Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

avatars and presence, spatiality, interactivity, chronotopes, heterochrony) as resources for
meaning-making. Drawing on the multimodal approach to architecture, I appropriate the systemic
functional framework of social semiotics to the context of virtual places and artifacts. Therefore, I
am focusing on experiential, interpersonal and textual meta-functions (O’Toole 1994, 2004) and
how they represent, orient and organize multimodal resources in design of places and artifacts.
Locations of artifacts in virtual space, their positions towards each other and the avatars, or the
social affordances of tools for facilitating interaction among designers are among the foci of the
multimodal framing of co-production in VWs. In terms of the analysis, my emphasis is particularly
on two interrelated aspects of the theory: (1) multimodal analysis, which foregrounds the meaning
potentials and interrelations of modes in construction of sign-systems, and (2) MDA, from which I
borrow the ‘nexus of practices’ perspective to analyze the interactions between social actors, places
and tools. Finally, I refer to the poststructuralist and socio-cultural critiques on the shortcomings
of multimodal analysis, and how these niches can be solved with methodological reconsiderations.
Following this logic, I will further elaborate on my use of the nexus of practices perspective and the
general MDA approach in the Analytical Framework chapter in order to support my analysis with
observational and participatory ethnographic data in the three case studies. The following chapter
will continue elaborating on the theoretical framework by presenting three relevant discussions
from design research field: (1) the definitions of design, (2) affordances and constraints as modes
of design communication, and (3) collaboration and co-production in design practices, in relation
to virtual places and artifacts.
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