I was invited to speak at Train for Success yesterday and, frankly, the audience was the main attraction. Maybe there was something about the topic (the Future of Virtual Worlds) – but there was no shortage of ideas, passion and discussion….I only wish it could have gone on longer.
Much of the discussion sort of spun off from my recent interview with Rod Humble, the new CEO of Linden Lab. It felt like we all wanted to answer the question: is there still hope for virtual worlds, for Second Life, for the idea of the metaverse?
Mitch Wagner attended – and I absolutely loved having him there. His recent blog post has generated discussion: he proposes that the dream of a ubiquitous Second Life won’t happen because participating in a virtual world just isn’t convenient.
My response to that was pretty simple really: who said we need or want ubiquity? And besides – the very inconvenience of Second Life is one of its finest virtues.
By being inconvenient, it puts us in a place where we log-in with intent – something that you don’t find with Twitter or Facebook.
Social media is a river – it flows, it rages, it hits rapids and it sometimes meanders. But you can sort of keep one eye on your social media stream and one eye on reality. With virtual worlds (and platform games, and MMOs and other forms of ‘immersion’) you enter with intent, it requires your focus, and that’s the benefit…..and there will always be a place for that on the digital landscape, even if that place is small-ish and contained.
Social media is a river, and virtual worlds are an island – a place you go with intent, for context, to stop, to have rich discussions and dialogue, to participate in stories.
The Geeky Affections for Interfaces
Following the session, a discussion broke out on Twitter that Rod Humble sort of chimed in on.
Ron Blechner, who hadn’t attended the session, decided based on second-hand reports that I have erroneously prioritized content over ease-of-use, and a whole stream of discussions tossed the argument back-and-forth.
I suppose it’s enough to say that my priority is design thinking – content, interface, complexity, elegance, economics, community – there are so many dials to turn in creating great experiences that it’s dangerous to focus on any one.
I find it intriguing how often I run into a sort of geeky affection for user interfaces. Now, with technology there is ALWAYS an interface. And I’d never deny the importance of removing friction or barriers in the UI.
But there’s this sort of faith in interfaces that I find odd – community and content are only accessible because of the interface, the logic goes, and so we all need to bow down to the interface’s primacy.
There’s a sort of geeky affectation to the concept that I find bizarre, especially when someone trots out the iPod or the iPad as examples of the interface’s importance – ignoring the fact that what Apple does is design experiences and ecosystems.
Thank goodness for the geeks, the UI designers, the software engineers – but I’m also thankful that there are the Steve Jobs of the world who realize that the human experience of technology is as much about the things that you need to couple with interface in order to create disruptive change, the importance of the stories we’re able to tell, the communities we can build.
Conventional Wisdoms
There’s a mental trap with Second Life – and I’ve written about it before, and I’ll write about it again – and the trap is to follow the funnel down to an “easier” virtual world experience.
Now – as someone who sponsored a Viewer Design Contest, I’ve long been an advocate of thinking about the ways in which users interact with virtual worlds, and there’s always room for improvement.
But I’ve also long been an advocate of applying design thinking to the world and, first and foremost, to make sure you’re asking the right question. The Lab has almost religiously pursued a single question: how to improve the first hour and get people to stay.
The problem is, if you start with that as a question, you’ll follow a deductive path and you’ll end up right where we started: it’s the viewer, the download, the learning curve that’s the problem….and the quest is on for the magical changes that will make everything better.
But seriously – I don’t care if you can access Second Life in a browser and the only thing you need to do is, um, speak or something to interact with the world. You can make it as easy as breathing, and I still think you’ll end up with diminishing returns.
When the television was invented it was easy to turn on. But you only turned it on because there was a reason to do so in the first place.
But this got me thinking about Second Life more generally – and about the conventional wisdoms that have long guided how the world is managed and developed.
So I’m going to start keeping a little list here of conventional wisdoms – because maybe it’s time to question everything, or at least articulate a few of the things that maybe have been taken for granted. I mean….you tell me, is it time to redefine what we mean by the following conventional wisdoms?
- Land represents server space and is a metaphor for how we use Second Life
- Content creators are the people who make things (or scripts, or animations, etc.) and content consumers are the people who just participate in the virtual world
- Second Life is a world and both the Mainland and Regions are part of that world (aren’t regions often like their own mini-worlds? Are there different kinds of geography inside the world? How do we describe that?)
- Governance is primarily the responsibility of Linden Lab (similar to the question of regions and Mainland, aren’t there other ‘layers’ of federation possible?)
