Transforming the Second Life Experience with Big Spaceship

As we have mentioned previously, tailoring the Second Life platform to make it easier for new Residents to begin experiencing the virtual world is one of our primary objectives moving forward. With that in mind, we’re pleased to announce that Linden Lab has engaged award-winning interactive design agency Big Spaceship as a partner in transforming the Second Life experience.

The goals of the project are to dramatically simplify the sign-up stage, ease users’ introduction into Second Life, and quickly connect people to relevant content and experiences in Second Life. Big Spaceship is well known for their work creating compelling online experiences that are approachable and engaging. [ http://www.bigspaceship.com/ ]

Linden Lab will leverage this expertise to explore various approaches to streamlining the “first hour” experience, from the Second Life Web site and registration through the Viewer and first in-world experiences.

Q: Who is Big Spaceship?
A: Big Spaceship is an interactive design agency with expertise in user experience strategy, interface design, and Web development. Past and current clients include Adobe, Sony, HBO, Nike, Coca-Cola and Disney.

Q: Why did Linden Lab choose Big Spaceship for this project?
A: Big Spaceship has demonstrated excellence in the area of online interactive experience design. They are widely recognized for their work creating intuitive and elegant branded experiences and has a deep understanding of social systems and online communities.

Q: What is Big Spaceship doing for Second Life?
A: Big Spaceship will be working with internal teams at Linden Lab to research, design, prototype and test web sites and user interfaces that dramatically lower the learning curve for experiencing Second Life. Big Spaceship will employ a user-centered design methodology to develop innovative solutions for streamlining the complexity of Second Life without limiting the freedom and expressiveness that makes Second Life so powerful for so many people.

Q: How will this project affect current Residents?
A: In the near-term, as Big Spaceship designs and prototypes potential experiences, there will be no impact on current Residents. It’s our hope that by dramatically simplifying the initial user experience, many more users will be able to experience the excitement of Second Life, ultimately creating a richer and more diverse community of Residents.

Perhaps you should be concentrating more on making the existing users stay, those who have built the grid and its content for you, otherwise all these new users that are supposedly coming in through this 'fantastic' new portal will find nothing but flexidongs and tumbleweed.

I've looked at their website. All fluff and no trousers. It doesn't impress me, and I very much doubt if many others will be either.

When will you guys at the Lab grasp that it's not the signup experience that puts people off - it's the costs of buying land if you want to make something your 'home' in SL. Many just aren't willing to shell out that kind of money for an experience they aren't sure about - but aren't really able to experience fully until they've spent the money. Sandboxes just don't cut it, because they are griefer magnets, and it puts people off trying to figure out the building tools when some muppet has orbited them for the 5th time.

Why don't you just get honest with us and tell us that you're only interested in getting big corporations here, and the rest of us just simply do not matter?

Good luck in trying to bury the Openspace bad news off the front page of the blog - but we haven't forgotten.

Er..

/me looks forward to seeing this build but, uh.., bad timing!!

Er..

/me edits the post 3 times but that's the best I can come up with. I'm pretty surprised to see this news with the openspace stuff still being such a hot issue. Yer adding fuel to that fire, Katt..

Crikey. That wouldn't fly in a PG-rated sim!

Many Residents tell me that expanding the number of new Residents joining Second Life would be valuable for them. As customers, for one.

Perhaps you can see other value to Residents in making it easier to invite new folks into SL, and in making it easier for them to enjoy the experience?

TFF!

So will LL recruit a group of knowledgeable and experienced residents to be involved in a feedback loop and alpha test the designs? If so I will sign up.

Absolutely!

There's still a lot of anger over the openspace stuff and the lack of updates about that too, though. There's some 6000+ posts over in that subforum, only a couple of which are from Lindens..

Sure, bring teh newbies but please consider an update on the openspace stuff, too.

Yay, an agency with an actual track record. How (in broad terms) will they be getting involved? Are they to be concentrating on the signup and orientation maze, or will this project also be about the viewer reorganization that's been talked about for along time?

Are they already creating content within SL, and if so, where?

It's not exactly complicated at the moment, is it?

These are the things that put people off, in no particular order.

1) Computer not up to spec to begin with.
2) Logging in to find it such a painful laggy experience.
3) Getting to the welcome area(s) and being orbitted by griefers.
4) Finding out just how expensive this game is going to cost them when they want to buy land.
5) Finding all the 'popular' places are either sex related, clubs full of afk zombies, shops full of campers, and wondering if they're the only actual live person on the grid.

If people don't have the patience to get through what is already a fairly basic signup procedure then quite how do you expect them to achieve much in-world?

No, they won't be creating content within SL.

I agree that expanding the number of new Residents (with a capital 'R'?) will be very valuable for the vendors, like myself, currently in SL.

But, there absolutely must be equal, if not more emphasis on the stability of SL and the SL Viewer.

