I poked at the Sacred Cow of the interface design for the Second Life client but the following sums up the whole discussion far more clearly. (A picture is worth a 1,000 words, a world a billion of them).
The sum of the argument: sometimes you need an interface to be very simple and accomplish key tasks. And sometimes you WANT an interface to be a whole lot more. Neither is right or wrong, maybe, and in fact by adding features you can forget your core objective and need a manual to use it, but you can also elevate the mundane to art. 
(The choice of interface in the above photos is not a commentary on the state of Second Life, a metaphor, or a product endorsement, it’s simply something by way of making a point.)
Can’t remember where I got the images – if they’re yours, let me credit you please or come after me with a team of lawyers.
The interface should not crash twice in 5 minutes. It especially should not crash twice in 5 minutes after teleporting into a bug fix triage session related to the multi-crashing interface. Worse yet, after mentioning this in open chat, none of the 7-10 present Lindens expressed any sorrow/regret over their product performing poorly.
Yeah – see, there’s the interface discussion and then there’s the plumbing. And it doesn’t matter how you handle the interface, if the pipes are backed up you’ve got yourself one stinky mess.
So i look at those images and it makes me ask why would you want to do all that while sitting on a toilet (doing a doo-doo)?
I see it’s a good metaphor for the complexity of interface but isn’t it a better one for the current state of SL and beyond? I hear about all the plans and ambitions people have for virtual worlds and wonder how many of them pause to wonder WHY anyone would want to do any of it in a virtual world? Same goes for the 3D web too. It might be very pretty but does a screen full of flying interactive 3D gizmo-gadgets REALLY get information across better than a page of text?
It’s probably a necessary phase we’ll go thru’, but it seems to me we (yes, that includes me!) are currently trying to cram so much crap into SL most of which is always going to work better in RL. When there are people offering to let you make phone-calls from within SL we’ve lost the plot!
For Second Life and other virtual worlds to succeed we need to figure out what we can do in virtual worlds we CAN’T do anywhere else and what we can do in virtual worlds BETTER than we can do anywhere else.
Ironically enough, I’ve previously been asked if i sell toilets in SL
Eris – have you read the Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda? Really – it not only speaks to SL, to virtual worlds….well, it speaks to everything really, including my life which has definitely seen a feature creep of massive proportions.
What I like about it, however, is that first, it’s a simple read. And as someone who has 7 books on the go at once, it was such a nice little pause in my world of information overload. But second, he highlights that simplicity is mulit-faceted. It’s not just about having fewer buttons, it’s the interconnected execution of a few simple concepts (he came up with 10) and a few “keys” (he came up with 3).
So, for example, we often talk about “reduce” – get rid of buttons, reduce clutter, reduce unwanted features. But he also talks about (to randomly choose 2) emotion and differences as laws.
Emotion – more emotions are better than less. He brings in this law because he recognizes that sometimes “simple/clean” doesn’t hit an emotional note with some people. As he notes “there will always be die-hard modernists who refuse any object that is not white or black…(but) my mother finds the iPod entirely unattractive….When emotions are considered above everything else, don’t be afraid to add more ornamentation or layers of meaning….”Form follows function” gives way to the more emotional approach to design: “Feeling follows form”.
Which is to say that simplicity when based in modernism ignores that objects, environments and interfaces can create a feeling. (My feeling about the current client is: utilitarian, boring, drab, confusing, and not empowering).
The other law, again just choosing randomly, is “difference – or, complexity and simplicity need each other”. He sums it up by saying “The more complexity there is in the market, the more that something simpler stands out….That said, establishing a feeling of simplicity in design requires making complexity CONSCIOUSLY AVAILABLE in some explicit form.”
Thus, I suppose, the idea floating around that the menus within the client should be nested.
And P.S. – how come you didn’t take the toilet selling job? And have you checked out the Baron’s High Colonic Sale? They have some outhouses that are creative masterpieces.
I think i have some kind of genetic defect Dusan, a defect which manifests as a near-total inability to do what i’m told. It’s adolescent i know but presented with any book called The LAWS of Simplicity i think my only reason to read it would be to find creative ways to BREAK the aforementioned laws. I know, just a big old kid really…
As if to prove the point i don’t quite agree with your suggestion that ‘Modernism ignores that objects…create feeling’ or maybe i’d just put it another way – Modernist objects create their own feeling (and they don’t really care whether you like it or not!). I agree that the current SL interface is utilitarian but, to me, that’s one of its best qualities. It needs more thought and flair certainly but it should always maintain some utilitarian modesty, unlike Dazzle. I still think we should have a twin-track client for SL, but i’ve ranted on about that enough here already.
Your comments about the book remind me of that quote “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” which i’ve often seen attributed to Steve Jobs but (i think) more correctly belongs to Leonardo da Vinci. Makes sense that simplicity doesn’t necessarily mean stripping away all the buttons – it means making the device/UI simple to understand and that’s a more complex equation.
BTW, another nail you seem to have hit is the prospect of adding rendered shadows to SL. They appear to be beta testing it now and that infamous bitchy comment made on Tues’ by a Linden was in direct reference to its implementation: https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/sldev/2008-May/009930.html
You’re just one step ahead all the way Dusan, huh?
Eris I adore you. And by the way, it’s not my suggestion about modernism, it’s John’s…however, I did quote him so I’ll fall on my sword and admit I’m one of those folks who will probably find that Dazzle grows on them. I like steampunk. I like gritty, buttons, dials and whizzygigs. I also like the iPhone and I think the Oxo peeler is perhaps humanity’s greatest invention since the orrery.
However, based on the link you provided, there’s another aesthetic rolling along at the Lab.
Personally? I’d fire him on the spot. Has M Linden even started working yet? What the hell is going on over there?
Edit> Spoke too soon for M hath spoken.
Oooh, a Steampunk UI for SL, how i would love that…it could puff steam and blow smoke when u clicked on things and creak and groan as windows opened and closed with big metallic clangs…
I cannot live, WILL NOT live with Dazzle as it exists now and don’t even start-up the latest RC build until i’ve patched Dazzle away – I call it Sunblocking, not skinning!
Luckily I’m not the only one to feel this way : http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Viewer_Skins