- If we link to social media, it means importing external identities, or it means exporting Second Life experiences to those identities
- The Second Life Marketplace sells virtual goods and should continue to be structured as such
- Search needs to be an algorithm in spite the fact that Second Life is filled with stories that aren’t so easy to parse
- The focus should be on attracting new users rather than attracting groups of users
- Complexity is the enemy of scale
What would you add?
Oh….and before I go….I wanted to share these really awesome mock-ups by Loki Elliot, one of the most creative people I know on the Grid (read his full post for more). Very nifty stuff. 
Hi Doug.
You know the struggles we’ve had integrating 2nd Life into a project for innovation, especially around the “convenience” and “ease of use” of 2nd Life for many people, especially those in corporations behind firewalls.
You make an excellent point – some trial or barrier to access means that people enter with intent, rather than babble (like Twitter) about their dining habits or celebrity glimpses. I think 2nd life is perhaps a deeper interaction for the people who do participate, whereas Twitter is aimed at a surface level interaction.
If it is true that 2nd Life is meant for a deeper interaction, however, then there are implications there. Deeper interactions for whom? To achieve what? Some good examples from Startled Cat exist, certainly, like bringing people together in shared experiences around diseases. Those people share common experiences in real life and can interact about them in 2nd Life in a way they never would in Twitter or Facebook.
So, perhaps there’s a hierarchy of interaction, with Twitter the most ubiquitous but least deep, while 2nd Life exists to provide a less ubiquitous but deeper interaction. The next question then is what interaction is the least ubiquitous but offers the deepest interaction online?
I like your introduction of me.
FYI I read your blog regularly, have followed your thinking for years, so while I had been otherwise engaged during the time of your event, my thoughts are not solely stemming from one talk.
“you enter with intent, it requires your focus, and that’s the benefit”
Sure, but if the platform is compelling enough, it will *engage* the user and keep them focused, regardless. Instead, I’d argue that social media should be seamlessly integrated with virtual worlds for the very same reason – so there aren’t nagging distractions tugging at the attention of the user to AFK while in Second Life or log off altogether – both are very frequent occurrences, and don’t fit into your theory about how making the interface more difficult somehow magically keeps people focused.
“there are so many dials to turn in creating great experiences that it’s dangerous to focus on any one.”
There’s a difference between creating great experiences and creating a platform for where these experiences are to take place. I don’t see you making that distinction.
“geeky affection for user interfaces”
I think you’re saying that affection for user interfaces is inherently geeky? I disagree and point out that Linden Lab’s full of geeks and they repeatedly fall short on delivering an easy to use user interface. If you look at the success of iPod, it’s because the smart phone market was flooded with geeks who thought they knew what a “phone” is “supposed to do” / “supposed to feel like”. I think Steve Jobs was very *un-geeky* in his approach to the iPhone. The two killer aspects were the easy-to-use interface and the app store open to developers with the SDK. The prior showed human understanding, the latter business savvy.
And that’s my point – good user interface design is NOT geeky at all. It is in fact a very psychology and behavior centric study. The reason so many interfaces suck is due to the fact that UI design is often haphazardly left to people so focused on the *features* that they forget that people who aren’t programmers are going to use the device.
Where do you get this notion that UI design is geeky, anyway? I’m really curious to hear your logic and thoughts on this. I don’t grant the idea, and I challenge you to back up your claims.
“You can make it as easy as breathing, and I still think you’ll end up with diminishing returns.”
Why? Please explain your assertion.
“When the television was invented it was easy to turn on. But you only turned it on because there was a reason to do so in the first place. ”
Really the TV gets its ease of use from radio, and radio stems from stage play. I do wonder who came up with the idea of the radio dial, though. It may have been a natural consequence of how the electronics work to tune into different frequencies. I digress.
You turned on the television because they showed these magical devices at world fairs and such, and they told a story to the masses: Imagine a future where you can access images from around the world *at the touch of a dial*. These images and movies were already available – in movie theaters and stage plays and photographs, etc. But the TV’s innovation was the ease of getting these in your home, on your couch, with an easy interface. The interface was the innovation.
There will always be content available. But Second Life didn’t start with content, nor did the iPhone, nor YouTube, etc. But when barriers of both creation and viewing are lowered, the 10% or so of people who are motivated to create things will do so. That’s the very essence of social media – make it easy, and people produce content.
But, yes, of course people need things to see when they get there. But if they get frustrated and never get there, what’s the point? I realize that both content and interface need to be in place, but I believe my arguments about how people will create when given easy tools is the added fact that makes interface trump content.
In short, where there’s interface, content will follow. Where there’s content, interface is needed but doesn’t follow automatically.
Interface is king.
Also, I may add that titling something “conventional wisdom” does not make it so, it just gives the reader the idea that you think your ideas are so obviously true that they don’t require proof.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dusan Writer and Alison Astor, Ron Blechner. Ron Blechner said: Your "conventional wisdom" is incorrect. Replied. @Dusanwriter http://j.mp/gRYYql [...]
