Supersize Me. Design values in virtual worlds.

Supersize Me. A post about design creativity in virtual worlds.

It’s interesting to assess how virtual worlds are built. Taking Second Life as an example, the vast majority of the landscape has design values based on the real world.

There’s houses, with windows and roofs. There’s roads with stop signs and road markings. And importantly, designed objects are in 99% of cases scaled in accordance to the height of an avatar.

And there’s nothing wrong with this. After all, virtual worlds need to be useable and functional, so the objects within them need to be fit for purpose in terms being designed for the user. But, let’s not forget that from a design perspective, virtual worlds are blank canvasses for creativity.
In some instances, creating objects at sizes far larger than normally expected can bring advantages. These include:

• Interaction. Particularly applicable when recreated real world products, being able to examine and interact with them on a supersized scale brings consumers closer to the product
• Uniqueness. With so much of the virtual landscape in normal size, creating objects on a larger scale means they stand-out.
• Experience. There’s some great examples in Second Life and There of places containing objects at fantastically large scales. And, these places seem extremely successful at driving traffic and creating communities.
• Product placement. For the time-being at least, placing supersized real world objects into virtual worlds acts as a simple yet effective method of product placement.

Here’s some examples of supersized objects and places in Second Life and There.

Over on Dell Island there’s a giant version of the XPS 710 desktop machine. The object is fully interactive, with moving fans and the ability to explore how the machine has been built.

Is this interesting?

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