So I'm chinging this up a little

Basically I started this blog to discuss interior design and interior design education. I would still like to incorporate some of that, but I've decided to swich the main focus for now to my thesis research and the impossible process that I'm going through regarding the program, Second Life, and research in interior design.

For those of you who aren't familiar, Second Life (SL) is a virtual world where people are represented by avatars of their design. SL can literally become your second, or first if you let it, life. It is all encompassing in every respect. You can, and probably should, have a job, own a business, get married, divorced, have a child, own property, rent property, and just about anything you can do in real life (even the "adult" stuff). It requires a high level of immersion, or feeling "into" the game or invested in it to really be a part of this highly social world. SL also has it's own cultures, and social norms which are very important. Like real life, the social norms are often difficult and sometimes painful to learn.

So when I decided to go to grad school and do a thesis as an interior design student I knew I wanted to research in retail design. Most of my interest had always been in this area, as well as my professional work experience. But when it came time to pick a topic for my thesis it was much more difficult than I thought it would be.

Picking a topic for a thesis requires lots of whittling down of a general subject to a very specific and testable question. I started out wanting to research color in the environment and either impulse purchases or how gender and color preference are related. Somehow, through many meetings with my advisor on how to accomplish these tests we came to the idea of using SL for my research.

At first we were going to build a whole retail store and essentially see what people thought of it. It would be identical to the real life (RL) store where researchers had done a study testing how people felt about that retail environment. If the results were similar in SL to RL we could figure that people perceive things in virtual worlds like SL in a similar way to RL. Well, this was very complex and if I had gone this way I probably would be in grad school working on my thesis for another million years or so.

So, finally we found a study done in the 80's evaluating consumer emotional recation to the retail environment in RL. Perfect! So now to mimic the study in SL. Another complication arose now....um...last minute....this instrument (Survey questions) are not very good. Literally, this came up right before I was about to launch my survey...sigh. So now to do a pilot study revising some of the questions to fit modern statistical analysis and methods.

Now for the fun part...We decided to make podiums that hand out information note cards (basically messages) in SL from various retail stores where the owners agreed to place my posium in their store. Again, another problem came up. After waiting a while and getting only a handful of responses, I realized people are thinking that the podiums are some sort of spam delivery system, which are similar and all too common in SL.

So my next attempt was to try posting on the SL forum. Well...all hell broke loose. Apparently people on the SL forum are inundated constantly with shoddy surveys that ask way too much personal information, and marketing companies only trying to make a profit. So, they knocked my attempt to solicit survey participants like only anonymous people on the internet can do. Well, I tried again in the education section of the forum and got zero response...so sad. So, I revised my writing and have tried one more time in the general section of the forum. While I might get some attacks from posters, I also get more participants this way than I've gotten any other way. I can take a little flack if I get what I want in the end.

So, I have about 20 survey participants that have taken it now, and am hoping for 80...ugh. Not looking forward to the drive that is left. I think for my final full survey I will be bribing SL residents with L$ (SL currency) to take the survey. I hope this will work!

Wish me luck! The results should be very interesting and have tons of implications!!!