I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve had SL crash or black-screen my laptop and I’ve said “This only reaffirms my intent to get into SL!” as I head to the kitchen to refill my tea, or do the litterboxes, or just turn off the laptop entirely and pick up a book and read.
*bling*
*bling*
*bling*
(picks up iphone, sees a bunch of offline messages…)
*hrmpf* (toss)
If you make the barrier to entry too high and people hear the sound of bitching and complaining on the other side more than screams of delight and pleasure, they’re not going to get curious and drag a heavy stool or splinter-filled ladder to the barrier to try to climb over it.
They’re just going to walk past that barrier and go on with their lives.
-ls/cm
The barriers to entry don’t just affect users — they affect content providers, as well.
The geeks tend to see content providers as folks with design skills, who are able to navigate the SL interface — the “power users.”
But they’re just a small subsection of the content providers in SL.
The compelling content in SL isn’t just nice buildings and animated animals (though those are nice). The compelling content is interactions with other human beings. On the high end, this includes live music, therapy sessions, book readings, poetry slams, sales training. But it’s also just hanging out with people who share your interests and talking to them.
The folks who provide that content — the therapists, the musicians, the book authors, the sales trainers, the folks with interesting hobbies, and the average joes who are just fun to hang out with — they all need an easy interface to get into Second Life.
I’m there to see those guys. And I’ll stay because of those guys. Not because there’s something pretty there to look at.
– Maria
@Maria – totally agree.
I think there’s a problem that many people assume “content” means “things”. Social media proves content is just as much about the interactions. In fact, it’s more that the “things” spur the interactions, whether it’s between users and other users or between users and things. (which, if I were to get on a philosophical tangent, is really just indirect interaction between users via their creations.)
Content is most certainly about the people.
Jeffrey –
You really hit the nail on the head. Ron knows better than most, perhaps, having followed my blog all these years, about how much emphasis I place on well-designed interfaces and incredibly well-designed experiences – and how Second Life has, mostly, been a disaster at those things.
Which kind of makes my point for me – because if SL is so bloody awful as an interface, as a designed experience, then why do the people who DO stick around stay?
There are reasons for immersive environments which are more compelling than the challenges of the interface.
I would LOVE it if the interface was easier, simpler, more elegant – if ease-of-access was a no-brainer.
But at the end of the day even if it was all of those things, it doesn’t on its own make the experience compelling.
It’s a virtuous circle, however, and I hope after 1,800 posts I’ve shown myself to be holistic in how I think about these things –
> A great interface attracts people
> people attract content developers
> Great content attracts more people
> More people, given a simple interface, leads to less attrition
But, I don’t care Ron – someone needed to rez the first prim, film the first frame of a television show, write the first blog post, and upload the first youTube video.
Yeah, you needed an interface to do those things, duh, it’s digital, it’s a tool, it’s media. But many of those things started with crap interfaces and thrived because the content was amazing.
Twitter is actually a truly crappy interface, for example, and yet I keep logging on because people keep posting awesome stuff.
It’s never one or the other. This is MEDIA, you need an interface to consume it and you need one to create for it.
But “make the interface awesome and easy” is a geek’s idea of a business plan, sorry.
My personal preference is to worry about stories, innovation, collaboration and community – but I’m very happy that there are people like Ron and people at the Lab geeking out over where the “speak” button should be so I can focus on the value my customers expect of me – changing their businesses, improving their bottom line, helping them to radically collaborate with global stakeholders, and all the rest of it.
And for the rest of us who are in SL in spite of the lag, crashes, lost inventory, garbled voice and all the rest of it – we found that the power of being there was way more valuable than how easy it was to arrive in the first place.
How can we make dog poop more popular?. Perhaps we can paint it pink? Or maybe add sugar to it?…
I dunno, sometimes we just have to accept that something has limited appeal.
Perhaps a simpler interface will help attract new users to Second Life. Or perhaps there’s only 50000 people on planet Earth that are comfortable socializing and befriending obscure people hiding behind avatars
Hmmm…I’m trapping myself in my own language trap – because everyone is a content developer – even if the only content you create is your avatar’s appearance or the chat you have with another user.
*sigh*
We’re going in linguistic loops.
If I had one message for Humble it would be this: just get out of the way of making stuff, make it easy to promote the stuff we make, and stop trying to figure out the interface and spend more time figuring out how to let us take advantage of the power to create.
God knows -
Indeed. But to be honest, if it’s the same people I’ve come to know in SL then I’m fine with that.
