DESIGN IN A VIRTUAL INNOVATION ECOLOGY: A Cybernetic Systems Approach to Knowledge Creation and Design Collaboration in Second Life by Peter Bryan Rive A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Design Victoria University of Wellington 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES.................................................................................................. viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS....................................................................................... ix ABSTRACT................................................................................................................ 1 GLOSSARY................................................................................................................ 2 CHAPTER 1................................................................................................................ 4 INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................... 4 Background................................................................................................................. 4 The objective of the study........................................................................................... 4 Research questions...................................................................................................... 5 The problem................................................................................................................. 5 The importance of design innovation.......................................................................... 9 Research design......................................................................................................... 13 The limitations of the research design....................................................................... 18 Recent historical examples of virtual world design .................................................. 20 The growth of virtual worlds..................................................................................... 22 The DNA of SL......................................................................................................... 24 Introduction to SL...................................................................................................... 25 Ethics......................................................................................................................... 27 Current gaps in the literature..................................................................................... 27 Second order cybernetics in SL................................................................................. 28 Chapter summaries.................................................................................................... 29 CHAPTER 2.............................................................................................................. 32 LITERATURE REVIEW.......................................................................................... 32 Introduction............................................................................................................... 32 Design innovation...................................................................................................... 33 Design defined........................................................................................................... 36 Innovation defined..................................................................................................... 36 Vision and creativity in design innovation................................................................ 38 Simulation and design innovation............................................................................. 40 Trends in design innovation...................................................................................... 41 The cybernetic context of a virtual innovation ecology ............................................44 Second-order cybernetics and a virtual innovation ecology .....................................45 Co-design and second-order cybernetic KM............................................................ 49 Second-order cybernetics and the intellectual DNA of SL ....................................... 51 Cyberspace and the background to SL...................................................................... 53 Futurism, knowledge creation and imagination ........................................................ 55 Knowledge creation and imagined worlds................................................................ 58 Lessig’s cybernetic knowledge regulation................................................................ 61 Enabling knowledge creation.................................................................................... 65 Motivating knowledge creation................................................................................. 69 The evolution of a new cybernetic model ................................................................. 71 Findings..................................................................................................................... 72 CHAPTER 3.............................................................................................................. 74 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK............................................................................ 74 Introduction............................................................................................................... 74 Design theory............................................................................................................ 76 Theoretical proposition.............................................................................................. 78 The spectrum of fidelity............................................................................................ 81 Face-to-face fidelity.................................................................................................. 84 Biological models of innovation............................................................................... 84 The biological metaphor of indosymbiosis............................................................... 86 Symbiotic epistemology............................................................................................ 88 3 iii Indosymbiosis............................................................................................................ 90 The cybernetic regulators of indosymbiosis.............................................................. 93 Indosymbiosis – the evolutionary life cycle of an inogism....................................... 95 Table 1 – The life cycle of a design innovation organism, an inogism ..................... 96 Example of indosymbiotic regulation..................................................................... 101 Summary................................................................................................................. 103 CHAPTER 4............................................................................................................ 105 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY................................................... 105 Introduction............................................................................................................. 105 Benefits of an ethnographic case study................................................................... 107 Mediated cyber-ethnography.................................................................................. 112 Components of research design............................................................................... 115 The proposition........................................................................................................ 115 Instrumental case study – the unit of analysis......................................................... 115 Logic of data and proposition linkage..................................................................... 117 Design 2029: The research path.............................................................................. 121 Machinima Design Research................................................................................... 121 Machinima Design Research – summary results.................................................... 127 ‘Design Led Futures’............................................................................................... 128 Design Led Futures results...................................................................................... 132 Initial conclusions from Design Led Futures research............................................ 136 Further research....................................................................................................... 136 The methodology of Design 2029........................................................................... 137 Research data collection.......................................................................................... 138 Quality assurance..................................................................................................... 139 CHAPTER 5............................................................................................................ 140 THE CASE STUDIES............................................................................................. 140 4 iv Case study introduction........................................................................................... 140 An overview