This is in from We Are The Network:
Please join us for a discussion every Tuesday at 12PM noon SL (US Pacific Time)
This Tuesday, Dec 15th, we will be at the Epoch Institute in Second Life™
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Working Measures Of Virtual World Engagement and ROI
Have you noticed a pattern in the published descriptions of virtual world projects? I’ve noticed a prototypical write-up pattern that usually answers the following questions in sequence: Who sponsored the project? Who is supposed to be interested in using the virtual environment, and to what end? What interesting or “shiny” features of the build or programming were included? It is, however, all too common that a critical piece of the write-up is missing.
What were the measurable results to go along with the “feel good” impressions and comments that “visitors can” (did they)? Was it a success by some objective measure of the participants? Is there some quantifiable return for the investment, and how much return was there? These questions do not necessarily point at product sales, and in many virtual world projects the target is not direct sales. At the same time, there are quantifiable ways to measure engagement and return on investment.
What are rational measures of engagement and return (which are not the same thing!) for virtual world projects? Which approaches have you seen to creating objective measures? Which seem to work, and which do not? Are there potential measures of engagement and ROI that are not being exploited, would need new software development or automation to collect, or “should be possible” but cannot be accomplished with today’s tools?
