Ethnography Results: Week 3

(02/21/11)
Goal:

For this week, per instruction by Dr. Hammond, each team member had to write his own blog entry on his/her own research. In my case, I decided to visit more communities, and tried to interact with people. I wanted to find communities that had large gatherings, but as I will explain later on, I believe finding these large communities depends highly on the time of day you play second life. 

Methods of Study:

• Teleport to different locations - college campuses, libraries, coffee shops, clubs, beaches etc.
• Observe people and their actions.
• Try to initiate conversation with people and judge their tone.
• Notice what music and visuals are playing at different places and what relation it has with the environment of that particular place.

Locations and Communities:

Last week, I was playing second life with my team member Jaideep, but this week I played second life alone. Since Dr. Hammond had asked me if there were any classes held on the Texas A&M second life campus, I decided to go back to Texas A&M and tried to see if any classes were held. I went at night, so there were not any classes, however I was able to take screen-shots of announcement boards.

Screenshot-Texas A&M bulletin board:

As can be seen by the boards, not a lot seems to be happening on the second life campus. I was able to go to the classes, but did not see any meeting times scheduled. From there, I decided to go to Tom Bukowski's house (A.K.A. Tom Boellstorff). Mr. Boellstorff has done some research on second life, and I was curious to know if he was at the home he set up on purpose to conduct interviews, and studies. The name of the location where he "lives" is called Ethnographia.

Screenshot - Ethnographia:



Since I did not find anyone at home, I decided to fly around the house to look at the scenery. Lo and behold, I discovered the FCA(first church of atheism) building. Having heard a bit about this community from the CHI classmate doing research on the reddit community, I decided to check it out. As soon as you land near the building, you get greeted with a card that was interesting to read. I plan to bring bring the things I read to class. No one was there though, but I wonder if, and when they actually meet.

Screenshot - FCA(first church of atheism) :

Afterwards, I thought I'd try coffee shops like Starbucks and Starstruck but did not find people. I did notice how one Starbucks coffee shop was very different from another. The music also would be different.
I then went to a place where new second life users go. There I met a new user who I interacted with. She was new to second life, and told me she had joined because of her friend. An interesting thing I noticed, is that when both of us would start typing to each other, the other would stop typing. The same thing happens in the real world when someone tries to talk at the same time as someone else, but then you stop to let the other person talk first.   

Screenshot - Starbucks and Starstruck

A bit of my conversation with the new second life user can be found below. I changed his/her name for privacy.

[21:56] Kat : Hi. I am new too..
[21:56] me: that's cool:) I'm really overwhelmed by all there is to learn about
[21:57] Kat: very overwhelming.. haven't seen anyone.. you're the first i've seen here.
[21:58] Kat:I need to read on more about it.. don't know what to do
[21:59] me:I have another friend who recently joined also so I may ask him to give me crash course... so anyways is there a reason for joining second life?
[22:00] Kat: friend told me about it. he suggested I would li9ke it.. here i am .. clueless :)
[22:02] me: I actually joined SL as part of a class project- I basically have a few weeks to write a report on my findings about SL
[22:05] Kat: That's cool. I hope to get better with the game. It's after 12 now, hope to see you again. It was nice talking to you.
[22:06] me: Cool - nice talking to you- If you want feel free to add me as a friend- I'll try to go to more places in the coming weeks.
[22:07] Kat:Ok, Thanks a lot.. Tell me how it goes.
[22:07] me: CIAO!
[22:07] Kat: C-ya!

Experience:

The overall experience was good, but I wish I had met more people. The chief reason for that is that I was playing second life at night. Jaideep plans to play second life during the day, so most likely more users will be online, and he'll be able to interact with more people. For next week, I plan to also log onto second life during the day.