Transforming the Second Life Experience with Big Spaceship

first of all, let me say as much:
the ability - or mostly lack thereof - of constructive feedback is, has always been, and will always be a critical factor. If you want lindens to pay mind to you, the feedback has to be clearly stated and not be filled with personal insults or kneejerk reactions.
Ive seen some shouts and all in this thread, and its best to simply not read those posts too much, imho.

with that said, LL seems to have made a good move by hiring a professional designer for a new UI and first-hour experience, but clearly there are problems, in that those who are the most experienced in helping first-hour residents arent considered and approached for feedback. tieing those groups of people into the new system would be great, and provide the quite valuable "human factor" right from the first hour. so instead of walking people through help island, offer them contact to the mentor groups right through the new UI, so that they are given the feeling of being part of the big social community that is SL.

enriching the further experience also is critical. this includes to a large degree the ability to find desirable locations. which leads me to the search as key instrument to finding those locations and assets. right now, I find that the search often directs to empty venues, to low-quality ones or to venues which /say/ that they offer certain items, but then either dont or only have a negligible display of them.
So in effort to help people navigate the lands, a better search and landmark system should be introduced. The "master landmark" approach that was discussed before is already an awesome suggestion, in that it would do away with obsolete landmarks, by giving the initial creator the option to update the landmark, and in the best case even flag it temporarily unavailable, closed down, or assign content ratings.

The search, on the other hand, could benefit from a rating system outside of traffic. Giving the parcel owners the ability to use the same "master landmark" principles would result in constant ratings if the parcel moves or otherwise changes, so for example a high-rated club which moves to another sim would be able to retain his ratings.
Another rating should be for the content, as in, PG, mature, adult. this would allow the filtering of adult or mature venues as a client-side option, thus if a person doesnt want to be flooded by sex club search results, they can simply filter them out.
The first rating system I mentioned would be a simple 0-5 star rating, which can be assigned by any payment verified user over a certain account age. This prevents most of the issues of alt/bot votes, and should generate a pretty good system. This, together with the traffic metric, could be a fairly good system to measure the actual quality of assets, where the only issue would be to figure out the "real", aka non-bot traffic. maybe only have payment verified traffic count for those figures.
I acknowledge this is somewhat of a sidetrack here, but I believe that the ability to discover and find locations and assets in-world is one of the bigger issues today, in that many of the top-trafficked assets in the old search are camping spots, and those in the new search are of varying quality.

There are many awesome suggestions in this thread, too, it is up to LL to listen to the good feedback provided, ignore the trolls (sorry, even if your opinion is valid, a fit of rage has never, does not, and wont ever be considered valid feedback), and listen to the community. they know whats best for themselves, and have lots of free advice to offer

So you are hiring out a company to do the new user experience. Guess you do not need us mentors anymore (a high proportion of which are old accounts, premium members, sim owners, content creators, etc).

Someone hit the lights on the way out if you are the last one, 'kay?

Bleh, in retrospect, my comments above haven't been in the slightest bit constructive, and as much as communication (always LL's worst point, even before pricing) is vital and is good to be kept in the loop with things, I cannot see how LL ever expect us to forget what they said last week and try and gloss up their image the next. Timing of communication is an integral part of the process as well. I hate knowing that my money is just lining the pockets of some already overpaid graphics studio artists. I'd rather that money came back in-world - like paying for a new inventory server.

Didn't Nike fire Big Spaceship because their site designs were so flash and java intensive as to both violate the Americans with Disibilities Act by not providing a method for blind users to navigate the site, as well as drive away people who didn't want to deal with possibly out of date plugins and long load times?

Could you please provide much greater detail on what Big Spaceship's role will be? The way it sounds is that they're being brought in to rework the web services. Given Big Spaceship's large portfolio of content-free websites that require the latest flash (which is often not available until it's almost out of date outside Windows) and fail to validate as HTML (meaning that they're coding to a specific browser instead of the HTML standard, ensuring the site will not work as well as it does now in most browsers), it seems that Big Spaceship is a huge step in the wrong direction. Out of their portfolio, I can't find a single example of an informative, useful website among them, and most of them are less informative than those jungle-themed Infiniti commercials that ran on TV before Nissan was remotely close to churning out the first Infiniti back in '89. Their own website is similarly content-free:



Nice way to completely blow your elevator speech: Use lots of big words outside their natural context, stretching their definitions to the point of meaninglessness to avoid saying anything altogether. This does not inspire confidence.

