Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

artifacts. In other words, the co-designers of places shaped the places that they design in certain
ways that their imagined users, or visitors, would experience. The experienced designers often
watch and learn from the reactions of the visitors, and develop new strategies to communicate the
affordances better. On the other hand, some designers were more interested in experimenting with
the affordances and test the boundaries of limitations.
As demonstrated by Xavier’s comments, who is a professional Danish architect working in both VW
and RL, SL may present particularly convenient affordances to resist norms and conventions in the
so-called RL for design, and expand the boundaries of their imaginations. Several factors –
including lack of gravity and other physical constraints on bodies and the prim system that allows
complex forms to be comprised of geometric units – contribute to the visual representation of the
notion of virtuality. On the other hand, in both Metrotopia and PAL cases, co-designers also refer
to the use of particular signs of realism mainly to accommodate the experiential and interpersonal
meta-functions, such as the urban landscape of Metrotopia with streets and high-rise buildings
(Caitlyn) or the use of ‘natural’ colors on cubes that form PAL’s ground plane (Curiza). The
analysis of such metaphorical systems invites a socio-semiotic reconsideration of how designers
conceptualize the interpersonal effects of modality in virtual places.
The final designs emphasized certain ideas, notions or concepts that the co-designers generate
during the process, either individually or by collective effort. The focus of analysis here was the
ways in which semiotic meaning potentials were co-produced by the co-designers, and the
motivations of the co-designers which made them to collaboratively give shape to SL’s places and
artifacts. The analysis of data from the three cases points to the relations between semiotic metafunctions
and design features: Experiential meta-functions correspond to the features of movement
and functionality, interpersonal meta-functions correspond to the features of visual language and
representation of social presence, and the textual meta-functions correspond to the features of
structure, organization and multimodal orchestration.
9.2. Implications for theory, methodology and practice
The findings point towards a complex nexus in co-production practices, and a semiotic flux in the
social negotiations of meta-functions, as well as identities, places, tools, affordances and methods,
which are also co-produced along the process. People with different backgrounds, skills, interests
and purposes get together through complex mediated relations; configure design teams according
to their interests and competences to design multimodal virtual places and artifacts. The three
cases show that the social and material environments in which the design activities take place affect
designers’ decisions; thus, contribute to the meaning potentials of the final products.
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