The Otherland Group - Blog

Usability in Virtual Worlds - its all about the business plan

After visiting some more current corporate projects in virtual worlds in the last week, I had to recap my presentation about usability at Metavers08 (see the slides here) I wrote about the topic nearly one year ago, but the situation hasn't improved much: Usability is still an aspect that is considered low priority with many projects in virtual worlds - if it is considered at all. The situation is a bit similar to that on the web in the mid 90s: developers and their clients are much more excited about the new possibilities (if they are still excited) or about spectacular design.

When I am writing this, I don't mean the user experience of the virtual world platforms. Granted, especially Second Life IS a usability nightmare and the new user experience is so "well thought out", that many users who would like to give this virtual world a try, simple run away screaming - or at least shaking their heads. The company behind Second Life seems to have realized this lately, though. While I don't know what they will actually do to improve this sad situation, they at least announced a newly found focus on user experience. And other virtual worlds are much more usable right from the start - sometimes because the platforms are a lot less feature-rich, of course. The little "worldlets", for example, the 3D scenes you can embed into web pages, are very simple, rather limited and you don't need to know (or learn) a lot, to be able to use them.

Better usability is good for your business
Sometimes, the new virtual worlds are significantly more user-friendly, though, because their designers realized that it makes sense to offer an easy entrance, early on. The reason is usually not an altruistic one but simple greed: when you want to create a business with/in a virtual world, you better not make it unnecessarily hard for your (potential) customers!

Many companies "trying out the potential of virtual worlds" these days, still don't seem to think this way. If you look at some of the projects from very well know brands in Second Life for example, it is still not uncommon to appear on their sites and not find the slightest clue about what to expect here and where to find it. Some other projects often are not "designed for the avatar" (avatars don't move and don't "see" like humans). The example to the right comes from an early phase of one of our own projects .

This is not limited to Second Life (and Second Life's basic shortcomings are responsible for these faults). And this can't be excused with "we are just experimenting with marketing/sales/training/conferencing in virtual worlds". Simply because a badly designed experiment is not very useful for evaluating the "potential usefulness" of virtual worlds. ...

Interesting enough ... it isn't too hard to do better. Some 25 years with software design (plus some additional 12 years with web design) have told us, how ...

Technorati Tags: 3d web, second life, ucd, usability, virtual worlds, web 3.d

Usability in Virtuellen Welten - kein Luxus sondern kaufmännisch sinnvoll

Nachdem ich in der letzten Woche noch einmal ein paar "Corporate Locations" in virtuellen Welten besucht habe, musste ich nich einmal an meine Präsentation zu "Usability in virtuellen Welten" auf der Metavers08 denken (Charts dazu hier; englisch) Ich hatte ja schon mal vor einem Jahr darüber geschrieben, aber seitdem hat sich die Situation nicht sehr verbessert: Usability ist immer noch ein Aspekt, der bei solchen Projekten nur eine sehr niedrige Priorität bekommt - wenn überhaupt jemand dran denkt. Das ist ganz ähnlich wie Mitte der 90er im Web: Entwickler sind so begeistert von den neuen Möglichkeiten und von spektakulärem Design, dass alles Andere dahinter zurück fällt.

Das war im Web nicht besonders hilfreich, sobald es darum ging, auch Geschäfte zu machen. Und das ist im virtuellen Raum nicht anders. Interessanterweise ist es aber gar nicht sooo schwierig, es "besser zu machen". Die Erfahrungen aus rund 25 Jahren Software-Ergonomie (und rund 12 Jahren Webdesign) zeigen, wie es geht ...

Technorati Tags: 3d web, metaverse, second life, ucd, usability, virtual worlds, web 3.d

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.

Technorati Tags: 3d web, metaverse, second life, virtual worlds, web 3.d

Kinset and TheMallPlusHow NOT to implement 'Virtual Shopping'

Everyone who ever had the (doubtful) pleasure to listen to one of my presentations about virtual worlds, knows that I consider 'shopping' to be a perfect example for the advantages of virtual worlds technology versus websites. In short: Web based catalogues are perfect for efficient buying Virtual Worlds are perfect for 'shopping'. (More details here; in German.) Others seem to have similar ideas.

Lately, two new 'virtual world environments' appeared on the market, who are explicitely intended to support shops in a 3D online environment: Kinset and TheMallPlus.

