Aspects to Motivate users of a Design Engineering Wiki to Share their Knowledge
Industrial design engineering is an information and
knowledge intensive job. Although Wikipedia offers a lot of this
information, design engineers are better served with a wiki tailored to
their job, offering information in a compact manner and functioning
as a design tool. For that reason WikID has been developed.
However for the viability of a wiki, an active user community is
essential. The main subject of this paper is a study to the influence of
the communication and the contents of WikID on the user-s
willingness to contribute.
At first the theory about a website-s first impression, general
usability guidelines and user motivation in an online community is
studied. Using this theory, the aspects of the current site are analyzed
on their suitability. These results have been verified with a
questionnaire amongst 66 industrial design engineers (or students
industrial design engineering).
The main conclusion is that design engineers are enchanted with
the existence of WikID and its knowledge structure (taxonomy) but
this structure has not become clear without any guidance. In other
words, the knowledge structure is very helpful for inspiring and
guiding design engineers through their tailored knowledge domain in
WikID but this taxonomy has to be better communicated on the main
page. Thereby the main page needs to be fitted more to the target
group preferences.
[1] Chowdhury, G.G. 2001. Information sources and searching on the World
Wide Web, London, Library Association.
[2] Vroom, R., Kuiper, C. & Wassink, M. 2004. Knowledge Search
Problems And Strategies Used By Design Engineers, 4th International
AED 2004 Conference.
[3] Vroom, R.W. 2003. Towards a toolbox for conceptual design
engineering known as C-DET. In McGrath, F & Remenyl, D (Ed.), 4th
European conference on knowledge management. (pp. 937-948).
[4] Vroom, R.W., Herkel, C. ten, Blomaard, S. 2005. Structure and
Grouping of Product Domains for Organizing Design Engineering
Knowledge", Proceedings of the CAID 2005, Delft, The Netherlands.
[5] Vroom, R.W., R. Pape and E. van Vulpen. 2006. Design Engineering
Information Search through Design Aspects Tree, Proc. of the 5th
Conference on Advanced Engineering Design AED 2006, June 2006,
Prague, Czech Republic.
[6] Zinkstok, M. & Frolich, J. 2007, C-DETwiki: Een onderzoek naar het
toepassen van het wiki concept bij het creëren van een Design Toolbox,
Internal Report, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft
University of Technology, Delft.
[7] Wikipedia Statistics, 2009. Available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special: Statistics [Accessed 26 February
2009]
[8] SHIH, W., TSJENG, S. & YANG, C. 2007, Wiki-based rapid
prototyping for teaching-material design in e-Learning grids. Computer
& Education, vol. 51, pp. 1037-1057.
[9] Vroom R.W., Joris van ÔÇÿt Ende, Raymond Jelierse, Alex Olieman, and
A. Kooijman. 2009, Creating A Community Base For WikID; An
Industrial Design Engineering Wiki, in: Proceedings of 8th European
Academy Of Design Conference - April 2009, Aberdeen, Scotland
[10] Vroom, R.W. and Olieman, A. 2010. Forming the identity of an
industrial design engineering wiki. Submitted for publication.
[11] ThesisTools, 2009. Available from: http://www.thesistools.com
[Accessed 10 March 2009]
[12] Kassenaar P. & Van Rijswijk, O. 2003, Handboek website usability,
Academic Service, Den Haag, The Netherlands.
[13] Saffer, D. 2007. Designing for interaction; Creating smart Applications
and Clever Devices, New Riders, Berkeley.
[14] Breadcrumb (navigation), 2009. Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadcrumb_(navigation) [Accessed 3 April
2009]
[15] W3Schools, 2009. Available from:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp [Accessed
10 March 2009]
[16] Lindgaard G., Fernandes G., Dudek C. & Brown J. 2006, Attention web
designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression!.
Behaviour & Information Technology, vol. 25, pp. 115 - 126.
[17] Website optimization, 2009. Available from:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/blink/ [Accessed 9
March 2009]
[18] Chih-Chien Wang and Cheng-Yu Lai, 2006, Knowledge Contribution in
the Online Virtual Community: Capability and Motivation Book Series
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Publisher Springer Berlin /
Heidelberg, pp 442-453.
[1] Chowdhury, G.G. 2001. Information sources and searching on the World
Wide Web, London, Library Association.
