Transforming the Second Life Experience with Big Spaceship

When I joined sl a lot of people were upset that they were promised first land but they never were actually able to get it. There wasnt actually any to get. If you do the first land in any form assign the land, and give the new person the lm.

Originally Posted by Argent Stonecutter
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?
brilliant idea.

People in the first hour need to find a/ community or b/ the promise of community.
In the first hour after orientation island they must see community.
They must feel they can belong.
Its very very hard to set "home' in sl.
I feel unwelcome in SL on my alt because of this(gulps), and on my first av i found it pretty devastating.
Solution- Give every every land owner an "allow anyone " or "allow group" button for set home. Default to off but there. Allow home to be set on roads too. Just do it. let people tick an overide set home land options box in groups interface somewhere and use that set of tools if they need more options, and have non group owned not allow set home if allow everyone is unticked. Its just unfriendly how it is.

Oh and I always heard there are linden run sandboxes for weapons and vehicles and such, i think i may have even read it in the help island stuff, but I never found one. Id say I was a very experienced search user, too. Make going to those an option in the drop down menu. Go on, you know you want to. Or maybe put them in showcase. add a really obvious Linden tab, why not?

Ordinal is right about the user accessability issue. SL must design for cognative and visual accessability. Just being tired and frustrated and facing new things puts many perfectly able folks into a less than ideal functioning states where the cleaner and simpler things are the better.
The more frustrated and angry they get the worse it is. This is just good design sense when aiming for an adult audience.
Who put one of the newbie lessons down a hill in a building? This would be an excellent move if the aim is to watch people who dont yet know they have their cursor in main chat space after clicking the chat button to bring it up to move and cant control their cameras and have a hud blocking their view stand around and log off.

Also if you havent done it already please stop saying you cant go back to new residents. What a horrible thing to say. Just say it a few times and see if you dont feel sad. What a very discouraging thing to say to someone, ever. It took me months to coax my rl friend into leaving the newbie island so she could start seeing what the point was.

Argent those are great points Maybe a whole new highly localised nav map with a little round button the side of the viewer to activate, that has a configurable radar, and a north. I use the current minimap when people start talking to me about compass directions. As well as a sit here on the pie a walk here would be great but i have a feeling itd be technically harsh to do.

I use drop when editing attachments I am making because otherwise I cant find them again in my inventory because i dont seem to be able to change an attachments name too well if its on me. I cant change "Armband" to "currentarmband", detatch and search for currentarmband in my inventory safely so drop is my workaround
If I drop it then if all else fails I know I can always use a sensor to find it on the ground.... drop sure has a big lot of problems.

I like how katt read and responded to things here. It reminds of when havoc4 was being brought in by a responsive and involved team who delivered us huge strides in platform stability while doing their level best to accomodate user needs (sidewinder responded to blog comments fast and as constructively as possible -oops ladders wont work? almost instant response, yay). I hope the new company is like that.

Yes you're right. I used your idea and then tacked on the mandatory eviction after 1 month, which would hopefully stimulate the land market in SL.

A "recently worn" tab in the inventory.

"Undo" and "redo" for clothing and attachment wearing. In addition to the recently worn list.

That would be the way to try on outfits.

I might give a bit more than a month. Someone may only be able to ligin once a week or so, I could see 60 or 90 days.

I wasnt able to read all the posts on this topic becuz of rl time constraints I finished on page 6 so I appologize if this has already been addressed.

One big way to help new residents is with mentors, LL cut its mentor group by a large amount and has it closed to new applicants. I dont think I would have continued to play SL if I hadnt met a mentor, he is the ONLY reason I stayed and no matter how simple or complex the new user interface is I dont think really matters, its the human interaction and the human explanations of how things work. Mentors cost LL NOTHING unlike this new company they hired. Try letting some of your residents help new residents a little more.

i am very happy with my second life experiance. why do you want to change things? You want more dollars. Those of us who have paid your profits to date don't count.
Go on then. Kill Second Life.
What you guys don't get yet is that there are a limited number of people out there who want a second life. You're always gonna be searching for the new, the enticing.
Some day, when we log on to the internet, we will have a virtual world presence. and we will walk among the various "internet sites", and see them in 3d. but second life as it is now is a very "contained" experiance. It's only good for those that want it.

