all the game's world is a persistent one. This
means that each time the player disconnects his
account, the game will save his status: his
modifications, his avatar's appearance, his
experience, and so on. In addition, all old 'copies' of
the Gazette are available for consultation. In this
way all public events, all competition winners, and
the like are stored creating a memory for the
community.
5 EVALUATING THE
FRAMEWORK THROUGH USE
In order to demonstrate the assertion stated at the
beginning of this paper (i.e., that the presence of
social aspect modulated through the framework
influences the use of an application) the developed
School Society virtual world was given to a group of
students to use. Hereafter more details on the
experiment.
5.1 The General Method of the
Experiment
Three (3) groups of students were asked to
consistently use the system for about one week.
Each group had different 'views' over the systems
(i.e., the group could access a different set of
features). The different views were created in order
to block some aspect of the framework (e.g., identity
representation) and then evaluate if this absence
impacted on the user's experience in the way
supposed while describing the framework.
Subjects
The participants in the experiments were 38 students
of the University Institute of Technology (I.U.T.) of
Montpellier. The gender distribution of participants
was 34 (90%) male and 4 (10%) female, with an
average age of 20.
Students were divided into three groups:
Group 1: Full vision over the system
Group 2: Vision of the system without Identity
features
Group 3: Vision of the system without social
features
Note that this means that all the groups were
using the same system. They just had different views
of it. This kind of division was done in order to
demonstrate the effective importance of social
features and of the identity factor.
The number of participants in each group (about
13 people) was coherent with the findings that 'with
high complexity, a study with more than 15 cases or
so can become unwieldy' (Miles el al., 1994, p.30).
5.2 Procedure and Materials
At the beginning of class, subjects in all groups were
introduced to the virtual world of School Society.
The students were asked to use the systems for 7
days.
The interactions were 'free' for the students. They
just had to inhabit the world as they liked. The idea
was that if the students did not feel the absence of a
feature they would not ever look for it (i.e., if they
did not feel the necessity to use a chat, they would
never open a chat).
Materials
At the end of the week students were asked to
A FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGNING SOCIAL INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS
141

evaluate their experience in School Society. Data on
the experiment were collected through two channels.
In fact, the survey method was coupled with tracking
methods based on technological features (log files,
number of sessions, sessions' length, and the like).
The general idea was that by cross-referencing
users' feedback and number of interactions
(qualitative and quantitative data) it would be
possible to understand if the designed social system
really works or not from the social point of view.
Survey and Qualitative Measurements
The survey was conceptually divided into three
parts. Several questions directly addressed students'
satisfaction with the social aspects (quality of the
interaction). Another group of questions addressed
graphic appeal and usage problem issues. A final
group of questions provided an overall measure of
satisfaction with the entire system (the overall
reaction to the system). The different parts of the
survey were designed in order to understand if the
global satisfaction with the system was influenced
by graphic appeal and usage issues, which are not
directly linked to social satisfaction. The main idea
was to distinguish between attitudes to the system
itself and attitudes to using the system in a social
way. Questions with Lykert type scales were
avoided where possible in order to avoid different
subjective approaches to these kinds of questions. In
general, a scale of 0-4 was adopted in the process.
Log Files and Quantitative Measurements
In order to measure sociability from a quantitative
point of view the system logged all the actions made
by the students. In particular Preece's suggestions
(see Preece, 2001) on determining sociability in
online communities were taken into account.
Preece says that determinants of sociability
include measures such as the number of participants
in a community, the number of messages per unit of
time, member satisfaction, and some less obvious
measures such as amount of reciprocity, the number
of on-topic messages, trustworthiness and the like
(Preece, 2001). While in this case the number of
participants in the community had no significance
(the participants were only the students) a list of the
other elements taken into account is described in
detail hereafter.
5.3 Use of Sociability Determinants for
the Evaluation
1-Number of Messages, Messages per Member
indicate how engaged people are within the
community. Number of private messages (i.e., in
other friends' mailbox) and number of public
messages (in the Pub) were regrouped under the
label 'Number of messages' and measured during the
experiment.
