I’ve been reading a lot lately. Too much and my head’s maybe not in the right space, but somehow it’s got me thinking about preconceived ideas and received wisdom and orthodoxy. And I risk being overly provocative, but I started off with Coming of Age in Second Life by Tom Boellstorff (Bukowski in Second Life) who takes an anthropologist’s view of the Grid and found myself in awe (and found myself needing to write a post of its own on the book but suffice to say – BUY IT) and mixing that up with some books on game theory and….well, here’s the thing, I ended up wondering if some of the things I take for granted are errors of conception.
Call them the Sacred Cows of Second Life. And maybe it’s time for me to kill one or two of them. For myself in any case.
And the first is that the Second Life interface sucks. Which will lead to the next sacred cow, which is that the newbie orientation experience sucks. And the sacred cow isn’t necessarily that these things aren’t true, but that we should actually do something about it.
So before I get blasted with statistics about attrition rates in the first hour and why 90% of users don’t come back, and how even experienced users need to dig deeper to understand how to use the client, the world, how to twist a prim, I’ll acknowledge that I can be a real idiot with technology. And I’ll acknowledge the following:
- I still don’t understand how to set perms. The debug permissions settings are a mystery to me. I have no idea what the “V” stands for.
- Deeding land and deeding objects to groups baffles me. I don’t understand how to nest permissions at the land level, I don’t understand the notions of control and ownership and how to properly let people do what they need to do without making a muddle of who owns what and who can edit it, and who can move it or deed it.
- It took me 4 weeks to learn how to fly above a few hundred meters. It took me 6 weeks to learn that you could disable camera constraints.
- I have no idea how to use the camera settings, how to zoom, how to get my avatar to stand still if I’m trying to take a photo of myself.
- I can’t for the life of me remember how to reset things like “enable/disable typing animation” when I download a new viewer, and have no clue why the settings need to be, well, reset every time.
- Planar vs. default texturing is a mystery.
- Groups are a mystery – am I in the wrong groups? Does anyone use groups anymore to talk to each other? Do I need new friends?
- I recently discovered the lag meter. And yeah, Linden has posted 100 times on how to reduce lag, but it’s beyond me, and besides I don’t care, I have a monster machine and a fast connection and lag is just something that IS, I live with it, but I feel the pain of those on lesser machines.
All of which is to say that the interface is NOT user friendly, at least for someone like myself who’s unfamiliar with half the terms and look, it took me an hour to learn how to talk when I first got to SL, and it must be even harder now – do I click that little chat balloon or the other button and what’s the difference between “Communicate” and “Talk” or whatever the buttons say, all you really want to do is ask someone where the fun is.
And Dazzle – well, dazzle is all skin and no bones. It looks nice but it doesn’t change very much. Just like search didn’t change anything, just made things more complicated, and the world has gotten so large that you need a thesaurus to try to figure out what words to use when you’re looking to narrow down the choices.
But here’s the question – so what?
One received orthodoxy is to dumb down the interface, make it easier to use, nest the tools and buttons and menu items so that the new user is faced with only a few easy choices. The conventional wisdom is that someone gets to SL and they’re so confounded with choice that they leave instead of face the grueling tasks of figuring out how to fly, drive, walk, teleport, build, chat, IM, join groups, search the grid.
But a few things occur to me. And one is that this orthodoxy presumes a few things: a) that it’s better to start dumb and get smarter, b) that if you could figure out how to do the simple stuff with your viewer that you’d be on the fast track to many long happy hours on the grid and that c) Linden needs to get to work simplifying things.
But I wonder. I mean, first – hasn’t this been tried before? If the viewer is such a clunky soggy mess of buttons, then what about the OnRez viewer? The whole point of it was to simplify the newbie experience. In fact, the whole CSI build was based on that premise – and gosh, Giff must think I have it in for them, and I don’t, but they were talking about CSI as an “ongoing series with characters and new adventures” and now they’re shutting it down because “it was always the plan”. The OnRez viewer was not always planned to become obsolete in 6 months, in my opinion.