Unfortunately, after trying out these two products, I got the impression that their designers did not understand the most important principles of virtual worlds - and of virtual shopping - at all.

Anyone who wants to understand, how - and why - shopping in virtual worlds works, please do NOT check out  Kinset or TheMallPlus !

These two services show, how one can present pictures of products in a 3D environment. What they don't show is why you should do this. Checking out both 'solutions' I could not find any major advantage of this kind of product presentation. Every web-based catalogue is - for most purposes - much better and demands less resources. I am afraid that Kinset and TheMallPlus will discredit the whole idea of using virtual worlds technology for online retailing. :(

Again: 'shopping' is - contrary to the efficient 'procurement of goods' - a social experience. Virtual worlds support this social experience - contrary to websites - by facilitating the immersion in another world together with others. What is needed to make this work is

1. a presentation of my surrounding by using the metaphor of a world/space (both Kinset and TheMallPlus do this),
2. a presentation of myself as an avatar (TheMallPlus tries to, Kinset doesn't) and
3. a shared experience, which happens because I am aware of other people around me and they are aware of me

More about these prerequisites for the virtual world experience here (or simply check out any popular shop in Second Life). It's all about avatars which interact and form relationships (temporary or permanently) and not about playing around with 3D. If I don't support all of the prerequisites for the virtual world experience I can forego 3D presentation -- especially, when the products aren't even presented threedimensional...

Technorati Tags: 3d web, kinset, metaverse, v-commerce, virtual worlds, web 3.d

Virtuelles Shopping - wie es NICHT geht

Wer schon einmal einen Vortrag zum Thema virtuelle Welten von mir gehört hat, weiß, dass ich ein Riesenanwendungspotential im Bereich "Shopping" sehe. Kurz gesagt: Web-Kataloge sind ideal zum effizienten Einkaufen, virtuelle Welten viel besser zum Shoppen. (Mehr Details zu dieser Argumentation hier.) Das sehen andere offensichtlich ähnlich.

So sind kürzlich zwei Produkte auf den Markt gekommen, die sich ausdrücklich dem Shoppen im dreidimensionalen Raum annehmen Kinset und TheMallPlus. Leider habe ich den Eindruck, dass die Entwickler dieser beiden Plattformen überhaupt nicht verstanden haben, worum es beim virtuellen Shoppen geht.

Wer verstehen will, wieso Shopping in virtuellen Welten funktioniert, sollte sich bitte nicht Kinset oder TheMallPlus ansehen!

Diese Projekte zeigen, wie man Produktabbildungen in einer 3D Umgebung präsentieren kann. Sie zeigen aber leider überhaupt nicht auf, wieso man das tun sollte. Bei der hier präsentierten Produkten bietet die 3D-Umgebung überhaupt keine Vorteile. Jeder Online-Katalog ist diesen Ansätzen weit überlegen. Ich habe die große Berfürchtung, dass Angebote wie diese der ganzen Idee von virtuellen Welten und des Shoppens in virtuellen Welten einen Bärendienst erweisen. :(

Nochmal: "Shopping" ist im Gegensatz zur effizienten "Beschaffung von Gütern" ein soziales Erlebnis. Virtuelle Welten ermöglichen - im Gegensatz zu Websites - dies soziale Erlebnis durch das Gefühl der Immersion (des Eintauchens in die virtuelle Welt). Dazu ist unerläßlich

1. die Darstellung einer Welt (das tun Kinset und TheMallPlus),
2. meine eigene Darstellung als Avatar (das tut TheMallPlus, Kinset tut es nicht) und
3. das gemeinsame Erleben, das entsteht, wenn ich andere Avatare wahrnehme, diese mich sehen und einfach und spontan Kommunikation stattfindet

Mehr zu diesen Grundvoraussetzungen einer virtuellen Welt hier (siehe auch das Beispiel aus Second Life hier rechts). Es geht um die Avatare, die zueinander in Beziehung treten, nicht um 3D-Spielereien. Sind die oben genannten Voraussetzungen nicht gegeben, funktioniert die Immersion nicht. Und dann kann ich mir den ganzen Aufwand mit einer 3D-Umgebung besser schenken, insbesondere, wenn die Produkte nicht einmal dreidimensional dargestellt werden.

Technorati Tags: 3d web, kinset, metaverse, v-commerce, virtual worlds, web 3.d