Perhaps you can have them utilize the space on the log-in screen (I have mentioned this before). The idea would be to create a 'popular places' [such as Greenie's Home Rezzable] showcase on the login screen with a small thumbnail picture of the sim and an abstract of what the sim is about. When one of the thumbnails is clicked, the client logs you in and takes you to that sim.
This, I believe, will greatly help new residents discover what Second Life has to offer very quickly, getting them more involved in the experience from an early stage.
The popular places page could also have links back to Orientation Island and Help Island for quick navigation when help is needed for new residents.

Here's the JIRA for that. Vote for it.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2199

That's not the same thing, and wouldn't solve the problem here. You need a tab that doesn't just show currently worn items, but all those that you have worn today, so you can find an attachment again after you take it off.

How about a recent items since tab for received and worn items and you specify the date range?
I.e.; I care about that thing i got 3 days ago and forgot the name.

I believe you can change the date range on the recent items tab.

Alan Cooper is a huge expert in user interface design. He designed Visual Basic which enabled talented, creative people with little computer skills to easily develop high quality programs. Alan's book "About Face" provides many user design principles that are directly applicable to Second Life. It would be fantastic if Linden was to hire Cooper's consulting company to help improve the usability of Second Life. Cooper is located in San Fransisco.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ucd12345

http://www.cooper.com/

I have been working with Visual Basic lately, and you CAN'T possibly be serious. No, really, Visual Basic has absolutely nothing to recommend it for either novices or experts. It is almost impossible to write a high quality program in Visual Basic even if you're an expert, and VB applications written by "creative people with little computer skills" stand out like a gangrenous thumb.

Visual Basic is not much more powerful than LSL, and it has horrendously overcomplicated syntax that makes LSL look like a gem by comparison.

I'm a interactive designer student and for a long time I have had problems with the Second Life viewer interface. Some things are just so "dumb" if I may say so.

Like the default color for what you write in Local Chat.... some kind of blue/purple color that doesn't give your eye a very good contrast against the background. a brighter color would be much better. I know this can be changed but as a default color for newcomers it's not very well thought through.

And then we have the IM's that are presented by tabs in a horisontal presentation. ANd if you're a creator like me who is a member in many active groups the scrolling from left to right and vice versa soon gets very annoying. Why not present the IM tabs in a vertical row. Would save so much space on the screen and also one doesn't have to be as afraid to loose IM conversations just because you can't see the highlighted tab.

Well if you on Big Spaceship wants my expertise send me message inworld and I will be gladely to help you with a heuristic analysis of the interface!

/"From the guy who wants a blimp as christmas present" Samson Swindlehurst

Personally I think all of this hand-wringing over getting new Residents and making them stay is amusing at best. When I consider what I have personally experienced and endured in the 22+ months I have been in Second Life, and lo and behold, I'm still here, I just think it isn't suitable for everyone. Friends in RL look at me like I'm from Mars when I speak of SL so I don't evangelize too much for fear of alienating them all.

I'm sure that those before me would attest to the very same thing. As SL Pioneers I can only imagine what they have gone thru while in this world. LL has a knack for changing gears every few months (i.e. gambling then no gambling; constant land price/policy changes; technical changes that adversely affect significant groups of people, etc.) and, well, it's really a question of how determined one is to maintain their Second Life. I can totally see why the uncommitted don't stick around. The playing field keeps changing which makes this experience not for the faint of heart. If you didn't have to shell out for a better computer to play, invest a small sum of money to just get a decent avatar let alone the huge sums to "buy" and keep land, then indeed I think more people would stay. Not everyone is prepared to take financial risks to "play a game" nor do they necessarily have the talent or wherewithal to learn how to build, script, animate... create content. The social aspect could get tiresome after a bit and some people find that alienating right off the bat esp. when their first contact is at the hand of some seemingly pre-adolescent griefer.

