Web Engineering at the Frontier of the Web 2.0: Design Patterns for Online 3D Shared Spaces

Online 3D Shared Spaces (3DSSs) can be regarded as a frontier of the Web 2.0, where users as participants contribute to create a meaningful, engaging experience. Like other complex web applications, the development and evolution of high-quality 3DSS applications requires methodological support—through models, methods, and principles. Yet, the application of structured, engineered approaches to this domain is largely unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to bridging Web Engineering to the 3DSS world by means of design patterns. We present five patterns that focus on two factors deemed necessary for effective experiences in a 3DSS: Presence (i.e. the feeling of “being there”, typical of “virtual worlds”) and Long-Term Engagement (typical of successful Web 2.0 communities). The patterns presented in the paper distil our large-scale experiences with 3DSSs (that have involved so far over 9,000 youngsters from 3 continents) and are discussed in the light of existing literature.