Now now..play nice. we’re almost at an end now to the delusions of secondlife and understanding media.;)
1. Interface occurs where any disparate surfaces meet.
2. Early Television and Radio wasnt “hobbled” by the “knobs” but by the “antenna” positions needed to receive any signal other than static. Interface again, but not an example i guess of a “conventional wisdom”
Interface is only the means by which humans can balance reality and virtuality. To Balance The Natural and the Man Mediated. Thats why we attempt to understand and apply it.
If one see’s a failure of “interface” ask WHY? and for WHOM does this failure serve? And what is created by such a culture driven by the medium of machines,interfaces(technology),and finally humans.
A faith in technology, not interface, is the oddity IMO. (though its not odd to see why it exists today) that continues to create the delusions shown growing in our culture by those new to the “meta.”
BTW- Lanier, Turkle, and Norman.– So many who created “interface” for over 20 years between machines and humans. Search out their current writings.
Conventional Wisdom?
@Dusan
Okay, round 3.
“because if SL is so bloody awful as an interface, as a designed experience, then why do the people who DO stick around stay?”
This is misleading. We’re talking about relative quantitative numbers. It isn’t an all-or-nothing thing. Maria’s correct – it’s the people who are the anchors to it. The better the interface, the more people will want to stay.
“There are reasons for immersive environments which are more compelling than the challenges of the interface.”
Sure, but that’s beside the point. Quantum physics is super challenging, but there are still quantum physicists. But if one wants something to be a *consumer product* the interface needs to be piss simple.
Example: When I came to Second Life in January of 2004, I saw immediately that there was a problem with shopping back then. The idea of the vendor was still new – where multiple items are sold in one box, and you might have arrows to select products with different images for each. The available vending machines were either pay-per-machine (like 50L$ – 200L$) or just tough to use.
I decided to write an easy, free vendor. I went through several iterations based on hundreds of users’ feedback. It was, for a good period of time, the de facto default free vendor in SL. Other free vendors came, so I open sourced it. Over the years I have gotten thousands and thousands of IMs about this vendor kit. I learned exactly why it was hard to use in every possible way. I fixed it. And that’s why it was popular.
See, we’re not talking about “Hey, let’s build a community of tens of thousands tech-savvy users.” We’re looking at virtual worlds as something we want to be ubiquitous and used by hundreds of millions. Your thoughts of “But look, some people are still here!” completely sidestep the main point – it’s not ubiquitous.
“But many of those things started with crap interfaces and thrived because the content was amazing.”
Examples, please.
“Twitter is actually a truly crappy interface, for example, and yet I keep logging on because people keep posting awesome stuff.”
No, it’s an amazing interface for that very reason. It’s simple, and it has an open API so that other people made a variety of useful interfaces. How is that crappy?
“This is MEDIA, you need an interface to consume it and you need one to create for it. ”
Okay.
“But “make the interface awesome and easy” is a geek’s idea of a business plan, sorry.”
No one’s saying anything about a business plan, Dusan. That’s a red herring. Naturally there’s a lot more to making a successful software product than interface, but that has nothing to do with the primary necessity of a smooth interface for software to be accepted universally.
“My personal preference is to worry about stories, innovation, collaboration and community”
Because you’re a content creator.
“– but I’m very happy that there are people like Ron and people at the Lab geeking out”
I worry about content as well – that’s been my career for five years. Please don’t pigeonhole me
into the tech-nerd category. I can point to plenty of my blog posts describing the value of content, advice for content creators, etc. I am a geek, but the whole reason I find success with virtual worlds and social media is that I don’t let that define my entire approach. Conversely, I use my geek to make sure my story-making is sound and delivered in a nice way.
“over where the “speak” button should be”
Please don’t try and diminish the user interface problem as “moving around buttons”. That’s absurd. Did you read the link I posted yesterday, about my review of the state of viewer 2? It’s hardly “moving this or that” around.
http://www.secondtense.com/2010/11/fix-interface-how-noob-sees-second-life.html
“so I can focus on the value my customers expect of me – changing their businesses, improving their bottom line, helping them to radically collaborate with global stakeholders, and all the rest of it.”
You’re trying to create a false dichotomy, here. I do all of those things – as do other people who similarly feel the way I do. Implying that YOU’RE focused on this and not others is arrogant.
Well, I’m not quite sure about this idea that the UI is of primary importance.
I think I learnt to use Photoshop, Gimp, Blender and SL, IN SPITE OF the UI. My desire was primary, as it was when I learnt to drive a car….. the difficulties I encountered did not send me back to the TV screen.
I started in SL at a time when every new viewer brought with it some improvements, some crashes, some features.. but… as I had mastered it , it was fairly straight forward to teach others to use it….or to ask questions on chat (it used to work better) and get an answer.
