Because three dimensional virtual spaces look similar to physical spaces that we're familiar with, it's tempting to try to apply our models of design to them. Instead, these readings provide a basis for thinking about virtual space as being a hybrid—having some characteristics of physical space, but also a set of new properties that make it something entirely new. As we start to think about designing Cross Reality applications, it is important to keep in mind the nature of virtual space that we will leverage. What can people do in virtual space that they can't in physical spaces? Does it matter how a virtual space looks? What kinds of interactions might be better in virtual space than physical space?
While in this class, we will primarily engage with virtual worlds as designers of new applications within existing worlds, these readings also demonstrate the role that the design of the world itself has on what kinds of applications are possible in a virtual world. As we look towards the future, how might we design different kinds of worlds to support different kinds of activities? The first three articles illustrate different ways in which the design of virtual spaces effect the behavior of its inhabitants in three different worlds. The final two articles abstract those lessons to make broader arguments about the properties of virtual space.
Reynolds R., 2006. Lindenomics and liability. Terra Nova. Available at: http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/01/lindenomics_and.html [Accessed July 31, 2008].
Dibbell J., 1999. My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World 1st ed., Holt Paperbacks. http://juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html
Ducheneaut N., Moore R., Nickell E. "Third Places": A Case Study of Sociability in Massively Multiplayer Games. Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work. (skim the quantitative stuff) (link)
Harry D. Algorithmic Architecture in Virtual Spaces. MS Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2008. (Chapter 2) (link, 8 MB PDF)
Research projects often have a hard time communicating broad visions for the impact of their research on future societies. Literature has historically been much more effective at working through the implications of particular technologies in the context of people’s lives. This is particularly true with respect to virtual worlds, where imagination has long outstripped our technical ability to create such spaces. In this section, we'll look at three different visions of virtuality—abstract, literal, and augmented—and discuss their impact on both modern virtual worlds and situate my approach within the range of their visions.
Vinge V. Rainbows End. 2006. (buy this one and skim the whole book)
Vinge V. True Names. 1987. true_names.rtf
Gibson, W. Neuromancer. 1984. neuromancer.pdf
Stephenson N. Snow Crash. 1992. snow_crash.rtf
Stross, C. Halting State. 2007. halting_state.pdf
There is a rich history in trying to use video and audio to bridge physical spaces. We can draw on the lessons of those experiences as we consider how to bridge the physical to the virtual and back again. These readings illustrate connected spaces in a number of different domains.
Bellotti and Sellen discuss a series of projects augmenting the EuroPARC workspace by letting users bridge offices and public spaces with glances, calls, and open connections. During this process, they identified a nice structure for thinking about the privacy implications of connected spaces that is relevant to our work.
Telemurals demonstrates how the nature of the connections between spaces can be tweaked in many interesting ways, and how those tweaks influence the resulting experience. Frank Lantz's article provides a nice overview to area/code's experiences that blur the real and the virtual through games. They are provocative examples of how the virtual need not be a three dimensional "world", but can still augment the physical in interesting ways.
Even without us building explicit interfaces to join the real and the virtual, the boundary is quite porous. Money and status have found their way through that boundary in online game worlds, and we can follow those examples to better understand how the spaces we design will influence (and be influenced by) outside factors.
V. Bellotti and A. Sellen. "Design for privacy in ubiquitous computing environments." In Proc ECSCW, pages 77-93, Milan, Italy, 1993. (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/asellen/publications/design%20for%20privacy%2093.pdf)
Karahalios K., Donath J. Telemurals: linking remote spaces with social catalysts. Proc. of CHI 2004. (http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/985692.985770)
Lantz F. Big Games and the Porous Border Between the Real and the Mediated (http://www.vodafone.com/flash/receiver/16/articles/index07.html)
Castronova E. Synthetic Worlds. University of Chicago Press. 2005. pp. 147-170. synthetic_worlds_chap_6.pdf
Also, check out iCom, a Media Lab Europe project: http://web.media.mit.edu/~federico/creativity/movies/iCom.mp4
What makes a virtual world a world? What role does its spatiality play in how we use it? In this section, we dig into some of the more theoretical questions surrounding how we make meaning out of social spaces. Metaphor plays a big role in this, because we need to have metaphors that work in the virtual world as well as the physical world. To get some traction with this, we'll look at how metaphor influences our language, particularly with respect to spatial metaphors.
One of the benefits of virtual worlds is that dissociation (as discussed in the Bellotti and Sellen article) is not as much of a problem as it often is in media spaces. This article provides one explanation for how action can serve as language when people can "see" each other in a mediated environment.
Finally, we'll look at "Beyond Being There" which challenges us to think about when mediated communication might be better than "being there". This is the central challenge to anything we do. Can we inspire someone to prefer to use a system we build over the supposed gold-standard of interaction—being face to face.
Harrison S., Dourish P. Re-place-ing space: the roles of place and space in collaborative systems. Proc. of CSCW '96. (http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/240080.240193)
Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By LakoffJohnson-Metaphors.pdf
Gergle D., Kraut R., Fussell S. Action as Language In Shared Visual Space. Proc. CSCW 2004. (http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1031607.1031687)
Norman D. Design of Everyday Things. 1988. design_of_everyday_things_chap_1.pdf
Hollan J., Stornetta S. Beyond Being There. Proc. CHI 1992. (http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/142750.142769)
Crossreality Wiki: ReadingList (last edited 2009-03-19 20:59:44 by drew)