But my point is that we’ve tried dumbed-down. And then I think about my own experience – and frankly, I had no clue. I’m not a big video game person. I mean, sure, PC games maybe, but X-Box is a mystery to me, and it only has 6 or 8 or whatever buttons, and I can never combine them the right way regardless of the game, my character always jumps when he’s supposed to crouch.
So the SL viewer seemed insanely difficult to me – so many buttons, so much to learn, and this on TOP of learning where to go, how to talk, who to talk to, and what the culture was all about, the norms, the attitudes, the list of things to see or places to go.
But if it was so difficult, and the viewer is open source – then surely someone, somewhere, would have created an interface so amazingly simple that we’d all be sending newbies off to download a copy?
But maybe the orthodoxy is wrong. Maybe we all secretly thrill to the fact that we conquered it? Maybe we all feel a sense of pride that we’ve mastered some arcane menu feature, that we’ve actually experienced those little moments of “flow” when our abilities came up against a challenge that was just slightly more than our capacities and we conquered it? And maybe it’s the challenge of it, and maybe it’s the buffet we’re given, both as newbies and as experienced pros – that there’s always another button right around the corner, or there’s always the debugging menu to learn, or some new little piece of LSL, or learning how to hack the viewer so we can create mega prims (I can’t remember a time when everyone got so charged up about adding ANOTHER button to the viewer as the mega prim creation buttons).
We’ve got some time to invest. Priorities to set. M talked about optimizing the experience and trying to grab those newcomers to the grid by their lapels and getting them, somehow, to STAY. And sure, it’s probably elitist to say this, but maybe if you can’t figure out the interface you’re really not going to get the best of grid, and you’re not going to want to stay in any case. But I don’t think it’s elitist….kids who master some new move combination on Playstation are hardly elitist, they’re just on the road to mastery, drilling down through an interface trying to learn its arcane commands so they can get just a little bit better, kill a little bit faster. And I’ve been checking out some games and platforms lately and honestly, after you master the 2-3 buttons you’re given, well, there’s nothing left to LEARN, and sure there’s social stuff, but have a look at someone’s Facebook profile – it’s a mad cluttered mess of widgets and buttons, and little things to master and games to play – maybe we LIKE complexity, maybe it’s the nature of the new cyber reality.
So maybe we should question some of the received orthodoxies – and maybe the viewer is better than we think it is. Dumbed down didn’t work. A dumbed down viewer, a dumbed down orientation experience, and a dumbed down OnRez marketplace and here we are – generally using the viewer we were born with, loading stuff up to and shopping at SLE, and using the whole Grid for orientation as soon as we can get ourselves off Help Island – because the bar’s set early.
Conquer this, the experience says, and untold riches await. Don’t, and maybe you weren’t cut out for this game in the first place. You can always go back to the X-Box, it only has a dozen or so buttons afterall.
Thought provoking perhaps, but I really can’t come to the same conclusions:
1. On “It would have been done already”: With the constant client updates and patches, any modification currently won’t last till the next patch.
2. The interface modding is terrribly complicated and build codewise, not some WYSIWYG interface interaction designers prefer. So you’d at least need a team of 2 ‘experts’ to get going with modifications.
3. With the investment involved (because of the difficulty in the construction, unlike interface mods in say, world of warcraft, who have outdone themselves in making it accessible to users as the interface is so relevant to the user) and the constant need for updates, it’s just not worth the time/effort to mod the public client.
4. Private clients are already being modded, but mostly in code. Nicholaz of course, apart from performance issues also added interface options such as dynamic stretching of pictures.
5. With every update – the interface seems to get worse. Starting with the communicate options all getting grouped, voice panels, the shouting dazzle skin and now the main chat window constantly disappears unless you press the little balloon to the side.
