Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

2007) to case-study data in order to systematically analyze the insights from various participants in
each case study. I find the constructivist abductive stream in GTM (Charmaz 2006, Reichertz
2007) particularly helpful in generating analytical categories from the empirical data and critically
reviewing my interpretations and generalizations. I appropriated several aspects of the grounded
theoretical model to my research context, particularly the substantive – open and selective - and
theoretical coding procedures (Holton 2007) which I used to construct analytical categories of
collaborative co-design activities in SL, and to explore their relations among each other in social
contexts.
The role and meaning of prior theoretical knowledge for research has been an extensive discussion
topic, particularly apparent in sociologists Anselm Strauss’s Qualitative Analysis for Social
Scientists (1987), Strauss and Juliet Corbin’s Basics of Qualitative Research, and Barney Glaser’s
(1993) account of empirical orientation in coding and categorization of data (Reichertz 2007).
Although none of these approaches explicitly systematized the abductive logic, later works tried to
bridge the gap by offering methodological explanations of abduction (i.e. Reichertz 2007, Jensen
2010). A more contemporary interpretation of the method was proposed by Kathy Charmaz (2002,
2005, 2006), who advocates a constructivist grounded theory approach within the interpretative
qualitative research with ‘flexible guidelines’ (Creswell 2007). Rather than aiming unified methods
and a single core category, Charmaz’s constructive approach emphasizes use of active codes and
consideration of multiple social realities.
In accordance to the qualitative research framework of this study, I use GTM to theorize social
processes by examining and categorizing meaningful activities that shape real people's experiences
in real social situations (Dey 2007, Bryant and Charmaz 2007, Stern 2007). I use the Metrotopia
case as a pilot study through convenience sampling for generating initial categories for an overall
view (Morse 2007). It is also stated by GTM theorists that series of smaller related studies with
different contexts, instead of a large case-study with a large number of participants, could help
discovering the social reality with the actors' points of view (Stern 2007). As explained before, the
findings from three case studies contribute to the emergence of categories from the observation of
design processes in various stages and contexts. The first case-study (participant observation of
Metrotopia’s design) aims to provide initial grounding categories for a similar type of open-ended
coding, after which I constructed new operational questions and research design strategies for the
following cases. During the analysis process, I revisited the initially formed categories in order to
theorize the findings from multimodal analysis and MDA, and used theoretical concepts to guide
the potential interpretative directions to emerge from within the data. The analytical matrix, as
well as the framing of the overall research question, have been revisited and modified in the light of
these emerging empirical insights, which led me to consider the participants’ voices and
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