Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

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Although Metrotopia was specifically designed for the participants of Caitlyn’s research, the design team was also considering SL’s social affordances, which would allow the virtual city to be populated by various other avatars; thus the team chose to make Metrotopia a public location and to allow other visitors in. Caitlyn expresses later that she “wasn’t thinking about other people, other visitors” and first design principles were determined “just for the participants of the study.” In our interview, Caitlyn mentioned that Metrotopia “existed primarily to bring people to for a specific reason” and her research participants are a “different type of audience than the audience you hope to get just by existing.” However, particular design elements have also been placed in the overall design to accommodate the variety of visitor profiles, including random visitors and guests for various inworld events. After Caitlyn’s research study - when the primary purpose of the design was accomplished – Metrotopia was introduced to public and several events were organized to “market” the city, including a Machinima contest and an opening night with live concerts. Therefore, the design of Metrotopia’s experiential meaning potentials reflect this situation, and the organization of various design elements aim to accommodate different visitor experiences. Although specific interactive places were designed and built within Metrotopia to represent particular types of interaction (i.e. information gathering, costume and avatar modification, fighting and exercising), certain locations did not satisfy the initial research expectations of Caitlyn. She believes that the design didn’t involve enough ‘questions’ to get participants more engaged: Caitlyn: It is this idea of the questionings that go on in a situation. First question is ‘what is this place’, and then you get that question answered but you do not have any questions after that, you are not going to stick around. (…) But then as a designer, of the content at least, you CAN structure questions in. I mean, that is what happens with narrative text. There are a lot of questions as you go along. So, we didn’t structure enough questions into the city to make it interesting enough to stay. In her comment above, Caitlyn relates the questionings of the users, or visitors, to the decisions that are made by the designers. Here, she explains why she thinks her experience with the research participants was not as successful as she thought, by referring to both the experiential potentials for movement and the interpersonal potentials for engagement. On the one hand, it is the visitors who would make sense of the place; therefore their questionings about the possible affordances and/or constraints was the primary steering force behind the design of certain elements. On the other hand, Caitlyn claims that designers’ task is to shape the users’ environment in such a way that would make them want to ask more questions and therefore have prolonged interaction. In Metrotopia, the co-designers present experiential meaning potentials by organizing the affordances and constraints of various design elements within specific locations in the city. Each of 199
these locations aim at specific types of activities, and in doing so, they also relate the interpersonal meaning potentials of the city. This way designers of Metrotopia assist users to generate further questions after their first impressions, or by asking ‘what is this place’ in Caitlyn’s words, and continue exploring. Specifications of these activities – and the characteristics of corresponding places – in the initial design brief were made with an outset in Caitlyn’s specifications, For instance, the design of the Fight Club Dojo was to enable the participants to fight like superheroes, as illustrated by Caitlyn’s comment below: Caitlyn: It was more of just an idea of trying to figure ‘what are the superhero tropes and how could we represent them in SL’ (…) [S]ome of the main aspects of superheroes are like they fight with other people, so there’s the Fight Club. Figure 8.7. (left) Nort-west street view of Fight Club Dojo Figure 8.8. (right) View from inside the Dojo. Four avatars are challenging each other with light sabers. The Fight Club Dojo is a good example of how the intertextual meaning relations with the superhero genre are reflected in the design within the scale of interaction spaces and their elements. The experiential and interpersonal meaning potentials of these locations, as well as coherence of particular design elements, have intertextual references to particular genre conventions, and other media products such as movies, comic books and computer games. The visitors can choose among the weapons that are provided in the Dojo, and they can challenge other avatars in this place by battling each other with machine guns, swords or light-sabers. In fact, the exterior of the Dojo building and its surrounding environment also support the interpersonal and textual meta-functions, as exemplified in Aspen’s comment below: Aspen: We decided to use an old warehouse to make it look scary. This is also very close to the harbor, so this is where all the bad guys hang out. So you don’t see any shining skyscrapers around here, this is a different part of town. 200
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Prologue ‘So it isn’t the origi
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Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborat
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CHAPTER 3. Social semiotics, multim
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Official and third party viewers
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List of Figures Figure 4.1 Domains
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List of Tables Table 2. 1 Theories
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1. Introduction Virtual places and
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technologies introduce new social w
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innovation studies researchers have
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contextual factors of collaborative
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creative collaboration, and creativ
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In a multimodal and multi-method ap
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three case studies. This chapter al
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2. Perspectives in virtual worlds r
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making. In fact, it is possible to
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virtual world technologies, it sign
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collaborative actions that span qui
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mediated social interaction with ot
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their perceived effects on networke
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ackdrop for the understanding of us
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multidisciplinary working (Gu et al
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Socio-cultural perspectives on co-d
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innovation differs from Bonsu and D
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In a place-centric socio-semiotic v
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Theoretical Categories Concepts and
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3. Social semiotics, multimodality
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3.1. The social semiotic approach t
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structures and analyzing the contex
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designers’ purposeful orchestrati
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communication as an essential semio
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aspects of multimodal entities for
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and-paste logic of online media, th
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from the meaning-making practices,
