The terms virtual community, online community, or digital community have enthusiastically referred to new outlooks with the unfortunate side-effect of more confusion than order in both academic and practitioner-oriented literature. Many consider them problematic concepts, because there is not a commonly accepted definition of what a community really is. But before trying to define the concept, let's first ask why people use it? What's the point of talking about community in technology design?

Designers, developers and managers need to talk about whom their product is intended for. Traditionally the terms customer or users have been used for that purpose. These terms reflected the development situation: some decades ago the customer was a company, since software was really so expensive that only large business organisations could be customers. The term user became popular to emphasize that it is not always the customer who is actually using the software. User-centred designers want to understand users to keep the customer satisfied.

Now, the development situation has changed again. The previously disconnected personal computers are getting connected to the Internet. More and more people have homepages, write weblogs and spend time online. The term community was adopted by developers to signify this change. In short, ehrn the model talks of digital or online or net-based or computer-mediated communities, it assumes they have the five following characteristics:

1. Post-launch. Software for communities become useful after the launch of the product/service/community. Effort is needed from the community moderators and value is created by the community members. Compared to traditional software development, this is a big change from the "maintenance phase", when many considered the project to be completed.
2. Place. Many designers use the metaphora of place, when designing software for community. They construct the member's place online. These spatial metaphors are heavily - and variedly - used to make collective social settings among members more understandable to themselves.
3. Non-work context. Previously the users didn't have a choice in using ICT, they had to use the software in the company or quit their job. Therefore, the motivation of the users was not a key issue. Now, as the Internet is used for fun and the community members are supposed to participate voluntarily, motivation and incitaments are key issues.
4. Large amount of (simultaneous) users. New and qualitatively different phenomena emerge with thousands of users interacting online. Past models considering small work groups are not enough.
5. Change. Communities form, change, develop, decline, and sometimes become inactive. No longer can the user needs (or the needs of the community and it's members) be considered stable. They change and the design has to live with it.