Members can “earn” time by providing a service and “spend” it by receiving a service. Timebanking formalizes community-based volunteering by tracking service transactions amongst community members in terms of the time taken to perform the services (Cahn, 2000). The authors discuss design challenges and opportunities of smartphone-based timebanking. The authors in particular present new affordances of smartphone technology on timebanking, including (1) transaction time reduction, (2) location and time-sensitive timebanking activity support, and (3) real-time coordination. The results highlight the potential of timebanking for young population with an application that facilitates access to communications and transaction-management activities, and strengthens social connection and the sense of community attachment. In this paper, the authors introduce a timebanking smartphone application and present a 5-week user study with 32 young adults. The authors' design research attempts to address these issues by leveraging the unique affordances of smartphones and their attractiveness to young adults. Although timebanking takes advantage of web technologies, the lack of flexibility in managing web-based timebanking transactions and the difficulty of attracting younger adults whose contributions would be highly valuable to the community still remain as major challenges. AbstractTimebanking refers to community-based volunteering in which participants provide and receive services in exchange for time credits.
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