collaborative group building - suggestions?

Hi there, I'm researching collaborative building in Second Life. I'm interested in questions like:

* what proportion of residents engage in group building? ie, how important is it in SL?
* do groups build synch or asynch (users work simultaneously or not)
* useful techniques for eg referencing objects, sharing point-of-view
* do groups make 2d plan drawings first?
* how well does SL user-interface support multi-user build and edit
* any particular problems / suggestions re the UI?
* is collaborative building possible without voice?
* does group size matter?

I'd be interested to hear any experiences you've had editing content in a group (two or more people) - the above questions are indicative only. Later I will run lab trials to test some ideas. Will post about these later in case you want to participate. Thanks in advance, -gw

http://disweb.dis.unimelb.edu.au/staff/gwadley

I'm just involved my with my first 'group' build, that's two of us. I supply one part of the build and the partner supplies the second half. The collaboration came about because I liked the objects and style of the build the other person was working on, I had an idea how to incorporate them into a new build. The only agreement had to be on how many items I needed, the maximum number of prims they could use, the rest, their artistic license was left to them.

I am currently doing collaborative building with partners in SL and we don't use voice. Basicly, my clients request special historical builds and we do research on those real world builds from photos. Some of the partners can specialize only on the prim build itself and from there another partner takes over the texturing part, and from there interior designers can take care of that part. For people who are just learning to build its quite impressive. They work under an experienced builder just as an apprentice and/or work experience students seeking to upgrade their skills in 3d content creation for the web.

SL's tools to support "collaborative building" are very poor, at best.

* what proportion of residents engage in group building? ie, how important is it in SL?
There are quite a few "Building Teams", where multiple people tackle large-scale projects like whole-sim or multi-sim builds. But in most cases, to my knowledge, each takes a specific area and works it to completion. For example, one person may build the docks and marina, a second may make beach houses, and a third may make a lighthouse. I've seen fairly few efforts where multiple people made parts of the same linkset or building, simply because you can't link prims owned by different individuals. Team efforts where one person does research and plans, another does primwork, and another makes textures as needed would be more common.

* do groups build synch or asynch (users work simultaneously or not)
Asynch, in my experience.

* useful techniques for eg referencing objects, sharing point-of-view
Shared design sessions are useful, where the team agrees on things like scale, color palettes, texture sets, and the like. It works relatively well to have one person building prims while one or more others make textures.

* do groups make 2d plan drawings first?
Some do, some don't. Depends a lot on the nature of the project and the skills of the builder.

* how well does SL user-interface support multi-user build and edit
Extremely poorly. For example, I can build a house, and can give you edit rights on the prims that I place in-world. But if you drag copy a floor that I made, to use on the level above, it's MY prims that you move, and a set owned by YOU are left in their place! To link things up later, all the prims that will be in one linkset need to be sold to one of the Builders. There is no easy way to identify which prims are owned by which builder, or to transfer ownership en-masse from one person to another.

* any particular problems / suggestions re the UI?
Better permissions systems. Add the ability to allow for prims that are all SET to a specific group (and which have some new "group build" permission flag set) to be treated as having the same owner, for the purpose of linking, with actual ownership of the resulting linkset defaulting to who owns the root prim.

* is collaborative building possible without voice?
Absolutely! I never use Voice. I much prefer having a text transcript of all discussions with the client and between Builders.

* does group size matter?
Bigger is harder to coordinate. Small teams work best.

I have several individuals who assist me with building. In most cases, what they do is place modules of content in-world that I initially build and design. For example, I will build a road segment, in several needed variations, and give them full-perm copies. Or I will provide them with transferrable purchased content, like plants and trees. They then place these in-world, per my directions. Afterwards, I fine-tune positions of the linksets, do manual adjustments as needed, and then either buy the content from them, or drag-copy and delete their originally placed prims, leaving my copies in place.

Thanks guys - that's pretty valuable feedback.

It's interesting to see how people are handling collaboration and problems such as permissions.

I'm particularly interested in synchronous (online together) collaboration. We're studying this at PARC and I've posted an offer to participate in our research, at /327/ac/276341/1.html

... if you or a friend are in the area, please consider! -gw

Hi guys, I blogged the results of this study at http://blogs.parc.com/playon/archives/2008/09/collaborative_b.html

We thought these were the most interesting issues that arose. I'd be interested in your comments.

1. In SL, your camera position is your viewpoint and focus of activity, and it's independent of your avatar position. Camera location is private to you, avatar location is what others see. Does the movable camera change the virtual-world experience, such as reducing the importance of avatars and their locations? Do you use the movable camera differently in different situations, eg building and chatting?

2. Do you refer to objects and places using spatial deixis relative to other avatars? (eg "the object in front of you" Do people do it to you? Does this work if your camera is away-from-avatar, ie are you able to figure out what object they are referring to? Is this a problem often?

3. When you collaborate with other builders, do you work together in-world, or do you divide builds into sub-assemblies and complete them asynchronously?

