The Plot-poll Redesigned: Lessons from the Deployment of a Collective Mood-tracker in an Online Support Group

The study described in this paper extends our earlier work on improving the user experience in online support groups via embedding social knowledge visualization interfaces. A real online support group was created for the purpose of testing a web-poll mood tracker for 16 weeks. We describe the design and deployment of both 2005 and current plot-polls, and conclude with the mixed results from our qualitative investigation, which yielded useful recommendations for future research.