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Classifying Communities for Design

A Review of the Continuum from CoIs to CoPs

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Abstract

Cooperative design is a complex process that usually involves participants from different cultural and social domains, with different backgrounds and experiences. In this context, the need for social structures that support sharing and common understanding is an essential requirement. The response to such a need can be found in the creation of ‘Communities of Practices’ and ‘Communities of Interest’. Both types of structures have successfully and extensively been applied in different domains; however, a detailed analysis of these concepts points up the need for additional research that leads to their application to cooperative design. This chapter presents a review of the ‘Communities of Practices’ and ‘Communities of Interest’ concepts in order to propose a systematic process for classifying communities. This process might allow practitioners to identify which kind of structure is more suitable to support specific cooperative design processes.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been partly supported by the urTHEY project (TIN2009-09687) funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) of the Government of Spain. Dr Hiltz’s work on this project was supported by a Cátedra de Excelencia appointment at U. Carlos III of Madrid for 2010–2011.

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Correspondence to Sergio Herranz .

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag London

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Herranz, S., Díez, D., Díaz, P., Hiltz, S. (2012). Classifying Communities for Design. In: Dugdale, J., Masclet, C., Grasso, M., Boujut, JF., Hassanaly, P. (eds) From Research to Practice in the Design of Cooperative Systems: Results and Open Challenges. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4093-1_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4093-1_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-4092-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-4093-1

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