Interested in your thoughts! cheers, -gw

Hi Grog! Unlike most surveys/studies, this one seems like it could be really useful for VW companies.

Before giving you feedback, let me second something Ceera said: in SL, a better permissions system would make group building SO much easier! "Better" for me includes things like: visible persmissions for every component in a build, by list, not by selecting and examining every prim; ability to link objects from multiple owners; ability to lift locks by group, not just individuals.

Context: I have made non-commercial builds with one or two other people, max.
If the build is not large, I will generally ignore my avatar, leaving her sitting or hovering somewhere out of the way. However, if the build is largish, the avatars must sometimes move due to see smaller objects, due to Level-of-Detail requirements. I must confess that my avatar is lazy; she moves as little as possible while shopping, chatting, and even sightseeing. Perhaps this habit was formed while building ... in any case, my camera moves a lot in all circumstances, my feet seldom.We do use relative-to-avatar position descriptions, but they are often problematic. The "Camcaster", used to share a single avatar's camera viewpoint among multiple avatars, can mitigate this issue. When things get very dicey, with different computers seemingly 'seeing' different things, we must exchange screenshots.We generally work together, not separately. But, I've built for pleasure only, not commercially. Even so, in order to be more productive, we will often divide the work up into either texturing vs. building on the same build, or subassemblies that we work on separately, calling each other over for consultation when stuck. We use voice often, for us it speeds up the work considerably.

One other thing: if I were building commercially, I would do three things:

1. I would ensure that every prim I created had a little script in it that would allow me to download other scripts to it, so that I could make mass modifications via script. Obviously this would be removed before distributing a build.
2. I would attempt to use a naming convention such that I could easily find/distinguish prims from different linksets. This may be too hard, tho!
3. I would use a rezzable texture organizer system, so that we all could have quick access to our texture library, and to the subset in use for the build.
.

I find that easy access to an in world "arrow" pointer tool helps me dialog with other builders.
Multiple arrows can be used to indicate specific objects you wish to be (un)joined or deleted or textured the same. You could also set glow on those objects to highlight them.

A hemi-circle arrow can easily illustrate a desired direction of rotation also.

Having separate COLORS for different person's prims can facilitate matters greatly. Postpone all texturing untill AFTER the build

The thread title made me think it was regarding the facility of similtaneous editing of a single prim kind of collaborative building. This notion has intregued me quite a bit, but I've seen little interest in it from others. Anyone wanting to do so could contact me in world stating as much.

That's what we intended with this study - to see how people collaborate together (synchronously, in real time) around collections of just a few prims. But even with a fairly simple building task, it was striking how many groups began by immediately dividing the build into sub-assemblies. In our case participants were building a house, and 3/4 of the groups said something like "you do the walls, I'll do the roof". So we concluded that decomposing builds and working on the sub-assemblies asynchronously is seen by users, especially experienced ones, as being more efficient than closely-coupled collaboration.

In some previous research in VR environments the participants were "forced" to work together, for example by implementing physics so that some users would have to hold prims in place while another user fastened them together. Another technique in previous research was to show the "after" photo only to a group leader who wasn't able to use the edit tools and had to direct the other team members verbally. We did this too, to force more collaboration during the build. So again, the fact that researchers have to "force" close collaboration indicates that it isn't efficient or desired in virtual worlds.

1. In SL, your camera position is your viewpoint and focus of activity, and it's independent of your avatar position. Camera location is private to you, avatar location is what others see. Does the movable camera change the virtual-world experience, such as reducing the importance of avatars and their locations? Do you use the movable camera differently in different situations, eg building and chatting?

When I build be it a large skypod or an small 'art' piece, I just have to keep walking around the objects, I need to visualize the spatial area it is in, how it looks from most angles, how the textures work on all sides; does repeat on corners and from prim to prim align, how does Linden lighting look on each side, checking to make sure that prims are aligned, however I also spend as much time doing these things with the camera too, I'm probably just very anal about how my final product looks.

2. Do you refer to objects and places using spatial deixis relative to other avatars? (eg "the object in front of you" Do people do it to you? Does this work if your camera is away-from-avatar, ie are you able to figure out what object they are referring to? Is this a problem often?

I do yes, this happens more often with my partner though, so generally I now know 'where' they mean. This happened last night Av1: "I like the red roof tiles", Av2: "where are the red roof tiles, by the entrance?", Av1: "Behind you, yes".

3. When you collaborate with other builders, do you work together in-world, or do you divide builds into sub-assemblies and complete them asynchronously?

Sub-assemblies. However my partner has created objects she as then given to me to amend for the final build.

There is a art group in SL called Collaboration, you can search for it yourself, or I can pass info on to you if you like, which sets a theme, artists/creators work on that theme to construct a final 'product', however to date all I have seen is that it is done as sub-assemblies.

I am also studying collaborative building in SL.


We should chat!