Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

design. Although the design idea and the overall concept were determined by Caitlyn’s research
questions and personal experience, she says once the main idea was generated and the team
“started understanding what we could do in SL, the idea had to be changed.” On the other hand,
visitor feedback or Caitlyn’s observations with research participants has not gone into changing any
aspects of the place.
The issue of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration was also a topic of discussion in the PAL
case. Since the co-designers were from different parts of the world, they have been living in
different time-zones, working and living in different life-worlds. The whole team has never met in
person, but Curiza and Xavier met a few times in Denmark. According to Shaggy, it was often hard
to get the whole team together in a certain (inworld) location and this situation shaped the design
process profoundly because “people will come here when they want to, and if they’re not here then
they’re just not here.” Shaggy adds: “this is probably because SL is not a priority for no one here.
You go to SL just to have fun. It’s not a job. So you do it when you have time, and you meet people
when they are online.” The process of PAL’s design was not much different in terms of the codesigners’
working methods. On the other hand, the evolution of PAL’s general design idea and the
role of feedback from various social actors (including visitors) have specificities. Back in 2008, subdividing
the land for streaming media was a new development in SL; which instigated Curiza’s
creative thinking. Thus, Curiza explains his initial purposes in generating the PAL idea as to “find
out what [they] can do in here, in 3D worlds.” Consequently, Curiza’s idea was supported by a
fellow Danish radio show, which invited its listeners to join in with ideas and co-develop the design
idea. Curiza describes how various listeners called in to give ideas, and sending requests to be
included in the design of the place. In fact, Curiza and Xray met through the radio show, after
which they met in SL and became acquaintances. The idea of using unevenly distributed cubes, was
generated by Shaggy and developed by him and AmyLee for the most recent version of PAL. Shaggy
explains how he generated the cubes idea as “just trying to close my eyes and say ‘ok, I’m
teleporting to PAL, what should be around me What should it look like’”, after which he
generated several ideas. The overall idea to produce the ground plane by 600+ cubes came as a
surprise to Curiza, who says he never mentioned such a design concept to AmyLee before. In fact,
the way Shaggy describes how the idea was generated refers to Curiza’s initial design principles,
and the perceived constraints of the design context. Shaggy describes these initial design principles
as “‘do’s and don’ts’” of the project. Such constraints in PAL’s design included having an open
space in which avatars can easily navigate, understand the overall concept, and be able to
experience music within four listening areas. For instance, Shaggy explains why “having the 4
listening areas pretty close to each other” was a design strategy to make it “convenient for people
to walk from one to another.” User feedback has a much more central role in the evolution of
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