[2] Vroom, R., Kuiper, C. & Wassink, M. 2004. Knowledge Search
Problems And Strategies Used By Design Engineers, 4th International
AED 2004 Conference.
[3] Vroom, R.W. 2003. Towards a toolbox for conceptual design
engineering known as C-DET. In McGrath, F & Remenyl, D (Ed.), 4th
European conference on knowledge management. (pp. 937-948).
[4] Vroom, R.W., Herkel, C. ten, Blomaard, S. 2005. Structure and
Grouping of Product Domains for Organizing Design Engineering
Knowledge", Proceedings of the CAID 2005, Delft, The Netherlands.
[5] Vroom, R.W., R. Pape and E. van Vulpen. 2006. Design Engineering
Information Search through Design Aspects Tree, Proc. of the 5th
Conference on Advanced Engineering Design AED 2006, June 2006,
Prague, Czech Republic.
[6] Zinkstok, M. & Frolich, J. 2007, C-DETwiki: Een onderzoek naar het
toepassen van het wiki concept bij het creëren van een Design Toolbox,
Internal Report, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft
University of Technology, Delft.
[7] Wikipedia Statistics, 2009. Available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special: Statistics [Accessed 26 February
2009]
[8] SHIH, W., TSJENG, S. & YANG, C. 2007, Wiki-based rapid
prototyping for teaching-material design in e-Learning grids. Computer
& Education, vol. 51, pp. 1037-1057.
[9] Vroom R.W., Joris van ÔÇÿt Ende, Raymond Jelierse, Alex Olieman, and
A. Kooijman. 2009, Creating A Community Base For WikID; An
Industrial Design Engineering Wiki, in: Proceedings of 8th European
Academy Of Design Conference - April 2009, Aberdeen, Scotland
[10] Vroom, R.W. and Olieman, A. 2010. Forming the identity of an
industrial design engineering wiki. Submitted for publication.
[11] ThesisTools, 2009. Available from: http://www.thesistools.com
[Accessed 10 March 2009]
[12] Kassenaar P. & Van Rijswijk, O. 2003, Handboek website usability,
Academic Service, Den Haag, The Netherlands.
[13] Saffer, D. 2007. Designing for interaction; Creating smart Applications
and Clever Devices, New Riders, Berkeley.
[14] Breadcrumb (navigation), 2009. Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadcrumb_(navigation) [Accessed 3 April
2009]
[15] W3Schools, 2009. Available from:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp [Accessed
10 March 2009]
[16] Lindgaard G., Fernandes G., Dudek C. & Brown J. 2006, Attention web
designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression!.
Behaviour & Information Technology, vol. 25, pp. 115 - 126.
[17] Website optimization, 2009. Available from:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/blink/ [Accessed 9
March 2009]
[18] Chih-Chien Wang and Cheng-Yu Lai, 2006, Knowledge Contribution in
the Online Virtual Community: Capability and Motivation Book Series
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Publisher Springer Berlin /
Heidelberg, pp 442-453.
@article{"International Journal of Business, Human and Social Sciences:58393", author = "Regine W. Vroom and Lysanne E. Vossen and Anoek M. Geers", title = "Aspects to Motivate users of a Design Engineering Wiki to Share their Knowledge", abstract = "Industrial design engineering is an information and
knowledge intensive job. Although Wikipedia offers a lot of this
information, design engineers are better served with a wiki tailored to
their job, offering information in a compact manner and functioning
as a design tool. For that reason WikID has been developed.
However for the viability of a wiki, an active user community is
essential. The main subject of this paper is a study to the influence of
the communication and the contents of WikID on the user-s
willingness to contribute.
At first the theory about a website-s first impression, general
usability guidelines and user motivation in an online community is
studied. Using this theory, the aspects of the current site are analyzed
on their suitability. These results have been verified with a
questionnaire amongst 66 industrial design engineers (or students
industrial design engineering).
The main conclusion is that design engineers are enchanted with
the existence of WikID and its knowledge structure (taxonomy) but
this structure has not become clear without any guidance. In other
words, the knowledge structure is very helpful for inspiring and
guiding design engineers through their tailored knowledge domain in
WikID but this taxonomy has to be better communicated on the main
page. Thereby the main page needs to be fitted more to the target
group preferences.", keywords = "Industrial Design Engineering Knowledge, SemanticWiki, User Willingness to Contribute Knowledge to a Wiki,Influence of Website Content to User Activation.", volume = "3", number = "9", pages = "1785-11", }