After all, what's the sense in wasting the resources to get a new 'Resident' in-world for a few weeks for them only to leave after one too many Sim crashes, Inventory glitches, Viewer crashes, or horrific Group Message Lag (intentionally with a capital 'L')?

LL not only needs to attract the new resident but also keep them here for the long haul.

Otherwise, SL will bleed Residents faster than they can infuse them into the system.

while i agree that the initial cost of ownership seems high (i can't help but compare sl to web hosting), i also am concerned about the longevity of sl

i have invested a lot into sl, i have 17 sims, but more importantly, i have spent 10 months of 20-30 hours a week in building what i have (i won't get much into seeing half of that time as being lost with the proposed OS price increase)

back on topic: the initial user experience does have the perception of being very hard in a lot of the world. some experts in the eLearning community regularly say that 4 to 20 hours is needed in order to do basic tasks (tp and search)

i think 20 hours is WAY overkill, BUT . . . there is the perception that sl is difficult to start in

and perception runs many things in the world. anything that helps that perception, such as your new effort, can only benefit sl, me, and the entire community

thank you for continuing to improve sl on many levels

i do my part in the world and would consider myself an evangelist for sl, in fact, i am facilitating a session called Give Second Life a Second Chance at an international conference in a week

Absolutely. How about letting people pick last names, so that Elizabeth Bimmler can appear in SL as Elizabeth Bimmler, not ElizabethBimmler Haystack? How about letting people change their names, so that if they don't want to be known as TrollBoy914 Miasma they don't have to stick with it? How about letting us invite people and provide them an avatar and inventory to pick up, legitimately... it's against the TOS to create an account for a friend, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to set one up for them? I've also kind of got mixed feelings about the third party welcome areas... the more decisions you have to make while you're setting up the account the more you're likely to go "this is just too complex".

There's a bunch of suggestions like these in the JIRA for ways to make things easier on newbies...

We're working on a number of fronts!

For the latest update on Stability and Grid work, see FJ Linden's post here: http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/10/28/ongoing-updates-from-the-grid-from-fj-linden/

Certainly Linden Lab is working on better stability, but we're also working on a number of things intended to make that "first hour" experience better.

We feel that it's important to keep working on both, as I hope you'll agree.

What would you like to see change in the Viewer or the inworld experience?

Well it seems to me that the focus should be on maintaining and expanding the premium accounts so there's a base of financially contributing players. While I've met a lot of freebie players I like, it's difficult for me to see how loading the system down with more is a win for anyone.

We're in the midst of a pretty nasty adjustment for OS Sim owners that will have the effect of hurting a lot of your paying customers. Supposedly this is based on the cost of increased loads on the servers largely due to too many people on them, so bringing in more people will only exacerbate the problem. If they don't contribute financially, I suppose those of us who do will be hit with even higher costs, but that is a pretty self limiting strategy.

You also have to make them want to STAY!

As far as their company site goes, another Flash site where I can't change the size of the awful white, red, & fuschia text on a black background, UGH! The few minutes I was there gave me a headache. Hope they do better than that for LL & SL.

Not that I feel all that inclined to comment on topic, but here goes.


The easiest way to streamline the new user experience is to make a New User Viewer.

Surely it is possible to navigate and explore SL with 20 buttons or less. ie: built in LMs

It would also need an extremely simplified build dialog(gotta be able to rez all those freebies)

my 50usd per OS worth

Alisha

Hmm why all the panic about the first hour experience ???..........or is it because of the OS policy you somehow have to replace the residents that are gonna leave

Now there's a thought !

Ok on topic, the first hour experience isn't really the problem, but its a good idea to try make things more interesting and simpler when people join.

In my opinion you should rather concentrate on how to make the wonderful experience of secondlife interesting and more attractive after the first hours, days, weeks etc........so that these new residents actually stay.

This is where alot of work needs to be done and it has nothing to do with stabilty......technical stuff etc etc

Maybe acess off-world to in-world with text chat in site.

Being able to join from a social network, and import your friends list from there into SL, IM with those not-yet-joined SL people in the SL client, invite them in via their social network's messaging system from with the SL client, provide them with an avatar like Argent said.

Then folks could enter SL and chat with existing friends rather than joining a 3D world where they have a funny name they only really picked part of and not knowing a soul.

I don't recall ever hearing of big spaceship. Is this related to the Heaven's Gate tragedy from a while back?

yay, lets dumb down SL !!!!

Are you really expecting new residents coming? Is this virtual world so fantastic? No. I don't think so. Secondlife WE residents have been creating is dying. What LL really should get is not new residents, we know, that's honesty for all current users. Don't you know so many residents, including me, are considering when we should leave. This is absolutely SL crisis. New residents will be interested in this issue, NOT Big Spaceship. LL must reconsider their decision, of course openspace price hikes, before it's too late. We really want to save this virtual world for new residents.