Emotional design for social computing websites

Abstract

Social computing has been popular nowadays and the number of social computing users is increasing every day. However, many website designers have focused on functional aspects of social computing websites. Also, there are few studies that focus on the emotional design of social computing websites. By investigating the websites' design factors which are preferred by users, we were able to suggest the guidelines for a good design of social computing websites. Survey was conducted in order to investigate the factors of websites' design. Social computing websites were measured by the questionnaire which is composed of satisfaction aspect and emotional factors. 254 participants of the questionnaire took part in this survey. We analyzed the data by employing factor analysis and linear multiple regression. As a result, fun, completeness, weakness, complexity and newness were chosen as the main factors for the social computing websites' design. It would be suggested that social computing websites should be designed by considering these factors.