User-Centered Strategy and Service Design for Online Social Networks and Community Engagement

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.63345/ijrhs.net.v14.i7.7

Payasvi Chhapola

Student, IDC School of Design

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

IIT Area, Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra- 400076

ORCID id – https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2471-6580

Dr. Rajendra Kumar Meena

Assistant Professor

Shaheed Bhagat Singh Evening College, University of Delhi

Phase II, Sheikh Sarai, New Delhi- 110017

ORCID id – https://orcid.org/0009-0002-4479-1708

Abstract—In addition to offering features and functionalities, nowadays online social networking and digital communities strive to excel on the dimension of member experience as well. Quite a large number of communities are not able to turn sign-ups into continued usage because of inappropriate service journey design. The current research explores the connections between five user-centered service design factors and community engagement as well as continuance intentions: onboarding process, content relevancy, moderation and safety, social presence, and opportunities for co-creation. Using the data from a survey of 386 active community members from interest-based, professional, brand, and civic online communities and conducting partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), all five factors were found to be significant predictors of community engagement and collectively explained 54.2% of its variance. Social presence (β = .287) and content relevancy (β = .226) demonstrated the highest impact among the five factors. Community engagement, in turn, strongly predicted continuance intention (β = .538) and moderated and safe environment directly influenced continuance intention as well (β = .192). The current model accounted for 42.5% of variance in continuance intention. Engagement varied greatly depending on whether members were lurkers, occasional contributors, or active contributors (F(2, 383) = 61.03, p < .001, η² = .242).

Keywords—User-centred design; service design; online social networks; community engagement; co-creation; content moderation; continuance intention

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