The viewer problems became paramount when the V2 was released unfit for purpose on an intelligent bunch of customers without any user-group study and no possibility of feedback. Before this time it was not such an issue.
The desire for ubiquity will not increase with a browser based viewer as this will lock out those with low bandwidth connections which, frustratingly, cannot be controlled by the user in the same way hardware can be.
My take on the situation would be to increase the quality of the tools available, improve chat and other social possibilities, and you will increase the desire of people to join in. That desire will overcome a number of problems which are currently regarded as ‘primary’.
@soror:
“My take on the situation would be to increase the quality of the tools available, improve chat and other social possibilities, and you will increase the desire of people to join in.”
Could you elaborate?
“Perhaps a simpler interface will help attract new users to Second Life. Or perhaps there’s only 50000 people on planet Earth that are comfortable socializing and befriending obscure people hiding behind avatars”
Explain MMOGs, then.
The false dichotomy is trying to make me make a choice between content and interfaces as you tried to do in Twitter….my response is pushing back on this false dichotomy and am pointing out that it’s equally if not more valid to pay attention to the content/value which is accessed through the interface, than the mode of access (interface) itself.
I mean – how many more years of “improve the first hour” and “make the viewer simpler” is it going to take before the Lab simply says – “wow, if we can help people create and promote great content maybe it will help…maybe if we don’t fiddle with tier, if we have our PR team promote content instead of Linden Lab, maybe if we sponsor courses or make the knowledge base more knowledgeable….I wonder if that would work”.
Instead, history suggests that the default “solution” is always “make it easier” (fast, easy, fun, SCRUM, Viewer 2)…and I’m not convinced it got us anywhere.
It’s not one or the other, although you seem to be adamantly pushing for us to solve “the interface problem” as the primary barrier/opportunity.
It’s not either/or. I don’t know why you keep pushing for it to be either/or, especially as I know very well that you’re holistic in the work you do.
Finding the sweet spot between interface and content, between accessing a community and the community itself is challenging. So long as “conventional wisdom” keeps telling us that “if only we’d solve the damn interface” the longer we’ll ignore the larger holistic question of: “OK, and say you do, what’s going to be there once you’ve made it easy for them to arrive”.
Stop trying to create a false dichotomy and I’ll stop pushing back so hard.
There’s no HBO without the cable company. There’s no radio show without the radio itself. There are no prims if there’s no way to create them.
Thankfully, it’s a virtuous circle and we don’t need to choose, although I’ll continue to strongly argue for focusing on content, on creating great destinations, on having great shows, on having compelling reasons to be there over a compelling way to tune in.
Create the next Sopranos in Second Life, the next Milton Berle, the next Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan….or have Justin Bieber show up one day to do an in-world concert HAHAHA….and I can guarantee people will figure out how to get in.
Ron –
I totally agree. When people decide what game to spend their $50 bucks on, they’re more likely to pick an immersive, 3D game rather than a new take on, say, Tetris or a new text adventure game. Even though 2D games are more efficient than 3D games — it’s a lot faster to get somewhere in 2D — and text games are even more efficient still.
Efficiency is not the same as ease of use. Windows is less efficient than DOS, but it’s easier to use.
Similarly, a 3D environment can be less efficient than 2D, but still easy to use, if it’s designed right. Plus you get all the benefits of immersiveness.
People bitched and moaned when Windows came out. Many refused to use a mouse. And the text-based interface hasn’t gone away altogether — we still type documents one letter at a time. Most 2D websites have 1D text entry fields somewhere.
Similarly, we’re going to continue to use 2D for viewing data. A telephone book is an easier way to find something than driving around town looking for a store.
But I think over time, a lot of meetings, training, socializing, and experiencing will move into 3D immersive environments. Second Life can speed up that transition by making the interface easier. Not glossier. Not less functional. But easier. And, yes, it is a monumentally difficult challenge. There’s a reason that it’s taking so long for the iPad clones to come out.
And Ron is right about going back to the users. Find out where they get stuck. Find out what’s intuitive to them and what isn’t. Or else you find and hire a UI visionary who has a genius for these things.
– Maria
@Dusan:
“The false dichotomy is trying to make me make a choice between content and interfaces as you tried to do in Twitter”
Disagree, I see we’re at an impasse on this.
“how many more years of “improve the first hour” and “make the viewer simpler””
Your assertion only makes sense if Linden Lab *actually improved the first hour and made the viewer simpler*. My critique has been that their repeated efforts to do so have failed to produce something easy to use and learn. Thus, one cannot simply write off the need to make things easier, simply because Linden Lab didn’t succeed at doing so.
“It’s not either/or.”
