Towards collaborative communities: a preliminary study on exchange of goods and services in local contexts

Abstract

In this paper, we present an explorative study aimed at assessing challenges and opportunities for the design of innovative technologies to support the exchange of goods and services in geographically local contexts. A preliminary focus group identified the main dimensions and issues informing the design of a survey, which was submitted to parents with young children and received 102 answers. From the analysis of the answers, three themes emerged as important: favour exchange as a gift; the different relevance that feedbacks have with respect to global peer-to-peer services and the importance of the relationships among the participants.