Second Life is an Internet-based virtual world where users can interact, explore, create and trade items. Second Life has its own virtual economy and due to open intellectual property rights all user produced content is owned by them. The virtual world attracted the attention of the Harvard Business Review and Business Week in early 2010 as well as Reuters who set up a news agency to bring virtual news to real life. This exposure has not gone unnoticed by the design community with many real life companies seeking a presence within the world including Adidas, IBM, Toyota, Philips and American Apparel. This paper explores the extent of the electronic product design activity found within the virtual world of Second Life, the reasons users and companies are embracing virtual worlds and the significance that this will have for design. By taking into account the development of the World Wide Web, views of companies and individuals, conclusions have been made about the future implications that SL could have on electronic product design.
Second Life, design, electronic products
Tom PAGE, "Prospects for the Design of Electronic Products in Second Life", Studies in Informatics and Control, ISSN 1220-1766, vol. 20(3), pp. 293-303, 2011. https://doi.org/10.24846/v20i3y201110
All articles published by Studies in Informatics and Control (SIC) are published in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).