Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

see, and work asynchronously on different parts of the design. In both Metrotopia and PAL
projects, the co-designers used separate locations for design and experimentation, mainly for the
purpose of being alone and uninterrupted by random visitors, as well as fellow builders. In the
Workshop project, the Metrotopia Sandbox was a location for collaborative design, although the
limited space of the sandbox presented various problems. In terms of the experiential perspective,
these can refer to both the spaciousness of SL, as it constructs a relative field for interaction, and
the place-ness of SL, as it develops a sense of place through use and appropriation.
In all three cases, several participants met in both physical and virtual places for different purposes
during the process. In Metrotopia, the physical meetings were used for concept generation and
project development, which included tasks such as map-making. The entire PAL team has never
met in person, and all of their collective decision-making processes are organized in SL. On the
other hand, physical presence was a commonly used method for the workshop students, who used
their avatars mostly to collect resources and generate objects in the sandbox. Therefore, my
analysis focused on the physical locations in which participants meet and work together in person,
the inworld locations where avatars meet, as well as certain sites on the Internet.
It is also important to note that these design teams generate their multimodal discourses by resemiotizing
and appropriating the socially available semiotic resources. The prim system, which
provides the basic building blocks for producing virtual objects in SL, represents a specific set of
tools and interfaces such as the object-texture-script model. The co-designers used these tools and
interfaces for their own communicative purposes, often transforming the intended functionalities
into new meaning and action potentials. The co-designers often used of various other tools and
resources in cases where SL could not accommodate their choices or in cases where they have prior
experience and better skills with another content generation tool. Although some digital formats
can be imported to SL, not every kind of data is allowed in. Drawing on this observation, it is
possible to relate the use of these other graphic design and 3D modeling software as semiotic
resources for the nexus of collaborative design practices. The ways in which semiotic and material
resources are collected and used (or not used) can become a design strategy that affects the
contents, forms and methods of designing.
The collaborative practices in and with Second Life
For the social semiotic analysis, the collaborative aspect of design activities in three case studies
illustrate how discourses on design and representation are negotiated, evolved and often
transformed to new meaning potentials through time and collaborative action. Rhetorical
intentions of the social actors diverge, and formations of social groups, or design teams, are often
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