Virtual worlds are not an isolated media form. A world such as Second Life is an early and outstanding example of an environment where the users create the content. Developments in web2.0 or social media or whatever these new media are called, are often very similar to what happens in Second Life and other virtual worlds. By the way: if you want to convince your company or institution to experiment with virtual environments, it is often a good idea to consider those experiments as part of a whole package of social media efforts. It is easier to understand what happens on the Metanomics show in Second Life for instance if people already are used to text-based live blog and chat sessions.
Back to the similarities between virtual worlds and other social media. One important example is the discussion about the User Interface (UI). I have been reading a nice article about this aspect of the user experience on ReadWriteWeb: The Rise of Contextual User Interfaces.
The philosophy of the old school UI is simple, and is still the philosophy of the current Second Life client:
Every imaginable choice was thrown at users at once and it was up to the poor user to figure out what to do.
The new school however is inspired by Apple:
The new interfaces are winning people over because they are based on usage patterns instead of choices. The key thing about new UIs is that they are contextual – presenting the user with minimal components and then changing in reaction to user gestures. Thanks to Apple, we have seen a liberating movement towards simplistic, contextual interfaces.
In essence, what it means is that the user should be able to find new tools when she is ready for them. In the Second Life context, this could mean for many users that for instance building tools don’t have to manifest themselves immediately, at a moment when the user still has to learn how to move and look around, and still has to find out how to contact other individuals and groups.
On Second Thoughts, in No, It’s Not Really About the User Interface, Prokofy Neva stresses the importance of the Search (or, more appropriately, the Find) function. That is a function which is crucial from the very first hours in Second Life. The post by Prokofy Neva is a reaction on the Design Contest one finds at Dusan Writer’s Metaverse. Neva asked newbies about obstacles and the user interface as such was… irrelevant. Every games has its viewers that you have to get used to. Even help desks are not crucial for newbies. What is important are jobs for newbies and a list of things to do. Now, in my opinion, a clever user interface could make it easier to find out where one can find which jobs and at which events one can participate with what kind of groups and associations.
Linden Lab, the owner of Second Life, is working to improve the user experience. CEO Mark Kingdon of Linden Lab recently said that the findings of research in social media are taken into account and that not everyone wants to be a content creator. It seems Linden Lab is developing an expandable interface, which grows with the experience of the user, so this could be in the line of thinking of contextual user interfaces.
I experienced a nice example of an elegant interface which seems particularly well adapted for the users’ needs. This was not in Second Life but in the virtual environment for the upcoming vBusiness Expo, which is organized on the OLIVE platform of Forterra Systems (registration is closed now). More about that interface in a next post.
Roland Legrand