6. The first user experience is inexcusable. There are several good writeups on the major flaws – not just by sloppy work, but by design – in this first hours of SL.
7. I don’t think this ‘mastery of the interface’ is relevant at all. Sure, maybe it filters the new users down towards the users ‘willing to make an efford’ – like the early days firefox theory (people who use fire fox are smarter, because they have the will and know how to install a new browser) but this is not something to be proud about for a platform that tries to stay clear of this ‘geek niche’. Crap interfaces are exactly what they are, especially when trying to make an open world for everyone as ‘advertised’
8. The interface mods are not ‘dumbing donw’ the experience, its about creating a less steep learning curve, which means prioritization in the interface – there is a reason some buttons are bigger on this website, and some are text. These reasons are by no means represented in the interface of SL
9. I think the point to be made is ‘would a better user interface and first user experience significantly boost retention rate’, or is there something about SL that still won’t appeal to over 90% of initial sign ups, and does -that thing- deserve prioritization. In my opinion that will depend on what direction M will try to steer the ship first, as I’ve written about here.
Oh I don’t think you have it in for us. You are half right. CSI was meant to go for several months but not in perpetuity. The OnRez viewer, however, we were indeed hoping to continue to enhance for a long time. We decided to shift our focus.
I say look at SL’s growth rate. You’ve tapped out the number of people willing to put up with the accessibility and usability problems. But I do agree that better UI isn’t a silver bullet. There’s a long list of barriers to usage that doesn’t stop at UI, some around accessibility, technology requirements, cultural attitudes, and of course what should really come first: purpose.
But it is good to question these things!
Bingo Giff. I’m with you.
Questioning the sacred cows is a way to circle around the real question – which is purpose.
The received wisdom is that we need to do things like improve the interface because we need to make the platform more widely accessible and remove the barriers to entry for the ‘casual’ explorer.
But what if you take these sacred cows and rip them apart a little.
Hypothetical –
What if instead of simplifying the user interface you made it MORE COMPLICATED? Just asking the question points to the idea that maybe we should be questioning the very assumptions on which all these received orthodoxies are based. What if the masses are all headed somewhere else? What if they’re going to be playing on little Metaplace apps all over the Web? What if they’re going to be addicted to Spore, and setting up little 3D rooms off of their MySpace profiles?
Maybe SL is destined to become increasingly specialized with more complex tools for visualization, simulation, creation, and art because, let’s face it, you can clean up the interface all you want but it doesn’t mean the masses will show up.
Here’s a what if:
- What if instead of cleaning up the buttons you add MORE. Say, embed a sculpty program like Cel’s SculptyPaint. Add MORE stuff to learn, and make it part of the “build tools” – add the ability to make sculpts from within the UI. Enable more complex builds rather than simplify.
- You add prim animations as its own interface.
- What if instead of making the camera and controls easier, you made them HARDER. Include the ability to program deeper camera paths, focus settings maybe, shutter speeds?
- What if you built a deeply detailed particle generation engine within the viewer. With a 100 little buttons and knobs, letting you push particles to their extreme outer limits.
Deepen the interface, make it more complex, (and deal with all the other issues like grid stability which is increasingly a cost of entry and survival issue and not a “feature”) and maybe you end up with a small group of users but they’re people who want to push the limits of simulation, 3D modeling, artificial intelligence, and machinima?
Now, I also totally agree with Digado. Because the interface is designed by someone who would never get a job at Apple. It’s a joke of usability design. (Although, IMHO, so is Maya and it still sells). But should we really be redesigning the interface because we want what’s THERE to be easier to use by the newbie and casual “surfer”…or should we be redesigning it so that it’s useful to those who need more powerful tools so that they can extend and deepen the platform beyond a beach house build or a classroom?
Food for thought, but the orthodoxy I’m questioning is as Giff points out: to what PURPOSE all these proposed changes and improvements?
