Designing online collaboration for the individual and social good: A collective argumentation approach

In this paper we introduce and evaluate DebateHub, a new online discussion platform aimed at helping groups to share information to solve an issue via online argumentation. We test alternative visual widgets designed to provide the users with increased visibility and understanding of the content and interaction generated through their interaction. We introduce several user experience metrics including mutual understanding, quality of collaboration, and usability to systematically assess discussion-based collaboration. Finally, we compare alternative designs to identify which widgets' combination performs better with respect to the selected metrics. Our results show that visual augmentation produces better users' experience up to a certain point, after which the provision of extra visual feedback lowers the quality of the user experience. We offer our approach as an example of IS human-centered design in which the design of the platform features is driven by metrics associated with users' well-being and technology usefulness.