Challis Hodge’s UXblog

The International Journal of Design Computing Special Issue on Designing Virtual Worlds is now online.

This issue is available only online for the next few months, and then will also be available on CD. The online version will continue to be available, and you can order the CD version from the journal web site.

The International Journal of Design Computing is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, published on the World Wide Web and archived by the University of Sydney Library. The objective of the journal is to promote research and technology transfer in design computing through the publication of interactive, multimedia journal articles within the general topic of design computing. This special issue looks more specifically at the issues in designing and developing virtual worlds and how researchers and practitioners are addressing these issues with the technology available in 2002. The articles in the Speical Issue consider the following topics:

1. how people make sense of spatiality in 3D virtual worlds,
2. how 3D virtual worlds provide a new way of understanding architecture and archaelogical restoration,
3. new paradigms for designing virtual worlds such as a user-centric dynamic representation of place,
4. how to make virtual cities dynamic through the use of automatically generated VRML files,
5. how user interfaces for virtual environments can evolve and respond dynamically to the user,
6. how people are able to understand and navigate using current tools for 3D virtual worlds, and
7. how games engines are influencing and providing a basis for understanding architectural designs.