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and Turner 2004). Social Informatic
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From this perspective, to build (an
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human action unfolds in ‘three-di
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genius loci idea to virtual places,
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Michael de Certeau’s (1984) analy
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semiotic practices, in all kinds of
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follow similar considerations of ex
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comparatively analyzing the multimo
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Here, the relevant question for pos
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3.6. Conclusion: social semiotics a
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Theoretical Categories Concepts and
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4. Theory and practice in design re
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elations. One example of the formal
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traditional distinctions between de
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Research for design aims to provide
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potentially offers to our senses. D
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In sum, I consider affordances and
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It is certainly important that desi
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A solely production-based account o
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design problems, while its variatio
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user-driven innovations. Von Hippel
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institutional contexts (Grossen 200
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Meaning-oriented design theories
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As explained in the Introduction ch
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The multimodal social semiotic appr
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them, and (b) experiential and inte
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From multimodal analysis, I draw ce
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phenomenology of time and space (an
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My analytical framework includes a
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characteristics of design in virtua
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6. Methodology Introduction This ch
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multimodal analysis in virtual worl
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sensibilities, and methods of analy
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are contextualized by the socio-tec
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perspectives as the primary source
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‣ Communication and Design in Vir
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perspectives and methods. The evolu
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designers are not necessarily geogr
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material resources either by visiti
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and selection of participants in co
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also the reason why this case study
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within each consequent case study,
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created/constituted in the situated
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than make overall statements and ge
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in-depth qualitative understanding
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7.1. The social actors and configur
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The core design team consists of Ca
Page 162 and 163: Curiza as the owner of the sim and
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Page 166 and 167: For Curiza, the hardest part of bei
Page 168 and 169: context 5 . On the other hand, this
Page 170 and 171: interviews, combined with findings
Page 172 and 173: Comparisons with game experiences a
Page 174 and 175: modification, combination and appro
Page 176 and 177: Shaggy, who recommends designers to
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Page 180 and 181: The variety of comments from the wo
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Page 184 and 185: the four Moons group, a few members
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Page 190 and 191: “reminds the sounding of the word
Page 192 and 193: Although Shaggy’s perspective abo
Page 194 and 195: For Caitlyn, the major advantage of
Page 196 and 197: PAL’s design. According to AmyLee
Page 198 and 199: shared or collaborative edited by m
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Page 202 and 203: 8. Analyzing multimodal discourse i
Page 204 and 205: these places, their elevations and
Page 206 and 207: (Rank-scale/ EXPERIENTIAL / INTERPE
Page 208 and 209: Superheroes. Caitlyn, whose needs a
Page 210 and 211: Figure 8.1. View from Metrotopia: T
Page 214 and 215: The Fight Club Dojo is designed to
Page 216 and 217: Caitlyn: [W]e wanted to advertise,
Page 218 and 219: of expression and reception of digi
Page 220 and 221: In Curiza’s comment the introduct
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Page 224 and 225: their interest in such metaphors fo
Page 226 and 227: Synthesis of the findings on experi
Page 228 and 229: Caitlyn: [L]ooking at what makes up
Page 230 and 231: Curiza: I told Xavier “Xavier I w
Page 232 and 233: 0 Figure 8.22. (left) Metrotopia Pa
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Page 236 and 237: Synthesis of the findings on interp
Page 238 and 239: Figure 8.26. (left) The draw-bridge
Page 240 and 241: Use of prims as semiotic units is m
Page 242 and 243: Modes and multimodal design element
Page 244 and 245: Xavier: It was very, EXTREMELY colo
Page 246 and 247: Texts and images are often used tog
Page 248 and 249: placement of various interactive lo
Page 250 and 251: 9. Conclusions and discussions 9.1.
Page 252 and 253: and the lack of prior experience, p
Page 254 and 255: in flux in inworld collaborative de
Page 256 and 257: potentials, and aim to reinforce th
Page 258 and 259: Although not all of the co-designer
Page 260 and 261: As mentioned in the literature surv
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Drawing on this point, I also consi
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(Kress, 2010). The analysis of the
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although he also acknowledges the r
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creative activities and reduce the
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Further directions for research The
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Bakhtin, M.M. (1986). Speech, genre
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Charmaz, K., (2002). Qualitative in
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Fischer, G. and Giaccardi, E., (200
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Halliday, M.A.K. (2007). Language a
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Jones, J.C., (2009). What is design
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Lemke, J.L. (2005). Place, pace and
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Norman, D.A. (2008). The way I see
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Reinhard, C. D., & Dervin, B. (2010
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Thackara, J. (2005). In the bubble:
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Summary in English Computer-generat
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Dansk resumé af afhandlingen Compu
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Interview Guide (Metrotopia and PAL
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Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

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