Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

collaborative design, in addition to semi-structured interviews with designers on their general
meaning-makings.
I see the research process as a form of communication, rather than mere representation; thus use
reflexivity as an analytical tool (i.e. Deacon et al. 2007, Sánchez-Jankowski 2002, Hine 2005). In
this respect, I often shared my interpretations from the case studies with interdisciplinary
colleagues, and opened my work to scrutiny through several international conferences, research
events, and research group meetings at Roskilde University. In addition, the interview questions,
especially in later interviews, included participants’ reflections on what others have articulated and
my interpretations of common attitudes and sense-makings. By this method, I was able to revisit
my initial assumptions in each step, and reconfigure the methodological framing of the analytical
objectives continuously throughout the process. I handled each case study as a whole at once, while
critically analyzing the relations between social actors, contexts, practices and designs among all of
the three cases. In the following chapters, I present the analysis by comparatively analyzing the
three cases, with the intention to represent the significant similarities and differences in relation to
the contexts of co-design practices.
Multiple case studies
In the empirical studies, first, a 3-month multidisciplinary design process of a virtual laboratory
(Metrotopia) was observed, while I was also an active participant of both design and research
teams throughout the process. The data is produced by recordings and snapshots of various stages
of the design project, participatory design notes, and interviews with the two interdisciplinary
members of the design team. The significance of the Metrotopia case-study for the analysis is twofold.
First, the interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers and designers provides a potentially
rich environment for studying the social situations in which design solutions emerge. In addition,
the participatory design approach provides a methodological window to take part in the sociotechnical
practices of meaning-making.
Consequent to the fulfillment of its primary research purpose, this virtual laboratory was used for
teaching purposes by Prof. Dr. Sisse Siggaard Jensen (Roskilde University) and me, where we
asked our students to work collaboratively in the city’s sandbox to create virtual artifacts in a 3-
week workshop; and join focus-group interviews afterwards. The data in this second case-study is
produced by image and video recordings from various stages of the design process, the students’
final presentations, and the transcriptions of the four group interviews. This case-study
foregrounds the experiences of novice users, and situations of collaborative design in which the co-
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