Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

and selection of participants in combination with related interviews/conversations with VW
experts and design professionals, in which the main purpose is to enrich the variety of viewpoints
and understand the nature of collaborative design activities in SL to a wider extent. I aim to cover a
wide spectrum of experiences and sense-makings on the subject matter in order to reveal
uncovered aspects and foreshadowed problems from a critical standpoint. As a result, the overall
case-study framework includes participants with different levels of experience and competence in
SL, observing collaborative design processes in different contexts, such as professional/
educational, inworld/RL collaboration, and using the various methods of data production, such as
field observations, snapshots/video, interviews, and focus groups.
6.3. Methods of data production
An important aspect of interpretation and triangulation in case study research is the positioning of
the researcher in relation to the subjects to be studied. As case study does not prescribe any specific
methods to produce data and draw and analytical framework based on a particular research design,
strategies for being involved in the field, either as an observer or a practitioner, teacher, policymaker
etc., would essentially depend on the researcher’s goals. In this section, I will discuss the
methodological strategies, by explaining the particular reasons for the particular methods that
were applied in the light of theoretical framework. Here, I aim to present the logic behind
constructing the empirical framing of participant observations and co-designer interviews with
other inworld and online data resources (i.e. snapshots of virtual places and artifacts).
As explained earlier, the main research question aims to understand the experiences of designers,
who engage in collaborative design projects in SL, as they construct situated and reflexive
meaning-makings. Therefore, my approach towards this aspect of the research question intends to
be as open and exploratory as possible. By observation of the co-design processes, and individual
and focus group interviews with actors involved in collaborative projects, I try to make a
theoretically and empirically grounded documentation of the activities and reflections as possible.
Participant ethnography and participatory design in SL
My overall goal in participating in the social contexts was to take advantage of the ‘uniqueness of a
specific case’ and let theoretical insights emerge from interactions, in order to achieve what
Eisenhardt (1989) calls “controlled opportunism.” As Kemmis and McTaggart (2005) suggest in
their essay on participatory action research, the role of researcher in participating and in-so-doing
changing the social context requires particular attention to the evolution of research objectives,
questions and methods. What is expected from participatory research is a sense of development
and evolution in understanding of practices and situations (Kemmis and McTaggart 2005).
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