Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

Synthesis of the mediational means and places of collaboration
When users download and log into SL’s user interface for accessing the VW and acting in it, users
engage in a complex interaction with a particular type of software and a network of user-generated
virtual places. Being introduced to SL, a new user (now ‘resident’) first needs to learn how to use
the GUI 19 to create and use an avatar, in order to navigate in virtual places and interact with the
world. Therefore, learning how to modify and operate an avatar is a useful introduction to learning
how to use SL. The capabilities of the avatar (combined with other objects in the spatial
representation and the GUI) reflect the affordances and constraints of user interaction in SL.
On the other hand, the co- designers often bring their prior knowledge and experience on various
other digital tools. During the participant observations and interviews with the co-designers, one
recurring topic for analysis was the use of supplementary software and/or platforms to conduct the
individual and collaborative tasks. Therefore, I aimed to explore and discuss the need for using
multiple platforms to support the collaborative design work, to see which platforms are preferred
during the process, and for what reasons. The commonly discussed issues were the use of official
and third party SL viewers, 3D modeling and image-editing software, and other platforms the
Internet, which the co-designers found helpful at times.
As outlined in the previous section, the participants of the three case-studies show a significant
variety in terms of their conditions and motivations for engaging in SL and participating in
collaborative design activities. Therefore, it is possible to argue that possible similarities and
differences in participants’ semiotic experiences are due to their habitus, and their interests in
participation. The participants’ interpretations of the physical and/or virtual places they inhabit
have a semiotic effect on the ways in which these places are perceived as affording and/or
constraining their motivated collaborative design practices. This relation between the co-designers’
interpretations and their design ideas is noticeable in cases such as Metrotopia or PAL, where the
co-designers aim to build larger-scale regions that are filled with networks of interconnected
virtual places.
Another significant factor that shapes the co-designers’ ideas is their opinions of the general
inworld aesthetic norms, or what they would describe as “SL-like.” Whether as a way of conforming
to the SL’s common semiotic norms of representation and production 20 , or as resistance against the
norms in order to draw a unique path for semiotization, the co-designers use SL as a semiotic
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Graphical User Interface
20
The world has been reviewed, and often criticized, as to having a too-American outlook, with its sunny beaches, clubs
and ideally-shaped avatars that collectively gave way to a particular form of inworld aesthetics. For Xavier, who describes
his first reaction to SL as being “provoked by the very American layout”, the first objective was to “make something that
was in contrast to that.”
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