2-The Amount of on-Topic Discussion was
evaluated only in public discussions and only to
understand the relationship between learning topics
and strictly social topics (i.e., the topic of the post as
not evaluated by its profundity or its real impact on
'community life').
3-Reciprocity is concerned with giving to a
community as well as taking from it. While this
element is normally measured through the number of
answered posts, in this case the measure of
reciprocity was also determined through the
challenge feature (number of reciprocated
challenges).
4-Flaming and Uncivil Behavior, such as abusive
language or harassment. In this experience this
measurement was not relevant for two main reasons:
the presence of teachers who acted as moderators,
and the fact that the experience lasted only one
week.
5.4 Results and Discussion
Before beginning analysis it is important to address
a possible limitation of this study. Students of an
I.U.T may not necessarily be the 'average user'. This
could influence how fast they learn to use the system
or its perceived usability, but not the sociability they
put into it. In fact, because of their age they can be
considered an 'average' Digital Native. In the case of
this experiment the measurements were linked to the
sociability of the system and not to its
usability/ability to learn to use it. For this reason we
believe that the composition of the sample did not
influence the experiment.
System Usage
Figure 3 shows the general system usage (the
number represented in the y-axis is the number of
total general actions that impacted over the system,
including posting, taking quizzes etc.) for each of
the groups. As we can see the group with full
features used the application noticeably more than
the other two groups. In addition, the group with no
identity features used the system more than the one
with no social aspects but noticeably less than the
one with full features.
INNOV 2010 - International Multi-Conference on Innovative Developments in ICT
142

Figure 3: School Society: general system usage.
Global Satisfaction and Generic Issues
Parameters linked to system issues or graphic appeal
(derived from the survey) are very similar for all the
groups. On the contrary the global satisfaction of the
system experience shows a difference for group one
(Full features- see Figure 4). Interesting enough, the
group that was not able to use identity elements
rated it in a similar way as the group without social
elements.
Figure 4: School Society global satisfaction.
Sociability Determinants
Figure 5 shows the trends for exchanged messages.
Public messages have greatest numbers than the
private ones (we will return on this topic later in the
paper). This is coherent with the perceived
usefulness (derived from the survey) of the two
features: while chats rated an average of 3.8, mail
rated 2.8 (scale 0-4). It is interesting to note that
while Gazette was used more for lurking activities
its perceived usefulness is 3.6.
This is not a surprising finding. Lurking and
contemplating activities are one of the most common
actions in social environments (Wenger, 1999).
Perceived Sociality of the System
The perception of the sociality of the system was
obtained through the survey. To the question ‘In
Figure 5: School Society: trends for exchanged messages.
general, about the fact that someone was playing the
same game as you’ 90% of participants answered
they were encouraged to use the application and the
main motivation (derived from another question)
was because they play to beat their friends. Only
four people answered that the presence/absence of
others did not influence their use of the application.
Nobody answered that the presence of others was an
obstacle to the use of the application.
To the question ‘Do you think that leaving
messages for your friends in game is’ 45% of
participants answered they find it useful because
they like to comment on what their friends do, 3
people answered they find it useless, and the
majority (50%) answered they preferred the public
chat (the Pub). This is more coherent with Digital
Natives' use of social tools than with the use they did
of the two media in the application.
In fact, the Pub had a flow of message very
Twitter like (that in our opinion contributed on its
success), while the note on mail was given based on
the standard use of private messages and not on the
ingame use of mail.
In addition, in the Pub participants with no
identity features quickly added a nickname to each
post. The result was something like: “Guest says:
Guillaume: who is in the Guest group?”.
6 CONCLUSIONS AND
POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENTS
This paper started asserting that the mix between
social and pervasive computing is an issue that
prompts us to rethink Interactive Systems Design. In
fact, the capacity to integrate social elements at early
design stages will make the difference between
successful or not applications.
