So, anyway....yeah, viewers.

In my usual daily fumblings with the helping of new people slide into second life with as little distress as possible, one thing that constantly bugs me is how the Second Life client seems to go out of it's way to make usability impossible. People can never find things and if they can find something, sometimes don't understand what it is or how to use it.

So. I aim to correct this. I have made a (at the moment) theoretical design of what I think an SL client should look like. Oh yes.


http://JamesRandom.deviantart.com/art/My-Second-Life-Interface-114175673

Click the pic to make it big.


Discuss (and share your own UI designs, if you have any).

I don't see a huge difference, other than color scheme - which ought to be under user control anyway. The one great thing is help going directly to the knowledge base.

I don't see any xstreet button, but I think that's a horrible idea anyway. It would be like Microsoft forcing a 'Shop Microsoft' button in IE - which they sort of do with favorites, but at least you can delete that.

Likewise for Explore. It represents one particular set of biases. There's nothing wrong with that, but it shouldn't be given a special place in the viewer. Let people use their favorite search engines to pick their own favorite sites that review SL.

Sorry - it looks a lot like the silver theme that already comes with the viewer to me. The main improvement I see is if the "Type here to chat" field stays open all the time so we don't have that embarrassing typing into thin air, hitting "E" and jumping into the air at completely inappropriate times.

I don't feel so bad doing that as a dog -- dog's are expected to do stuff like that, but it looks really stupid in human form.

Oh - and I wouldn't need a gestures button at all. What gestures I rarely use are unintrusive animations and are coded into the F1 - F12 keys.

I think it would be nice to add or remove buttons and task bars as you can with most Micro-manage-soft programs, but I wouldn't change very much at this point for myself.

I don't get what i am supposed to be seeing.

Well you can certainly remove buttons from the current client if you already know what you're doing.

As for being 'different' it's not designed to be vastly different because people are already used to the current client. It's merely designed to be a colour scheme that ties in with how the final website will look like (but i used blue instead of puke green) and easier to find your way around because of the clearly/larger text.

The xstreet button is next to the L$ button near your balance in the top corner.

Stuff I theoretically added were:

*preferences button: Next to help. If you press it, it brings up the preferences window with graphics as the selected tab by default (being that its the most commonly needed)

*explore: a quicker way for new people to get to showcase without the confusion of going through search.

*help: getting to the KB within the client.

*labelled media functions: because among the common newbie questions is 'how do I listen to music?', or 'how do I use voice?'

*larger inventory button: Because another thing newbies have trouble finding from the start is their inventory.

*speak instead of talk: Changed this because two buttons labelled the same is a noob thing to do.

Well.. here's the changes I'd personally make.

Have two distinct modes: the Edit mode and the Not Editing mode. Don't mix up controls that are only useful in one with those from the other.

Get all the controls used in standard operation, and put them all onto a single small pop-up bar. This would be "buy L$", Xstreet (if we must), Communicate, Fly, Search and Snapshot. The mini-map itself can be made dockable to replace that function, and a double click on it could open the major map, to clear off some of those functions.

Also.. maybe think about bringing back the Events button. For those who aren't super oldies like I am, the Events button used to be where the Build button is now, and took you straight to Events search. It was removed on the grounds that it was too close to the Search button in functionality, but it could be valuable to be able to see what's going on right now with just a click.

Edit would be a single button on the bar as well, and would switch the entire interface to editing mode. This would enable the build controls to be in a nice toolbar in a static position, not an ugly tabbed floating window that inevitably gets in the way.

Oh, and have the option to turn off graphics when in the notecard or LSL editor. Fans don't last forever, ya know.

Good idea, but how hard is Ctrl-P?



saves 1 click, and is the Showcase really worth making that easy to find?



Excellent idea



I would have thought the musical notes were pretty obvious in meaning, but labels aren't a bad idea.



Not a bad thought, but I think the problem is that they don't realise what the button does, rather than they can't find it.



Took me a while to work out what you meant by this, probably because I never turn voice on. probably a good idea.

I don't think the real problem is with the buttons, it's with the menus, which seem to me to be badly organised and it's often not clear what functions are likely to be in which menu.

Don't see the point of the Xstreet button.

The more legible font is great, though.

I thought this was just me, I never see anyone else doing it, but I do it at least once a day. Glad I'm not the only one.

It looks like the regular viewer, except the inventory button is on the other side of the screen.

I don't like the locked chat bar. It gets in the way of taking snapshots.

CTRL P: Would you know abouT CTRL+P on your first log in to SL? Plus some veterans I know still didn't know about CTRL+P - plus, people with disabilities might not be able to manipulate the keyboard properly to activate the shortcut.

Labels: You'd be surprised how many newbies ask me in a day 'how do i listen to music?' This seems to indicate that the music symbol isn't enough.


Xstreet Button:
imagine yourself in the middle of something, like, Roleplay a meeting, dancing and you happen to idly browse Xstreet for something while you're doing the dancing or waiting for someone else to do their part of the roleplay. You see something you like but OH NO! You don't have enough funds on your Xstreet account to buy it. This means you have to go and find a terminal, pay it, then come back. Very inconvenient.

The xstreet button is designed to work exactly like the SLX terminals do, but without the inconvenience of actually having to go to one.

Of course it looks like a regular viewer. That's the point. Familiarity is also a factor when designing something. No point in reinventing the wheel.

The statement that the client "seems to go out of it's way to make usability impossible" suggests that a major rework is in order. Something more than moving a couple buttons around.

You should probably hide the advanced menu from users who can't find the preferences.

I think a major rework is under way, truth be told. LL are being quiet about it but I think they have those chaps from Big Spaceship working on a new UI.

This what I want. A drag-n-dock inteface with dockable windows and customisable button ribbons I can make as many of as I want.

And the world view in a resizeable docking window that I can close.

And then, a debugger/editor like MS and Eclipse have. And a texture editor like PS. And Maya and ... well you know. I think we will get it all one day hopefully =)

But right now drag-n-dock-n-hide windows and custom button ribbons would be excellent.

Technically it's already possible to edit the buttons. But I can't actually get it to save these changes after you log off (IE: I managed to changed Local Chat to Main Chat as an example).

agreed +10