Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

For Curiza, the hardest part of being the boss in a collaborative project was to “handle 4 egos.” So,
it was easier for him “to say ‘Emily, you are the boss’.” He describes the motivations for his
decision as: “Emily was the girl who have invested most of the time, who have helped me so
much, so it was also kind of a way for me to thank her and show her the respect she deserved.”
He also explains why he prefers not to create any new content in his own sim before getting
AmyLee’s approval. Again, Curiza builds his discourse on a metaphor based on art, comparing the
creation to “painting a picture” where “you don’t want to paint a picture and then call a new
artist to paint it over.” For Xavier and Shaggy, the problem with the initial process configuration
was ‘having too many voices’ at the same time, trying to create and have a say in the general
formation of the design. For Xavier, who is a RL-professional architect, this leads to a self-inquiry
about his social identity as a builder in SL. He reflects on his condition in this new social context as
“[m]aybe I’m a professional, but my idea doesn’t rule over somebody else’s, because I might be
professional in RL, but in SL everybody’s equal.” For Shaggy, the challenge with involving too
many people in collaborative design is based on their ability to produce constructive criticisms and
“motivated reasons.” He claims that the effective approach is to include people “who wouldn’t say
‘oh it’s great’, but would say ‘I like this and this and this’ and ‘here’s why I like this work’ or ‘ here’s
why I don’t like it this way’.”
As seen in the comments above, PAL co-designers Xavier and Shaggy believe that having too
many uncoordinated creators and styles would eventually lead the design to conflict. In PAL’s
design, division of tasks was mostly decided upon by individual conditions and interests of the codesigners.
Specific locations and design elements were produced by each designer, such as the club
interior by Xavier or the seating units by AmyLee. Therefore, there are stylistic differences in
particular elements, as the final designs were evaluated by all members, and decided upon
primarily by AmyLee and Curiza. In terms of organization of individual design processes of design
elements and collaborative evaluation of ideas and designs, the PAL case also shows resemblances
to the Metrotopia project.
The virtual worlds workshop and learning through collaborative design
The ‘Communication and Design in Virtual Worlds’ Workshop was organized in Roskilde
University in September 2009 as a part of the bachelor track in Communication, including 15
international exchange students. The teaching language was English and all students were visiting
from other European universities. Therefore, the participant profiles in this case-study show quite
a variant social trajectory, which was also influential in the variety of their meaning-makings on SL.
There was one common characteristic among all students: all of the fifteen students were female.
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