BUILDING AN APPROACH TO WORK TOGETHER IN SECOND LIFE Cintia Ramalho Caetano da Silva Fluminense Federal University Niterói, RJ, BRA +55 21 2621-5861 ccaetano@ic.uff.br Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia Fluminense Federal University Niterói, RJ, BRA +55 21 2621-5861 bicharra@ic.uff.br ABSTRACT Computer Supported Cooperative Work or, CSCW, is an area that aims to understand how technology works in the performance of work and tasks together, covering the computational support of activities involving more than one person [1]. Studies and experiments in Second Life helped confirm the need for an approach that facilitates collaborative work. This article describes the activities carried out by a group of students to develop a minimum set of tools to improve collaboration in meetings of acquiring knowledge and decision making. Will be presented in this article the activities carried out, the challenges encountered, challenges and results. The project of creation of this new approach of collaborative work, covered the activities of software development life cycle such as requirements analysis, specification (use cases, GOMS, storyboards), implementation, execution, testing and evaluation. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5 [Information Interfaces and Presentation (e.g., HCI)]: H5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces – collaborative computing, computer-supported cooperative work, synchronous interaction. General Terms Design, Experimentation and Human Factors. Keywords CSCW, collaborative work, collaborative approach, software development life cycle 1. INTRODUCTION A Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) is an interaction space that supports the construction, integration and exchange of information of participants in order to interact for task completion, achieving goals, knowledge building, social networking, and other interactions. The abundant amount of data and the granularity of the interactions of collaborative environments have stimulated numerous investigations into forms of cooperation and collaboration in these environments. Sparking the interest of the community CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work), due to the richness and variety of interaction and immersion, is the name of the area of research that studies the use of computer and communication technologies to support activities of groups and organizations [2]. Within this universe we highlight the Second Life (www.secondlife.com), a 3D virtual environment, the world's most popular, where players develop strong social bonds interacting with objects, forming groups and participating in activities of significant value [3][4][5]. The affordances of 3D environments facilitate communication, emotional and also social interaction among participants [6]. Second Life is an environment rich with opportunities for interaction that gives the participant a sense of presence very strong, but still has major limitations in the process of interaction with others and the world. After numerous studies and experiments with the environment, the team noted the need to develop an approach that facilitate collaborative work, in other words, a minimum set of tools to improve collaboration in meetings of acquiring knowledge and decision making. This paper describes the experience of developing a collaborative project within Second Life. The project of creation of this approach for collaborative work covered the activities of software development life cycle such as requirements analysis, specification (use cases, GOMS, Storyboards), implementation, execution, testing and evaluation. All activities were held inside Second Life. It was not necessary to use external tools. 2. RELATED WORK Numerous studies in the field of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) have reported the use of 3D virtual environments like Second Life, to conduct collaborative work and the behaviors that involve this process. “Traditional” criteria of analysis for CSCW tools have been applied to Second Life and it can be concluded that Second Life is a good tool for collaborative work, especially in remote support of synchronous collaboration (at the same time), providing an experience almost co-located (face-to-face) [5]. Groups can work together effectively in Second Life, but it is necessary to coordinate the process of collaboration. For this the authors developed a proposal to support the management of collaborative activities called SLMeeting [7]. SLMeeting Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Copyright is held by the author(s), 2010. MexIHC 2010, November 8, 9 & 10, 2010. Published by Universidad Politécnica de San Luis Potosí