Design Thinking for Developing an Event-Based Social Network Platform: Perspective from Social Support Theory

Abstract

From ancient times people’s demand for group life and interdependence is obvious Through people’s interact and interdepend process this study together generate psychological physical and informational type of interaction value and support This pluralistic value and support is so called social support From 1997 the first social network platform start to blossom until 2002 social network platforms emerge all over the world and have been frequently used by different local people (Ellison 2007) research indicates this phenomenon comes from the people’s needs of social interaction Today different types of platform have developed and event-based social network (EBSN) stresses on the face-to-face interaction studies have proven it has positive effect toward social support However users responded that they have negative user experience result in the drawback of social support The cause of negative user experience varies from technical bugs user misuse… and one of the reason lies in the inappropriate design of the using process causing the platform gaps Due to this phenomenon this research implements through design thinking methodology defines users’ using process and takes in-depth interview to gain users’ feedback and collect platform gaps that have met by users Afterwards through focus group this study discover critical identified problems and ideate solutions then develop the new prototype of platform then tests The testing of the prototype needs to evaluate from social support’s perspective In the testing process users will use the initial designed Prototype 1 0 and re-designed Prototype 2 0 and respond questionnaire afterwards The questions were based on social support theory and the purpose is to examine whether the re-designed platform have enhanced users’ social support comparing to the original platform The findings in this research indicates that: The re-designed Prototype 2 0 has positive effect toward all four types of social support (appraisal belonging tangible self-esteem) especially significant toward appraisal and belonging support; The eight new designs of Prototype 2 0 has different degree of positive affect toward four types of social support and most of the designs have significant positive effect toward two to three types of social support This research hopes by providing theoretical-based design process and evaluation report these can serve as a reference for improvement of future social network platforms furthermore to have positive impact on optimize efficacy of new social network platforms

Date of Award	2017 Jan 23
Original language	English
Supervisor	Chia-Han Yang (Supervisor)