Comments on: Design Appeal and Second Life

By: cube

cube — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:36:07 +0000

a tool and an expereince

tools- yes. intuative for users.
Experiences- no- they can be surprising for the viewser, if not why experience some of them.

they are differnt things to the user/viewer.
they may be the same thing to the maker.

again the problem of the SL products, is their design and definition of intent.

3d for everyone- has been the rally cry of failed web3d companies and products/services for 15 years.

By: Neil Canham

Neil Canham — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:00:35 +0000

I think that design model misses a level (for me at least) – the intuitive level. I love the idea of the visceral level, and that can be the thing that motivates us to achieve mastery where it doesn’t come naturally. But I want tools and experiences to be intuitive, what some call the ‘Principle of Least Surprise’ – things should obey your expectations as much as possible, and should be designed to trigger correct behaviors innately. Everyone should read ‘The Psychology of Everyday Things’ – the world of usability would be a much better place

By: Tateru Nino

Tateru Nino — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:55:10 +0000

“Do I want to be associated with this product? Do I feel good about owning it? Can I tell stories about it and impress others?”

Not sure I’ve ever encountered a product that I think any of these things about. It’s probably happened, but if so, then it was unmemorable in the long-term despite the rarity.

By: SL CHick

SL CHick — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:23:36 +0000

Listen, when you get down to it, there is no way to standardize SL anymore than there is to standardize RL. It’s what you bring to it and what you make out of it. I’ve had incredibly joyful experiences in SL and incredibly bad experiences and, yes, even boring ones. Just as in RL. That’s why it’s called Second LIFE! Some people get it right away and some run away scratching their heads. The shocking truth that M Linden and others might not be able to face is that it’s not for everyone. I just hope that when they do realize it, they won’t throw those of us who do thrive here overboard in their mad dash to make SL monetized and idiot proof.

By: Suzanne Aurilio

Suzanne Aurilio — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:46:28 +0000

Along the same sentiment as Adric’s, I don’t see Second Life as having mass appeal and I don’t think a major redesign is going to change that.

I’m not a gamer and although I’ve been a Resident since 2005, and have bouts of spending more or less time in-world, I gotta tell ya, that even if the experience had production value of games, I’d still be juxtaposing it to real world “activities” which I’d always see as more valuable, more interesting and ultimately more satisfying. I’d change that statement though, if I had a life circumstance that prevented me from doing those activities.

I think “life-circumstance”(for lack better way of putting it) hasn’t even been touched on as a criteria for describing virtual world users.

I for one am thoroughly looking forward to being 80 and having virtual worlds to hang out in, rather than the TV to veg out in front of .

By: MixedRealities :: How can virtual worlds contribute to the post-industrial eco-systems?

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:41:30 +0000

[...] and I’d like to refer to the model suggested by professor Don Norman as mentioned by Dusan Writer: One of his contributions to our understanding of ‘design thinking’ is the concept of design [...]

By: Sveid Heidenstam

Sveid Heidenstam — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:07:14 +0000

I love SL considerably, but it is not something I can recommend to very many people I know outside of SL. There are too many inexcusable problems which desperately need to be fixed. If everything I mentioned in my previous comment were corrected I would feel much more enthusiastic in “showing others the wonder of SL”, and I’m confident the appeal of the platform would become considerably more widespread.

By: soror nishi

soror nishi — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:28:15 +0000

Object lust, yes, I like that…..one thing that I have found extremely surprising is the terrible screen savers we have been treated too on logging in. With all the thousands of Flickr photos available how on earth did they manage to find such horrid images?
It isn’t really the images themselves as much as the mindset of the person/people who decided to go with those that is so shocking.
These people who are responsible for SL’s “face” cannot, surely, be designers?? They must have other talents one would hope, presentation definitely not being one of them.
Amazingly bad.

By: Adric Antfarm

Adric Antfarm — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:35:38 +0000

Were it isolated feedback, perhaps, but taken with his previous idea for an Xbox style achievement system, Facebook concepts, and a few other things I am perhaps blocking out for sanity, Hamlet seems to be writing about something he likes so much he wants to change it completely.

I do not understand this obsession with showing the world the wonder of Second Life. It’s just not going to happen. Let’s focus on making those who are there now happy before we fail in attracting new people who stay a week. If you change things to please people who don’t show, you better hope those things did chase off those already around.

I think we all want to see some of the legacy features go, but are we prepared to accept doing so may not include backwards compatibility? Would new animations require such a change that old ones would be useless, or a better looking model that comes with the cost of needing new hair or other attachments?

For me, I would like to see them focus on being ready for the growth they claim to want. Any successful event I see is lag hell or unable to fit another avatar. It’s as if growth is shunned.

One issue you cannot dispute is the learning curve from hell. When I signed on it took me an hour to turn my avatar into a brownish furry humanoid with Klump like proportions. I stayed away and might not of came back (like most others). A help system that told me there was an option on the advanced mention to reset my avatar or the hint my shirt was in the box on my hand, not the box itself would of been great instead of the rocky self learning.

By: radar

radar — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:36:48 +0000

The user experience is clunky. It’s hard to be immersed when you’re fiddling with UI junk all day. That’s something the emerald devs will never learn, as I imagine they were first in line for the 18 button OpenOffice mice. It suits them.

But back to LL, the ultimate goal would be to have the world be the primary focus even more than it is, and for LL to not have to keep whispering for us to ignore the man behind the curtain as we fiddle with our interfaces, trying to get something to work.

God bless opensource, and pray someday it learns that less is more, and more is less.