Collaborative Design in a Virtual World: Using Second Life to Re-imagine Boston City Hall Plaza

Virtual worlds provide architects and engineers with design tools for collaboration across distant locations. These developments present opportunities for non-traditional designers, such as liberal arts students and faculty, to collaborate on the design of spaces in ways not possible in the real world. Recent studies report evidence that online environments ground collaboration by re-introducing the concept of place back into virtual spaces. Other studies have attempted to prove that networked design is more than simply a technical exercise; it is a social activity. As a result, the nature of both design and design studies is shifting to more nuanced and reflective practices. Researchers and practitioners have embraced this transition to explore the endless possibilities that virtual worlds provide to collaborative design projects. This paper builds on these and other studies to provide a comparative framework for evaluating a recent collaborative design project, called Hub2, at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. In it, the author will (1) explore concepts relevant to design studies and the influence of networked technology on design practices, and (2) apply these lessons to a non-traditional collaborative design project using the virtual world Second Life. The author concludes with recommendations for future networked-design projects in higher education with a particular focus on the group formation process.