Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

to SL was a few years ago (2004-2005), while this was a very brief experience. She says her active
engagement with the virtual world (VW) began with her involvement in the project in 2008, which
is also when the Metrotopia project was initiated. Caitlyn is neither a builder nor a frequent user of
SL. She describes herself as a gamer who enjoys games with “short-term investment”, as she get
frustrated easily. However, her interest in the Superhero concept roots to her personal interest as a
“fan” as well as a researcher. She defines herself as “client and idea-generator” in the overall
process. According to Caitlyn, her participation was about “content generation” rather than
“design or structure generation.” Although she does not actively generate content by using SL’s
building tools, Caitlyn had a significant role in generation of the overall layout and organization of
places and artifacts within the city. She also created a special avatar for a specific character to
represent Metrotopia and communicate with the city’s followers, named “Mayor Sandalwood.”
Caitlyn’s purposes as a media and communications researcher and her interest in the related
contexts –such as gaming, virtual worlds and superheroes – have notable consequences in her
decisions, and the ways in which she relates the design of Metrotopia to her research study.
The overall design and production of Metrotopia was done by Aspen, who is a Danish computer
programmer and a SL entrepreneur, offering professional inworld design services since 2007.
Aspen owns and/or has designed several other locations (sims) in SL, one of which is WonderDK
island that neighbors Metrotopia. He has been asked to participate in the project through existing
collaborations with the design team, but this is their first collaborative project on this scale. For
Aspen, having practical content-generation experience in SL is an important advantage, and his
large inventory of resources (i.e. objects, landmarks for resource archives) enabled the team to
work faster. In his view, experience enables designers to recognize what can and cannot be done by
using SL’s affordances, and such considerations are a part of the design process from the
beginning.
My involvement in the design process of Metrotopia included active participation, through which I
observed the interactions of the co-designers while I also learned and practiced content-generation
under the supervision of Aspen. I had access to both research team and design team meetings, in
addition to which I joined several inworld gatherings in which team members generated and
evaluated ideas, and organized the places and artifacts within the city. My professional background
as an industrial designer and existing competences in other 2D and 3D content creation software
enabled me to adapt to the working methods of both teams. My purpose in active participation was
to observe tools, resources and methods for collaborative design with a hands-on approach. To do
so, I undertook various design tasks and primarily followed Aspen’s and Caitlyn’s specifications in
creations.
146