Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

As mentioned in the literature survey, research studies on user behavior in VEs often focus on
cognitive characteristics such as vividness or interactivity (Steuer 1992), and possibilities to apply
RL behavioral patterns to virtual environments (Blascovich and Bailenson 2011). However, an
equally important consideration in the study of virtual experiences is how people interpret the
semiotic resources, and how they may choose to resist the social conventions of meaning
production. In my analytical framework, SL refers to not only software for modeling threedimensional
digital objects but also a multi-user social media platform in which various design
cultures emerge, blend and interact with each other. The effects of socio-cultural influences are also
visible in the place metaphors (Prasolova-Førland 2008, Taylor 2009) and the offline everyday
cultures (Book 2004), such as comic books or other forms of fiction. On the other hand, these
influences may not always be appropriating the codes of a particular genre or style, such as
Metrotopia, but they may be used to emphasize new ways of conceptualizing these places and the
new forms of multimodal social interactions that are characteristic of SL, such as the ‘pixel
landscape’ concept of PAL.
The analysis shows that the co-designers of both Metrotopia and PAL aim at constructing
communities and social presence in their creations, as they also created inworld groups, organized
social events, and provided attractions for potential visitors. The creation of the sense of place
(Maher and Simoff 2000) depends not only on the visual organization of spatial elements, but also
on the ways in which the designed place affords meaningful social interaction, or its social
affordances (Kreijns and Kirschner 2001). Social creativity is not only about the collaboration of
the designers, but also about the possibilities for the visitors to participate in the construction of
the overall meaning of the place.
The framing of a VW as place also brings forth the phenomenological issues of space, time and
experience through individual consciousness, as a foundation to the analysis of collective practices
(i.e. Tuan 1977, Lemke2009a). The individual and social contexts of collaborative projects shape
the way ideas and discourses are materialized through the use of socially available semiotic and
material resources. The findings show that each participant contributes according to their
capacities and motivations in collaborative design activities, whether these contributions include
ideas, judgments and preconceptions, skills, resources or new content. Both individual insights and
collective processes contribute to the creative solutions (Hargadon and Becky 2006).Therefore,
including a variety of social actors in the analysis presents a multitude of perspectives on mediated
discourses and provides a mapping of potential semiotic associations with tools and their
affordances. This is where the integration of multimodal analysis with the ethnomethodological
perspectives becomes useful to understand the co-production of meaning.
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