I was fortunate when I began Second Life as I did happen to meet up with some awesome people and basically had a hoot for the first few months as I learned the ropes. I was patient with myself and took the learning curve in stride. I also eventually came to terms with the fact that if I wanted to "evolve" I would have to invest a l'il bit of cash. Fortunately I was able to do this. I also found myself upgrading my hardware so I could have a better experience. This I can only imagine is probably the number one deterrent for most people... either that or they have a lousy internet connection.

Anyways, maybe a survey is in order. Long-term residents surely have qualities in common that have helped keep them in Second Life. Maybe LL already knows what these qualities are and is marketing accordingly but then again maybe not. Personally I don't believe that the first hour I spent here made much of difference save for the fact that I made a couple great connections that made those first few months a laugh riot. Those particular friends are long gone (as far as I know) but I was hardcore and I'm still going strong with my original av no less.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

As a newbie to SecondLife I can actually side with newcomers, but I also understand the concerns of long-time members that actually own land, etc. My suggestion to improve the first-hour(S!!!) experience addresses several of the complaints that I've read. My main problem is that I like to learn as much as I can about a thing when I commence, so any form of dumbing down the interface should be out of the question. If Linden Lab were to allow a fully-downloadable (partial?)world in which to work, many of the other problems would be simultaneously solved. What I mean by this is allowing each Resident the option of setting aside some of their OWN hard drive space for the files and structures now contained only on the servers. For example, if someone has an extra 5+ GB of hard disk space, there really is no reason to NOT let them download a large part of the SecondLife world. This download would obviously not include items marked as "Not downloadable" by the owners of custom objects, but would necessarily include all of the public landmasses flora/fauna, and most importantly, their OWN Avatar. When someone logs on for the first time, they would NOT be connected into the server world with all of the other Residents, but the client would still load and initialize so that, like an RPG single-player game, they could explore the functionality and configurability of the Second Life world WITHOUT having to interact with (say for example) crowds of people standing around the entry portals resulting in nothing but a tremendous slow-down of the SL experience. The chat engine could be configured to allow interaction and questions from a Linden family member, and the option to LogIn should be there at anytime, so people can begin interacting publically as soon as they're ready.

When one chose to log in, they would find themselves all of a sudden surrounded by the online Avatars of other Residents, advertising billboards, private buildings, etc. Until they decide to LogIn they would be able to explore all of the Tutorial Public Islands, etc and get the hang of walking, flying, etc. Most importantly (to ME at any rate) would be the abilities:

to experiment with the configuration in order to eliminate LAGS and other performance issues of the application (before confounding the problem with internet traffic lags, firewall configurations, etc),

to customize their own Avatar (how many people go to the club first, and THEN get dressed??!!!),

to brush up on the myriad of different Views and options (which should persist if only I can figure out how),

and any other issues that one might want to explore on their own BEFORE logging in to the "real" Second Life.

Also, the option should definitely STILL be there for someone to use a thin-client modelling so as not to exclude anyone that doesn't have a lot of extra Hard Drive space available. Perhaps giving people an incentive to download large chunks of the world onto their hard drives would also help ease any server congestion complicated by bandwidth usage due to redownloading the basic structures every time you enter a new room/region. Something like 1000$L per 100MB of download space dedicated (after of course the first required ~150MB for the thin-client space). The only real concern utilizing bandwidth would be how updates of objects are handled (and some of the Knowledge base articles have addressed this issue), placing more emphasis on implementation of downloadable animations and repeating patterns (as well as perhaps the ability to host local copies of EVERY other Avatar that you meet - encrypted of course, or the option to host local copies of your friends' Avatars, etc) rather than having 538 UDP packets each minute (each of which has to also deal with IP protocols/overhead, security scanning, etc). [See note below]

I'm currently at the stage of trying to tweak my own performance to get better than the three or four fps (!!!) which I currently have. So as my research continues in this vein (Impostor Avatars, Lag Meters, etc) I don't really have the time yet to concentrate on other aspects of personal preparation - such as, how can I build a gesturing tail and attach it without greatly increasing my Avatar Rendering Cost, or how to acquire a "Ruth" outfit to wear to parties, etc., let alone any time to actually explore the Second Life world - although I'm still being severely slowed down by its lags to my system at this point. It would be nice to be able to experiment with Appearance tweaks without adding to the server congestion.