I never said it was. I have been asserting *priority* of interface design, not disregarding content. Claiming I am making false dichotomies is a straw man, whether willful or whether I have not been clear enough about it.
“Thankfully, it’s a virtuous circle and we don’t need to choose,”
Again, agree. But just because we don’t *choose* doesn’t mean we don’t *prioritize*.
“Create the next Sopranos in Second Life, the next Milton Berle, the next Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan….or have Justin Bieber show up one day to do an in-world concert HAHAHA….and I can guarantee people will figure out how to get in.”
Are you totally amnesic about the history of Second Life? We HAD celebrities ushered in 2006 and 2007. We had CSI, for crissake, one of the most popular shows on TV, with the writer of the damn show going on YouTube talking about how he was super excited about integrating virtual worlds and how seriously he was taking that.
But the interface was too difficult. Users came, and users were frustrated, and there was an enormous media backlash because of the inflated expectations allowed to happen by Linden Lab and by certain third party developers who were happy to take big money and speak at conferences, and then blame the platform when they couldn’t get the numbers.
Do a little history research. I don’t think anything I’m saying is going to work for you until then.
that damn history..if only we could ignore it and still make bank forever…
its like a greek chorus yelling at their gods…:)
zeus ATE his siblings…. duh.
Dusan, I think you’ve highlighted some important things here again that we need to return to. There is so much geeky obsession with interface (and you spawned some of it with your contest as you admit) that people have departed from the basic sense of Second Life: it has to be a word, and it has to be a world people find reasons to come and stay in.
The Lindens have assiduously thinned this world out lately — moving stores to the Marketplace, moving more and more contests and socializing to Facebook, moving more and more attention off land and off inworld experience to the postcard like Destinations on the website linked to the dingus in the viewer that both exasperates and helps people.
SO when you piss on world-ness in that fashion, you can’t come along later to the world and say, wow, why do you have piss all over you?!
The things you listed — land, Mainland, metaphor of contiguity, governance — these are all things that the Lindens have let go horribly in recent years — just horribly. The only glimmer of hope is the LPDW work, tunnelling and beavering away at trying to make it work again. But it has no glory and the company cares more about flogging Valentine’s on the Marketplace than flogging something like Pyri because they don’t see the payoff and the clicks in the same way (long term).
I was surprised and intrigued that the latest poll has something I’ve never, ever seen put in a poll from LL before: a question about griefing, and whether the griefing you experience has made you come less to SL. About time! That should be right up there in examining the first hour problems and never is (governance).
I won’t get into a debate now about your tweet about “leveraged content”. I don’t think the Lindens should be in the business of FICing content and fronting this or that culture they think “sells”. They should be like the Star Wars bar. They put out the bar. They put out the drinks. And then all those freaky creatures come and socialize freely, from all their different cultures. They focus on the bar. And the drinks. They don’t focus on this freaky customer or that freaky customer or even the little catchy tune in the bar. They just put out the bar. And put out the drinks. That’s it. The bar is the viewer. The drinks are various things that entice various constituents and keep them “lubricated” — a pet or Valentine’s day hunt thing for girls; a war game thing for boys; an intellectual thing for the intelligentsia etc. (for the first time ever the Lindens put a *political topic* on their website *from real life* (I fell from my chair in shock). Look on Destination, and see “Egypt” as a destination “to talk about politics”. (*faints*).
So they are bumbling around doing some of these things — put out the drinks, put out the bar, let the customers come and entertain each other, and let somebody else play the music…
Putting out the bar is about the search working, so that the Star Wars creatures can even see that there are others like — and unlike — themselves at the bar.
I could extend this metaphor further, but you get the idea.
I continue to feel the problem is insufficient belief in the creativity of the mass consumer in rearranging content, not enough care and concern about the paths to RELATIONSHIPS and houses and pets and activities and events.
As for Mitch Wagner, I’ve blogged what I think about all that. I view his casual cynicism complaining in jaded and high-visibility fashion in a posturing for the new guy about how “inconvenient” and “boring” he finds SL — then tweeting from a vehicle show the next day — it’s despicable.
You and I both know this is not about convenience. It’s not about being able to log on to SL while you’re at the bus stop. Reading forums or tweeting or Plurking or surfing SL Marketplace is more than enough for the die-hard SL addict if they can’t log on.You don’t need a gadget to do this, although sure, a nice light client that peeks in or enables individual and group chat (even more important) would be fine.
You’re absolutely right that social media is the river, and virtual worlds are the island, and that’s ok.
But there are bridges. And the bridges have to be about the Star Wars bar setting up the bar, and setting up the drinks.
Ron,
People go into MMORPGs to play the game.
