Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

certain concepts, or enable certain activities. The final part of the analysis covers the findings about
the textual meta-function. Here, I discuss the issues about internal and external semiotic cohesion
in virtual places and artifacts, which implies both the composition of their internal components
and their relations with the surrounding VW.
8.2. Constructing the experiential meta-functions: practical
functionality, movement and presence in virtual places
The experiential meta-function refers to design of affordances and constraints for particular types
of avatar interaction, and how their features are organized according to their intended usecontexts.
The co-designers frame particular types of activities to facilitate particular experiences,
while limiting others. Representations of affordances and constraints for these specific experiences
are built into the multimodal configuration of each design project; and they are determined by two
significant factors: the rhetorical intentions and choices of the co-designers, and the socio-technical
environment which affords and/or limits certain creations. The design choices that are concerned
with the experiential meta-functions may originate either from the initial design-brief (such as in
Metrotopia and – to a certain extent – the Workshop projects) or the choices may develop over
time and with the flow of user feedback (such as the emergent interpersonal features of PAL). On
the other hand, the experiential meaning potentials are also closely related to the overall coherence
between experiential, interpersonal and textual meta-functions in design. Therefore, I will analyze
the intended practical functions in each case-study and the relevant design decisions in this section
by taking their relations with the other two meta-functions into account.
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