As it stands now, it seems like a better fix would to go back and reintroduce the mandatory Orientation Island and update it based on feedback, and leave what's obviously working for millions of us so far well enough alone.

Sure, since the OS crap has chased so many customers away. GET THIS RESOLVED FIRST! WE ARE NOT HAPPY!! When are you going to get that?

Better yet: SLIM that doesn't require two logins and two passwords. I have one SL account. It works in the wiki, the jira, here, and inworld, but NOT in SLIM? Bzzt! Wrong implementation!

I have to admit I don't remember all, but these cause me most problems with regard to new user experience:

1. I did't immediately found a way to activate the chat history, so I often found it difficult to follow the chat. (I did meet a "Mentor", but (s)he wasnt very helpfull)
2. I started exploring by randomly clicking on the map, later someone told me about landmarks and search. In fact I didnt knew what teleport was
3. You can get a lot of content on the help/orientation Islands, I was looking for communities (art, sport, music etc)

Later I just picked it up and I probably have a lot more to learn.

That is what I have (for now)

Cheers,

Binary

I hope the big spaceship came travelling, has a clue about Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, W3C Validation, XHTML and CSS, Usability Guidelines, etc. The washed out, extreme blurry mini-text on their black...(funeral anyone?) startpage wich is even not to read with my certified eagle-eyes, is creating some doubts about the qualification of this company, by the way. If I think at particulary disabled people, the website is useless. Just another slow flash thing.

And ingame we have some perfect qualified designers who are able to build areas and to set some smart marks to lead new folks into the right direction. There is intelligence in game in masses. I could name them, but I don't know if its allowed to advertise them here, but anyway: you hire mysterious firms one after the other, instead of thinking about goodies wich are so near and less expensive: we, the people. We made that thing from the point when it was just grey pudding.

And now there are people in game wich have experience in webdesign, usability and sociability analysis and much more. And no one comes to the idea to ask them first. Website designers, content designers and some wich are able to create a smart guided tour through the first hour(s).

Basicly I would have no problem with any person or company on this planet who likes to dock on LL, but since we residents paying that...and since they are more noobs than we all...

But ok, try it...

Just wanted to express, that there is still the fitting personal in game if wanted and asked. (not me, by the way, bot some others)

If it's in the wiki, you do know you can change it, right? If it's broke, please do everybody a favor and fix it yourself. The wiki is largely Resident-contributed documentation.

No, but you're reading it.

The largest percentage of your current residents don't care about this...and most of us take care of as many new residents as we possibly can...FREE. I personally have equipped and given lindens to two residents this week, and I know others who have done more.

We are BEGGING you (LL) to take care of us...as we have taken care of you.

I strongly suspect the latter, or you would have noticed this.
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/10/28/ongoing-updates-from-the-grid-from-fj-linden/

.. Sure, lets hire an Agency that has no inWorld experience, does not know what people (later) do in here and as an absolute must have .. they have not nor will ever create Inworld Content .. seems ignoring is exactly the way LL operates.

This must be a big Slap in the face of all Mentors and people that spent their time, helping friends or completely strange and lost newbies around here.

Also i am interested how they can "improve" the UI without actually using it. I mean if they dont create things inWorld how would they know what to improve. I develop and Enhance Software myself and do some UI (Re)Design myself but to improve an existing UI we always have to use the Program and it is not enough to just click through all the functions. I hope they have a person within the company that has a SL account. And we will see if a Agency with a Website like this (despite the great portfolios) can solve the old problem of the UI.

My 50 /O$Cent is .. kill that Parrot on the Welcome islands, and bring back Torleys Video Tutorials back on the SL Homepage. And also set up a lot of TV Sets with his Tutorials on the Welcome Islands. They help a lot more than a nicer Website or a dumbed Down Noob Viewer.

and a big lol to this.



