VIRTUAL WORLDS
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With Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVE s), such as Second Life (SL), individuals are provided with more comprehensive means of experiencing the online space.
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These virtual worlds provide online 3D spaces for visitors to explore, play and create in collaboratively generated virtual environments.
VIRTUAL WORLDS
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Most visitors’ interest in experiencing the physically unachieveable activities, artifacts, skills and relations provide designers with a vast market of unsatisfied needs, and possible innovative solutions for the virtual environment.
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Several large global companies, such as IBM, Nike, Cisco, and Wal-Mart have already launched their virtual branches (Hof, 2006; Kremen, 2007) and working on ideas on how to develop new methods for their operations in management, marketing, and design.
VIRTUAL WORLDS
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Designers in Second Life capture the demands of their (virtual) customers, introduce new fields of commerce, and offer personalized (or mass produced) artifacts to avatars who are willing to spend money on their SL looks and their virtual identities.
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As they offer new platforms for social interaction, participation and user-driven innovation, virtual worlds require an emerging field for both design and communication studies
WHAT IS METROTOPIA?
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Metrotopia is a virtual city, designed and built in Second Life for a series of experiments and observations on digital communication, social interaction, design and entertainment in virtual worlds.
WHAT IS METROTOPIA?
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Concept of a virtual city in which avatars can identify themselves with virtual superheroes and villains is intended to imply a sense of community between visitors.
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Visitors’ sense of belonging was supported by providing them with a pre-defined set of costumes and accessories that represent the style of comic books and sci-fi environments.
THE DESIGN PROCESS
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The (ongoing) design and construction of Metrotopia has been conducted by a multidisciplinary team involving freelance and in-house designers as well as researchers and consultants.
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During the design process, several meetings, both inworld and in RL, were done in Roskilde University and/or in Metrotopia. In these meetings, – –
the general visual style of the city landscape, accessibility of specific locations and their contents were discussed. the design team had opportunities to try different design possibilities and evaluate them in real time inside Metrotopia.
THE DESIGN PROCESS
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Functions of specific objects and their places were discussed and decided by the design team.
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Designers specified the location in the city, the dimensions and the visual characteristics of the designed objects/buildings (geographic position, its relation to neighboring objects, usability and attractiveness, i.e.).
THE DESIGN PROCESS
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After collaboratively transforming these decisions to ‘design briefs’, several virtual mock-ups and alternative design solutions were generated, evaluated and modified.
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3D modeling and texturing of these buildings were also done collaboratively, and by the help of various internet material libraries and CG websites.
THE DESIGN PROCESS
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Minor modifications were also done during the placement of the object, since its overall consistency with its surroundings is important.
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The major concern at this stage was designing a skyline view of the city that is modern, clear, appealing to the visitors and consistent with the context of a Superhero/heroine city.
MAJOR SIGHTS FOR INTERACTION
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Although Metrotopia itself is considered as an interactive virtual environment, some regions of the city are designed purposefully to enhance the social interaction, as well as interaction with the system, in various ways and aspects. These locations are: – – – – – –
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Costume Bazaar (and welcoming area) Museum Metrotopia Park/Sandbox Gym Fight Club Metrotopıa Library (In progress)
All of these places relate to a set of specific activities that the participants of the experiment are intended to experience in Second Life, such as character building, learning, design and social interaction.
ORIENTATION / TELEPORTATION IN METROTOPIA
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These posters were placed to the entrance of the city, right after welcoming arch and the costume bazaar, easing the first-time visitor experience and strengthening the links to the visual language of the genre.
ORIENTATION / TELEPORTATION IN METROTOPIA
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The general complexity of the design was considered not only as a problem of how the content was selected and presented, but also by the ways to travel and explore the virtual place provided for the visitors.
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It is intended to enable participants to get familiar with the locations and their contents, so that Metrotopia is visited more frequently and with more users than merely the participants during the experiment.
THE METROTOPIA LOGO
“The logo was designed because we want to have a specific visual representation for the island for branding purposes. We want to actually create a presence in Second Life so we have a branding. And we’ll find this branding occurring all over the city ...” CarrieLynn Reinhard (Researcher, Virtual Worlds Research Group)
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Reflecting the visual language of comic books and the superhero genre was the primary aim, along with coming up with a striking, distinguishable and easily remembered logo that can be used with the other posters and graphics inside the city.
WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED FROM THE DESIGN PROCESS
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Further research and analysis will focus on these three characterizing issues of design processes in virtual worlds: –
Collaborative Design: Investigates how affordances of Second Lıfe’s design and communication tools facilitate collaboration in design process.
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Design for Interaction: Users can have direct, immidiate and interactive access to the designed product/space. It is not only the interaction between avatars and other avatars, and avatars and the SL system, but interaction between avatars and the virtual objects/spaces they use for social interaction.
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Design by walking around: Unlike conventional 3D modeling applications, the creator of virtual object positions herself inside the virtual environment, so the scale of the creation always keeps its relative proportion to the ‘designer-avatar’. Through the design process, the avatar of the designer walks and flies around the object to position his/her view. This new paradigm of ‘designing by walking/flying around’ is significant not only because it offers a new spatial perception for designers towards the objects of their design practice.
USER –DRIVEN INNOVATION
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This study considers movement and change as central elements of innovation; thus conceptualizes ‘innovation’ through ‘innovative practices’.
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The practice of ‘user–driven innovation’ is strongly related with how user experience is created and/or constituted through interaction with, by or through virtual objects.
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The study categorizes the three levels of object–oriented–interaction (either between avatars through objects, or between avatars and objects) as: – ‘sense–making through designed object’ – ‘sense–making through design (practice)’
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There are elements, tools and places in virtual worlds that involve the study of both kinds of interaction.
VIRTUAL WORLDS
CRITICAL QUESTIONS
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What can virtual worlds offer in terms of design methodology, market research, usability, authenticity and user-innovation?
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How does individual entrepreneurship and user-driven innovation possibilities drive the market by answering to existing needs and offering new solutions with new technologies?
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How do user-product interaction and users’ emotional experiences with the artifacts function in Second Life’s social structure?
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Should we categorize Second Life’s designed artifacts as contemporary objects of product design and architecture, or interaction and graphic design? Or both?
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What can be the new tools & criterias for effective design processes in Virtual Worlds?
FURTHER RESEARCH & EDUCATION
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Virtual Worlds Research Group’s studies on communication, media reception, social interaction, design and user-driven innovation are continuously conducted in Metrotopia.
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Course on “Communication and Design in Virtual Worlds” is organized between 31 Aug. – 18 Sep. 2009 by 15 international communication students.
FURTHER RESEARCH & EDUCATION
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Design of Metrotopia Library ( in progress )
ates@ruc.dk http://www.agursimsek.blogspot.com
Virtual Worlds Research Group Blog http://worlds.ruc.dk