Ending our discussion we can say that the
A FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGNING SOCIAL INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS
143

experiment described in this paper supported this
assertion. Firstly, the absence of social features
deeply influenced the use of the application (as the
different usage of School Society demonstrated, see
Fig 3).
In addition, the experiment demonstrated that
also the identity aspect is very important in a Social
Interactive Systems. In fact, not only it influence
system usage, it generates a sort of ‘need for
identity’ in the social context (as the Pub example
demonstrated).
However, while trends are visible even in this
short (in terms of time) experiment, we are aware
that more interesting information could be obtained
extending the time of the experiment. For this reason
we are working on another experiment (on the same
system) for a longer amount of time (the idea is to
let the world 'live' for at least two months).
Another interesting experiment could be done
‘playing’ with the Action element. In fact, additional
interesting information could be obtained doing a
similar experiment that will use Identity, Space, and
Time as reference points, and will play with
different levels of social actions in order to answer
questions such as: More or less to what degree do
visible social actions affect social interactions? In
addition, we want to demonstrate the importance of
the space and the time aspect in the same way as we
did for the identity aspect.
Finally, the idea of adapting complex software
systems by creating different profiles based on the
four dimensions of the framework in order to answer
other questions could also be explored. For example,
for a large democratic debate application is the right
thing to do give all age ranges the same vision as the
'first vision' (i.e., the view they have over the system
the first time they enter it)? Would a simplified
vision in all aspects be better for older people or
would they not need, for example, the space aspect
for a good performance? And so on.
REFERENCES
Carmona, M., Heath, T., Oc, T. and Tiesdell, S., 2002.
Public places-urban spaces: the dimensions of urban
design. Architectural Press.
Danet, B., Ruedenberg-Wright, L., and Rosenbaum-
Tamari, Y., 1997. Hmmm... where’s that smoke
coming from? writing, play and performance on
internet relay chat. Journal of Computer- Mediated
Communication, volume 2.
Di Loreto, I., Gouaich, A., 2010. An Early Evaluation
Method For Social Presence In Serious Games. In:
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on
Computer Supported Education CSEDU 2010. 2nd
International Conference on Computer Supported
Education (CSEDU-10), 4/2010.
Goffman, E., 1959. The presentation of self in everyday
life. Doubleday.
Harré, R. and Langenhove, L. V., 1991. Varieties of
positioning. Journal for the Theory of Social
Behaviour, 21, 4, 393–407.
Hogg, M., 1987. Social identity and group cohesiveness,
in J. Turner, M. Hogg, P. Oakes., S. Reicher, & M.
Wetherell (eds.), Rediscovering the social group: A
self-categorization theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 89-116.
Joinson, A. N., 2003. Understanding the Psychology of
Internet Behaviour: Virtual Worlds, Real Lives.
Palgrave Macmillan.
Klemmer, S. R. and Hartmann, B., 2006. How bodies
matter: Five themes for interaction design. In
Proceedings of Design of Interactive Systems 74,
140–149.
Lakoff, G. and Turner, M., 1988. Categories and
Analogies 3. University Of Chicago Press.
Maglio, P., & Kirsh, D., 1996. Epistemic action increases
with skill. In LEA (ed.), Proceedings of cognitive
science society.
Miles, M., & Huberman, A., 1994. Qualitative data
analysis : An expanded sourcebook (2. ed.). Thousand
Oaks: Sage.
Pecher, D. and Zwaan, R. A., 2005. Grounding Cognition:
The Role of Perception and Action in Memory,
Language, and Thinking. Cambridge University Press.
Piaget, J., 1952. The origins of intelligence in children.
International University Press.
Preece, J., 2001. Sociability and usability in online
communities: determining and measuring success.
Behaviour & Information Technology, 20 (5), 347-
356.
Wenger, E., 1999. Communities of practice: Learning,
meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press.
Wenger, E., Mcdermott, R., and Snyder, W. M., 2002.
Cultivating Communities of Practice. Harvard
Business School Press, Boston.
INNOV 2010 - International Multi-Conference on Innovative Developments in ICT
144