I think the major problem to recognise here is the interface doesn’t match the (communicated/perceived)proposition of Second life.
It’s really as simple as that, the purpose.
- Lack of incentive makes people less willing to learn the interface – when its this complicated, they leave. Apparently for 90% there is no clear ‘gain’ from taking the time and effort to learn about the interface – which to me is perfectly understandable at this point.
- The 3D photoshop (a term coined by Eric Rice) application you get by introducing the features as you posted them, means repositioning second life as exactly that (as written about in the earlier article), and would just shift the ‘niche’ from a ‘3D facebook’ to a ‘3D deviant art’.
- The market SL addresses benefits from being browser-like. ‘Maya is complicated and still sells is true’, but the obvious difference is Maya is goal oriented, and a focus product for a specific niche, of tech savvy people (how many people inside the ‘mass market’ (early and late majority) will use maya? Again it comes down to SL trying to be everything to everybody.
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P.S. – A common misconception is to think ‘browser like’ means ‘looks like a browser’ but it’s not. A browser is a great way to navigate trough 2D spaces, but that doesn’t make it true for 3D spaces (anyone who has ever been in an activeworlds based world will know this).
However, every button in a default browser is either task oriented or ubiquitous. The affordances used have become cross language conventions, which has made broad adoption possible very quickly. SL, if it wants to maintain the proposition of being everything to everyone, needs to use these common conventions and affordances to make their interface as intuitive as a browser.
Hmm Dusan, can open, worms everywhere….
My tuppence : we need a simpler UI for the casual visitor AND we need a more complex (read: professional) UI for the committed builder/resident/businessperson. In other words stop trying to make one size fit all and realise that there is a natural divide between ‘visitors’ and ‘residents’ and create two separate but complimentary clients to accommodate them – a simple to use browser AND a pro-level creation client.
Reflect that divide in the way we access SL too – free feature-limited access for ‘visitors’ and a subscription-based full-access for ‘residents’. Virtual world usage will naturally divide this way anyway, we should be smart enough to realise that now and plan around it.
Too many of the discussions around SL and other virtual worlds focus on the technical problems and possibilities (Dusan’s blog is a welcome exception to this!) because the discussion, and to a large extent the actual platform itself, is being led by developers. Not surprising for such an emergent platform but not always very helpful either. We’d get nowhere without the codeheads, but very few will have the vision a platform like SL needs. It’s not enough to imagine the technical possibilities of virtual worlds – you have to judge whether anyone will actually want to use those possibilities and what for.
In the end it’s always about the people, not the code.
Digado – great points. But I suppose I’m opening up these discussions not so much because I believe the client is amazing, but to highlight that we have all these discussions about it and about the SL experience without being entirely sure that your stated purpose is TRUE.
Does the proposition that SL needs to be all things to all people stand? If it does, then I’m with Eris and you – let’s do up a simpler client. Hey, any improvement is an improvement. But if you’re truly going for the “we’re here for everyone – your grandmother, your kids, your browsing and exploring and experiencing desires” then sure, we need to have a stripped down, elegant, and easy-to-grasp client.
I’d propose however that the purpose and reality are increasingly at odds. Second Life is NOT being used for casual browsing – it’s being used for people who are deeply committed and are spending increasing numbers of hours in world. The community isn’t growing, but average user hours are. Concurrency is growing, but slowly.
And as Giff has pointed out, the mass media approach has moved on to other platforms – casual games, MTV, There.com (or back to There.com), custom apps, 2D worlds, etc.
So, if the masses are moving on, are we trying to lure them back? Or are we instead seeing the rise of Second Life as the “site of deepest engagement” – a place that appeals to and attracts folks who are going far deeper than dancing and hanging out at the beach – artificial intelligence researchers, educators, simulation folks, architects, artists, etc. If so, then you’re looking at a target audience that maybe is willing to overcome the learning curve if the tools keep getting more robust.
