Multimodal Collaborative Design in an Immersive Virtual Environment: Opera Staging and Performance Design Using iModel

The focus of this chapter is multimodal and collaborative design in immersive virtual environments (IVEs). The research reported in this chapter aims to identify and examine barriers to effective collaborative design in IVEs and to demonstrate how these may be overcome. The chapter uses a two-stage method to address the aim, the first is a literature review, and the second is a descriptive case study. For the first stage, the chapter presents a background to recent research about multimodality and participatory or collaborative design in IVEs. It analyses the types of interaction identified in past research, along with technical and social barriers to the effectiveness of IVEs. In the second stage, the chapter introduces a specific case that addresses many of these barriers. That case is iModel, a technologically enabled, multimodal design system that engages diverse expert users in creating an operatic design. Its collaborative IVE supports staging and performance design, including placement and dynamic coordination of stage machinery and sets within 3D modelled spaces, alongside choreography of lighting, props, and actor movement timed to the musical score. Through its implementation in major productions and use of immersive simulations of existing performance venues, the case study demonstrates that an IVE can assist expert teams in an operatic design process. This chapter contributes to the development of new knowledge about barriers to effective design team collaboration in IVEs, and potential ways of overcoming them.