The optional thin-through-thick client approach (with required abbreviated tutorial thick-client which could be later uninstalled) could even allow private parties to be hosted where the private group members are somewhat autonomous from the servers as well, only logging in to the group's subspace - another potential improvement on bandwidth congestion at the servers...

Please pardon my long-winded reply to a thread that I'll have to admit I've not read thoroughly (25 pages!), but this solution would address a LOT of my own complaints concerning the "newbie learning curve" without myself turning in to an "orbiting griefer" (if I've used that term correctly).

Love is the law, love under will.
Aryobrand

Note: Of course some mechanism would have to be implemented with these initial Linden Dollars making them non-transferable. Otherwise some more clever little thieves would just keep signing up for new accounts, transferring the $L to their accomplice, then closing the account to sign up for a new one! Cheaters! They'll probably figure a way around that as well, but at least make it more work than it's worth to cheat.

Anyone else see a trend here?

LL start a thread (recently direct from the front page blogs - hiding the dirty laundry), add a few posts to keep the momentum, then abandon it... lol.. leave us to let off steam harmlessly...

last post by LL was how many pages/posts ago?

Nice to see this thread start back up after a few days.

-- Katt

If you want to experiment with that, the tab position is defined in an XML file and can be moved to the top or left. The current tab position is a compromise between people who wanted it on the top and people who wanted it on the side (where they originally were). If you don't have very many IM tabs (and if you're in a habit of closing them, you tend not to have many) then the tabs on the side were a horrible waste of space.

Yep, the interface is hard. For some VERY hard. I HAD an Alt on Help Island 6 since I went though that too fast the first time and was revisiting the building tools. But recently the island was closed down, and I was transported to a location of Linden Employee homes. ???? A bunch of folks were there, but everyone was OLD, with prim hair and all. I did meet a true noobee who WAS totally lost. I didn't have time to help. If this is the future, well, no one will make it through to the other side. I for one stayed on Orientation Island for 3 weeks and still couldn't fly worth a darn. hehe

Moin Katt Linden,



well ... the URL you quoted just shows a black page. The source code shows something like:



does Linden now places advertisments to install Flash? What is this Big Spaceship about?

Their own Website is a bad example, if they want to improve SL new users experience. And please dont tell me to install flash, or to allow java script for a website I dont need. You'll lose those new players who like me have Firefox no-script plugin installed, if Linden website goes same way.

BTW: If we talk about pre-user interface. Take a look at my old Jira WEB-673 entry. *ouch* no votes yet. Am I the only one who normaly disables Java Script and has no flash installed? I dont think so. There are several places where the SL web interface must be improved by simplyfing it. See also my security mail from 19 Sep 2008 about CG vulnerability.

ciao,Kephra

It is unlikely that SL will work very well on Vista, if it tries to use Java or actionscripts.. DEP will see to that. Any website that uses either, automatcially closes my Browser.

I tried 'opting out' of DEP, but it doesn't appear to be sticky and it's a pain in the butt to do eachtime I startup or reboot.

Oh well, lets hope Windows 7 gives back control to the user, or I might just get me a tin foil hat and install Linux

Just what I look for in a girlfriend

big spaceship does incredible work and i am eager to see what SL looks like when they are done

retention and initial experience are soooo important to the future of sl. i can't tell you how many people in my industry think of sl as being hard to get into (i mean one "top" person in my field says it's a 20 hpour learning curve! o_O well maybe if you want to learn every LSL function!).

hello, it's no harder than Facebook or any of that stuff. so any efforts to dispel that myth are great!

good luck!!! =D