The Otherland Group - Blog

The importance of having shadows Or: realism in virtual worlds

What is the difference between the two pictures above? Realism? Immersion? Fun? Success? Both are rendered from Virtual worlds. The left one is from Gaia an low end (and extremely successful 2.5D world. The right picture is taking from Playstation Home, probably the most realistic virtual word of today, only accessible with a Sony Playstation 3.

Hamlet Au, one of the most famous authors in the Second Life Blogospere recently posted an arcticle about a new experimental version of Second Life, which provoked a lot of comments immediately. He questioned if it was really desireble to have more graphics effects, more realism in Second Life - especially if this leads to different user experiences among the users - and quoted some interesting numbers:

Top virtual worlds/MMOs by use, as of 2008:
- World of Warcraft, 10 million subscribers
- Habbo Hotel, 8 million monthly active users
- RuneScape, 5 million monthly active users
- Club Penguin, 4 million monthly active users
- Webkinz, 4 million monthly active users

He concludes, that people probably don't want realistic 3D worlds, as 4 of 5 of the most successful virtual worlds are 2.5D and the only 3D one is certainly not "high end" or "realistic". 

I can't follow his line of reasoning though.  While I won't argue his numbers (showing that a lot of 2.5D worlds are vastly more popular than next gen 3D ones), it is tough to draw conclusions from such a fact. When two factors are correlated this just means that they are ... correlated, NOT that one is the result of the other in a cause-and-effect relationship. :) Assuming cause-and-effect when there is correlation is one of the most popular mistakes in logic.

METAVERSE08 Usability in Second Life - Making sense of business

"The Otherland Group"-CEO Markus Breuer is presenting at Metaverse 08 and I'll take some notes ;)

It's important to optimize virtual environments in accordance with the functions and aims that my presence in this world has. Providing an agreeable environment is one of those aims. It makes people come back.

Usability optimization has a very positive effect in ROI, on the web this is compensated within 6 to 8 months.

In Second Life Usability is a problem because
a) you deal with user generated content
b) SL is a usability nightmare of it's own

* Make signs readable from the point where people arrive when teleporting
* If your cool architecture makes it had for avatars to navigate: offer them help.
* Design for avatars that have a cam 2m behind and 1m above them.
* Don't lead people into dead ends or hide access points.
* Help people find orientation
* Help people get their processes straight: what can I do?
* Bot that give cryptic instructions are not helpful
* Tell users exactly what you need them to do
* Price tags and orientation maps are cool, too

Hints for improvemets:
* Ask experts
* Ask users (best!)

There is even already a ISO standard for user involvement in usability design: ISO 13407

If people have more fun there is more ease and more ROI.

The Otherland Group developed a design pah that involves users and that is as fast as the classical "expert" path. What are the users needs, desires, abilities and what methods do they use?

Build personas and let them act in scenarios.
Test, test often, document your tests, analze quickly.
Document on video, have a second room for viewing.

Thus you develop a real understanding for the user.

My golden rule, says Markus, is: "Make UCD, involve the user, test often."

Usually 8-12 users find all the problems. (1000 do not find more.)
Testing is NOT expensive.
Not testing can become expensive.
The later you fix the errors, the more expensive by a factor of 10 to 100.

Design for the avatar.
Do walk-throughs often.
Do fly-throughs, too.
Set the viewing range to standard.
Show people where they are and what they can do.
Billboards and posters are not necessarily evil.

These principles don't lead to boring sites and SIMs.

New Dazzle Look for Second Life - Old wine in ...

Tonight I read about a new First Look Viewer for Second Life, Dazzle, downloaded it and played around with it a bit. For those who don't know Second Life in Detail: First Look Viewers are new versions of the client software, that you need to access Second Life, which are not ready for prime time yet. They usually change some basic features of Second Life (or just the front end) and users can try them out for a while, before the new features are integrated into the general release. First Look clients are not Market Research. All of the features, Linden Lab releases with First Look Viewers so far, have been incorporated into the main version later.

I was very much excited to test this out, as this new version was announced with words like:

We’re pleased to announce First Look: Dazzle, a “refresh” for the Second Life viewer’s appearance which makes the UI (User Interface) more accessible and pleasing.

It is my strong belief, that the shortcomings of the current user interface of Second Life are one of the major issues leading to the extremely low user retention especially in the first 30 - 90 minutes. Learning Second Life is NOT easy for the average internet user. ANY improvement of the client's usability would be extremely welcome to me. Alas ...

... after playing around with Dazzle for 30 minutes I can only say: deeply disappointing!

What has happened is basically nothing more than the application of a new skin and color scheme. Cosmetic changes. Pure facelifting. Some icons have been changed. The style of windows, buttons and other interface elements is now basically that of a "polished Windows NT/XP" and everything has been made a little brighter.

Nothing else was changed in a substantial way! The illogical grouping of commands into menus with arcane or misleading names is still the same. Some important commands are still well hidden, rarely needed ones appear in the menu top levels. I wonder, how one can say, that any of these changes improved usability or accessibility at all (some texts are more readable maybe; stronger contrasts).

This leads me again, to question the way this company, Linden Lab, is doing user experience design. I honestly wonder

• How many user interviews have been made (professionally done) before this project was started?
• Have the interim versions been tested with real users (especially newbies) in a controlled environment?
• Was there any comparative testing (old and new versions with different groups)?
• What were the goals of this project?
• Which measurable performance indicators have been defined to check, if (which) goals have been achieved?

To be honest, I very much doubt that anything like this happened. This looks like a bunch of enthusiastic engineers got together and attacked some weaknesses of the current viewer/client - guided by their own taste or suggestions in publicly available literature and eager to demonstrate the relatively new feature of "XML-based customizability" introduced to the SL viewer last year. Disappointing.

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