And all of this, of course, makes no difference if the grid isn’t stable. I’m taking as a given that if they don’t fix the asset server and improve grid uptime that they’ll never last in the long run.
So…well, I agree with you. I WANT Second Life to be a 3D platform that really DOES connect all of humanity. But Philip’s been going on for a year now about how “the brands came too early, we weren’t ready for a mass influx, and really, it’s schools and business-to-business and collaborative platforms where we’re REALLY at” which doesn’t sound a lot to me like “connecting all of humanity” (at least in the short term) and would imply that we should be building out tool sets for these target audiences rather than worrying about whether your newbie who came in for a peek around can find the “talk button”.
But look. I’m willing to give this a shot. Or pose a question – what does it REALLY take to make a simpler viewer? Let’s say one whose buttons and tools are so simple that they can mostly withstand the many updates and patches that Linden itself releases? Is that possible? How hard is it? Can we create a “newbie viewer” easily or is it monumentally difficult? And what would it take to motivate someone, anyone, to sit down and actually sketch something out?
Maybe I’m way too cynical but Linden’s switch in emphasis to education and corporate usage seemed to be motivated by the need to keep SL commercially viable, and little else. They’ve tacitly acknowledged they can’t/won’t do much to protect IP within SL so they have to shift the inworld economy to something that doesn’t really require it – and suddenly we have corporate users clustering behind firewalls and education budgets being lured with ‘one avatar per child’ bait. Those users will always be welcome and important to SL but it seems like a short-term strategy to tide us over till the crowds return?
SL is the “site of deepest engagement”? Great phrase but why limit ourselves to that? Why does it have to be one or the other – dancers OR designers? We can have both, in fact we NEED both – but we should lead each one down a slightly different pathway into SL and realise that they came, and will ultimately stay, for slightly different reasons.
Sorry, that’s fourpence now…i’ll stop….
@Dusan: One thing I think is worth considering with the idea of seeing SL as just the ‘deepest platform out there’ – in a way intentionally raising the bar to get in so you get a dedicated (creative) core – is I just haven’t really spotted something that would make me enthusiastic about the idea of ‘filtering trough interface’.
Filtering trough content, by peers, by advertising/positioning all work for me because it allows growth. You prioritize, specialise, become remarkable in your field and grow. But filtering trough interface is just a poor option given the choice of ‘fixing the interface and re-position’ or ‘make our software inaccessible to but the most enlighted’ on so many levels. The problem is, if you want to continue the maya comparison, is that SL is a social platform, and the essence of the entire project is the human factor.
Without that you’d be much better off designing in maya, or listening to music in iTunes, or watching pretty pictures in GTA IV of Flickr. Creation is sharing, not just with likeminded techs and other ‘3D artists’ but with a broad community. Inspiration doesn’t come from just navel gazing within one small niche, it’s culture brought to you from a diverse group of people.
So in whatever way you can amplify and facilitate this human factor, you should – and the proposition above has the counter effect, not just on the entry level, but also in the long term. Think of how that would shape a community, how it IS shaping the community.
I WANT SL to reach the masses. I want dancers and community and explorers and wanderers and people who just want to mosey on through and check out the Greenies and then hit a music gig or go to a gallery. And the current client is an impediment to that – along with all the other impediments, and sacred cows and so on.
OK. So, I throw out the sacred cows and you guys have convinced me – it’s a sacred cow for a reason. We need a simpler way to interact with the world. So let’s get moving shall we?
[...] The Interface One received orthodoxy is to dumb down the interface, make it easier to use, nest the tools and buttons and menu items so that the new user is faced with only a few easy choices. The conventional wisdom is that someone gets to SL and they’re so confounded with choice that they leave instead of face the grueling tasks of figuring out how to fly, drive, walk, teleport, build, chat, IM, join groups, search the grid. [...]
[...] recently talked about the Sacred Cows of Second Life and whether they needed some debunking. One of them was the [...]