The class is open to all UT graduate and senior undergraduate students.

Course Description

What makes good public space? What is community? How can architects, urban planners, game designers, and citizens create physical, social, economic, and institutional environments to facilitate and foster public life? These are some of the issues that we will be exploring and testing in Designing Digital Communities.

There are four objectives of this course:

1. to understand the theory and practice of designing space, place, and community;
2. to consider how these theories may or may not be relevant to the design of digital environments;
3. to investigate new ways of creating and supporting digital communities and online environments that foster public life, public participation, social interaction, debate, collaboration, dialogue, and a sense of community; and
4. to consider how virtual worlds can support and connect with physical
5. communities.

Participants are encouraged to view the course from two very different perspectives. One is to see the class as a way of using traditional physical design concepts to help design digital environments, and the other is to see the class as a way of using virtual environments to deepen our understanding about designing physical spaces. Consequently, the class is equally appropriate for gamers and game designers, as it is for traditional designers of physical spaces, such as architects, landscape architects, and urban planners.

We will be using Second Life to explore, build, and test some of these design ideas. Second Life is a 3D social gaming environment created by Linden Lab, a software company in San Francisco <www.secondlife.com>. Second Life is a commercial site, but students will be provided with complementary accounts for the duration of the class.

Prerequisites

The class is open to all UT graduates and senior undergraduates. In addition to Architecture, interested students from Liberal Arts, Fine Arts, Geography, Information Studies, Business, Communications, Computer Science, and Education are particularly welcome.

Experience with gaming or 3D software tools is NOT expected or required, but the ability and willingness to learn is. Those with experience are also very welcome.

In addition, each student will need to have, or have access to a computer (PC or Mac) with adequate memory and a broadband Internet connection to run Second Life. (Most of the machines in the School of Architecture computer lab and studios meet these requirements.)¹

Course Structure

This course will be run as a seminar. Class time will be split between discussing the readings (students will be responsible for presenting material and leading discussion) and discussing the week's experience in Second Life, as well as showing current work or issues experienced during the week.

Assignments

There will be three major assignments during the semester: an illustrated journal documenting your experience in Second Life; a design and research project that fosters public life in SL; and a final assignment summarizing and reflecting on your experience in Second Life. These should include your thoughts on what you have learned during the course as well as and offering recommendations and design guidelines for creating public space and cultivating a sense of community in an online environment.

¹ PC specifications: Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 2 (32MB RAM) or higher, or ATI Radeon 8500 (32MB RAM) or higher; Computer: 800MHZ or higher, 256MB RAM or more; OS: Windows XP/2000; Internet Connection: Broadband (DSL/Cable Modem/LAN); DirectX 8 or 9.
MAC specifications: Graphics Card: nVidia GeForce 2 (32MB RAM) or higher, or ATI Radeon 9000 (32 MB RAM) or higher; Computer: 1 GHZ G4 or better, 512 MB RAM; OS: Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) or higher; Connection: Broadband (DSL/Cable Modem/LAN).