Open University

Atelier-D Project

In this case study we examine five one-hour studies of collaborative design in SecondLife, the virtual online world (www.secondlife.com). These sessions took place on five evenings between 1st and 8th July 2009. Participants were recruited during June from the Open University’s Level 2 course Design and Designing (T211). Participant numbers varied between 5 and 8 over the five sessions. The first two sessions were intended as familiarisation in the SecondLife environment (e.g. flying, communicating, teleporting), but also included some simple individual and shared design tasks. The following three sessions involved participants in increasingly complex situations for online collaborative working. Each session was guided by a design brief circulated shortly before each session began. The project has created a photo record of the outputs plus some short video sequences of group design work. At the end of the sessions participants were asked to complete a questionnaire on their experience.

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