“Second Life isn’t a game, it’s a platform” – Linden Lab
God knows –
True, Second Life is a platform. But it’s a platform that’s being used for games — role playing games, social games — as well as all sorts of other activities.
It’s a time sink in the way that hanging out with friends is a time sink. Some periods in your life, you just have to cut back on friends, to focus on other things.
But that doesn’t meant that your friends matter less than, say, work does — it just means that you have to prioritize differently for a while.
– Maria
Maria,
Few people will log into Second Life to play the clunky games. People who log into Second Life do so because they’re open to the idea of socializing with obscure people. The games are just something they do on the side with their obscure friends.
Whereas people who log into MMORPGs do so to play the game, and socializing is something they may do on the side. MMORPGs are the opposite of Second Life.
So my point remains in that it doesn’t matter what Linden Lab does to improve Second Life, it will always be populated by obscure people and as a result will always have limited appeal.
We’ve all seen how popular facebook is. Now imagine if somebody created an alternative facebook purely for roleplayers. A place where you’re banned if you show your real identity. How popular would that be?
I rest my case…
A parable:
The piano manufacturers association decides they want to increase the popularity of playing the piano (so they can sell more pianos). They hire a consultant, who tells them the user interface is too complicated. So they hire a fancy UI design firm and they come back with a great new piano, Piano 2.0. It looks really funky.
Some enthusiasts buy it, but schools and piano teachers already have “normal” pianos, and they work just fine thanks. “If I learned it, my kids can learn it too.”
The interface was never the problem.
(Linden Lab could make a super-amazing, easy, fantastic user interface, and it wouldn’t make much difference. In fact, any new interface would probably anger the people using the old one (since they already know the old interface). SL isn’t the user interface any more than piano music is the piano keyboard.)
—
(If you look at the most popular third-party SL viewers, most have interfaces that are even more complex and cumbersome than the official SL viewer. They are for power users, not beginners.)
—
The last commenter seems to think that SL “will always be populated by those obscure people.” Why? Where do such perceptions come from?
I suspect they come, in part, from Linden Lab’s failure to tell the world who actually uses SL, and why. Why doesn’t LL advertise SL in regular magazines, TV, newspapers, and websites? Are they just too cheap? By relying on word of mouth, the message gets confusing: a million voices, each with their own stories. LL needs to tell the big story – we’d like to see the forest, not a bunch of trees.
The best way to convince someone to do something is to have them believe it adds value to their life. The more value they perceive, the more they will do it subject to whatever limitations they have (financial, physical, etc). We also prioritize our activities based on perceived value. This basic concept can be applied to everything we do including visiting virtual worlds. And it’s why I continue to hang out in Second Life, OpenSim, or even World of Warcraft – this activity brings immense value into my life.
The challenge for someone trying to convince people to use their product by building value is that everyone is looking for different levels and types of value. I really liked the Star Wars bar analogy and hope that Prokofy doesn’t mind me borrowing it: If a bar owner doesn’t intend to focus on a specific type of customer, then they attract the most people to the bar by trying to figure out what provides the most value for the most customers. The owner needs to figure out what types of drinks are expected and most desired or what bartenders will attract the most customers, etc. The more you widen out your customer base, the more shades of value you need to provide.
So the bottom line for Second Life to succeed is for them to figure out what customer base they want to attract – a specific group of “obscure” people, or artists, or geeks, or educators, or every type of person in the world. Then based on that decision they need to figure out what value that group or groups is looking for. The more value they provide for their customer base, the more their world will be visited. From their actions, it almost seems like they have not gone through this process.
As an example, I believe this is why the educators are leaving – they perceive that other platforms will now provide them more value. And because LL has removed value previously enjoyed by this group and not made a move to add more value desired by that group, it appears the Lab has decided educators do not make up their customer base.
Hi Troy,
Online worlds (and chat rooms) will always be populated by obscure people because people are safe in their obscurity.
Why stand out in the opening of the forest when so many are lurking in the shadows watching?. It’s unnerving..
Facebook has managed to make people open up because that was the whole point of facebook. And if you weren’t willing to open up then you had no reason being there. Creating a false identity on facebook would be like creating a false identity on a dating site. Pointless..
But lately Facebook is adding more games and so more and more people are creating false identities and logging into Facebook purely to play the games, and this could ultimately be its downfall. Because if they’re not careful they will end up being just another gaming site for flash based games, and a site populated by obscure people.
“[Second Life] will always be populated by obscure people and as a result will always have limited appeal.”
– Anonymous commenter at dusanwriter.com, 2011.
“[Television] won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures… People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
– Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century-Fox, 1946.
*applauds Troy*
Thanks again for speaking at our Train for Success meeting Doug and for spurring this fascinating conversation. You make a great point that people get hung up on ease of use and simplicity of interface. The first comments and questions I get from corporate decision makers when I demo virtual worlds are almost ALWAYS about ease of use, along the lines of: “it looks difficult,” “how long does it take to orient someone,” instead of the more interesting questions of value: “How can we use this environment to solve business problems through immersion, engagement and 3-D experiences.”
Lots of interesting discussions here on how to best design things and who should be doing the designing.
In the end, I think the community of people who are most deeply engaged in actually using virtual worlds will figure out the magic recipe that makes virtual worlds a more global phenomenon. I doubt it will depend on any a single company pushing things forward. Rather, success will come from collaboration between passionate users.
The following quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry comes to mind.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
@God Knows:
People go into MMOGs to play games, agree. But they stay for the community. The remainder of your arguments thus don’t follow.
Troy, another parable:
A musician lamented that only gigantic publishing companies were able to publish music, because the process of publishing was far too complex. Then software became cheaper and the Internet allowed musicians to connect with people directly, and suddenly the complexity to “breaking into the music business” had its barrier of entry greatly lowered.
Because the complex interface was replaced with a simpler, more affordable one.
Your metaphor is begging the question from the start. By comparing virtual worlds to a piano, you assert immediately that virtual worlds are designed as *only* artistic expression. Thus, your illustration that simplifying this leads to disaster follows logically, but the premise is not something I think is correct in the first place.
Ron,
Community does help to add spice, but when somebody becomes bored of the underlying game then the community becomes irrelevant.
I’ve seen many people leave Second Life. Where was the holding power of community for them?. How could they just abandon all their obscure friends who they had never actually met in the real world?.
How could they?
Obscurity..
[...] writes that I’m partly right; Second Life is inconvenient. And that’s one of its virtues. Sure, it should be easier to use and less buggy, but the [...]
As I see the comments going forward here I see that many still would like SL to be easier in the beginning in order to help boost retention and therefore drive everything else. My thought would be, give the new residents a scaled down version on the UI, only what is truly needed to function say for the first couple of weeks or month so they can enjoy the content. At the end of this period, or any time before, they can upgrade to the full UI version. I work on Help People Island and the interface is the biggest challenge for all new residents. Simplifying it in the beginning for a short period of time allows a comfortable transition into immersive virtual environments without being overwhelming to the new user. The current UI is for power users that need or want to use all of the functions. Not everyone needs to use all this and can be intimidated by the shear volume of bells and whistles set out before them. Ease them into being a power user, better results and retention in my opinion.
Coming to this late:
In my opinion the barrier to entry has never really been the interface, though I find viewer 2 to be actually more annoying than the previous versions (it’s ‘in my way’ a lot more).
When I first entered SL I had basic movement and communication down within the first 20 minutes or so and had my avatar somewhat customized before too long. Anyone in the least bit familiar with computer games or anything should be able to understand either arrow key or WASD+mouse movement and typing to talk. Before the end of my first night I had learned to teleport, had done some exploring and had met some people, one of which helped me start learning to build almost immmediately and showed me lots of cool stuff.
SL -does- require that you are a bit of a self-starter, so I guess what is required for the other percentage is some way to hold their hand and help them find whatever content they are looking for. The current iterations of Search don’t really do that very well. Something like Crap Mariner’s Click on the Clock idea or an event calendar would go a long way in that direction as well as finding ways to clean the drek out of event listings.
The highest barrier to entry in my opinion are the technical problems with performance. Failure of group chat (sometimes even room chat lags badly), crashes, lag, failure to rez, all the usual suspects, are what make SL ‘hard’ to use. Rod Humble’s focus, I think, needs to go to those issues with laser-like focus and get those most basic of performance complaints solved, post-haste. They are the top complaints I hear as a content creator and part owner of a roleplaying sim, and I think some visible progress on those issues would go a long way toward beginning to satisfy the customers and create more positive word of mouth.
Right now a noob is liable to be in chat with veterans for whom the conversation most often includes phrases such as “$%#%% chat lag… Just SL being it’s normal self again.” and discussing frustrating workarounds to ruthing and other performance issues, instead of talking about the experience/content. Get the technical glitches nailed down solidly and the conversation will move to the content and how neat that new build by so and so is. The interface is workable, but yes could use some polish, but it doesn’t matter how slick the interface is when chat doesn’t work right.
Basics.
[...] Dusan’s “Conventional Wisdom” and belief that the SL UI should not be a LL priorit… [...]
[...] social media life that hasn’t been filled by anything else. Doug Thompson, aka Dusan Writer, addressed this point. I said that Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are superior to SL because they can be used with short [...]