And why has Jack not replied yet if he "reads" the forum ? .. but i know thats not your business.. you are working in a different team on a differnt issue .. mayby thats part of some of LL`s Problem(s) ---

best regards

(and this is really the first time i write negative about SL and yesterday i also noticed how i spoke bad about SL to an "outsider person". afterwards i bite my lip for that statement.. but it just came out of me )

And there ya have it! Brilliant!

A 718 area code cookbook at that. We're toast.

It's illegal in the US as well. Court cases from this decade have ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act would cover a site design that defeats devices designed to help people with low vision to read and navigate the site. It's on par with not having handicapped accessible parking or doorways a wheelchair will fit through on an establishment open to the public.

What about making it possible to complete customize signup?
sort of combination of directSLURL and RegAPI.
So it will possible to:
- allow me to choose ALL things needed for character creation and just send API call
(TOS will be presented on 1st login anyway)
- give new user basic inventory I WANT
- give them basic avatar+arleady weared tools I want
- make them appear at my place

Sounds like Donald Duck to me.

P2

I remember years ago when i tried SL for the first time, and the hour long learning curve was to much effort for me, so i gave up, and tried again a few weeks later and gave up again and then tried about a year later and stuck with it that time. So needless to say i do think it's a problem and i think the answer is two viewers. New user's should have the option to choose an advanced viewer (the one we have now, which can be used for content creation, avatar mod. etc..) or an easy to use viewer with basic chat functions but nothing to complex. Adding more new residents to SL is something that would benefit everyone in some way whether they know it or not.

Also just one thought on the open space change, can't you just lower the allowed avatar limit in them instead of a price jump. Only allowing 15 avatars or something like that would greatly reduce the usage, way more then a price jump. If the problem really is over use of them like you guys say it is, then this would fix the problem and keep everyone happy.

New memebrs into SL? Lets see, thousands of new mamebers managed to find their way in quite nicely as freeloaders to sit in camping chairs and lag the whole grid down when you made it free to join. Now you want to make it even easier for freeloaders to enter second life. How about looking after current players a bt better. Everything in Second Life that makes Second Life something better than a chat room has been put there by players for players. Put some of your efforts and resources towards minimizing lag instead of creating more, making the game compatible with the most common graphic cards (still not fix for the NVidia problem I see) and providing some entertainment vlaue for players since you continue to make it harder and harder for the players that work their butts off to provide the new players a rewarding experience.

New memebrs into SL? Lets see, thousands of new members managed to find their way in quite nicely as freeloaders to sit in camping chairs and lag the whole grid down when you made it free to join. Now you want to make it even easier for freeloaders to enter second life. How about looking after current players a bt better. Everything in Second Life that makes Second Life something better than a chat room has been put there by players for players. Put some of your efforts and resources towards minimizing lag instead of creating more, making the game compatible with the most common graphic cards (still no fix for the NVidia problem I see) and providing some entertainment value for players since you continue to make it harder and harder for the players that work their butts off to provide the new players a rewarding experience. Since I have been in the game bonuses for traffic have been removed taking away the only financial reward for those players that put time and effort to create something special for people to use freely, weekly stipends have been reduced by 200L a week discouraging premium members that actually pay to play, new land is gone thus removing the ability of paying players to actually make themselves a home at reasonable cost and now all the sims that many players paid for to provide entertainments, sailing etc, that you Lindnen did not provide are getting a big hit. I know many of these things were abused and that was a suffficient excuse for you guys to remove them completely instead of making the effort to police the misuse and penalize the misusers and reward t6hose that made a reral effort on your behalf. Good plan Lindne Labs.

Hope they plan on keeping the debug menu alive. I would really miss my debug menu if they removed it.

Am I missing something here. SL has LAG problems. You can blame it off on the Open Space Sims .. but they work fine when there are fewer people in SL. It is the huge number of people in SL that are causing the problem. You have not provided server resources to handle them. So your solution is to jack the price up on land and drive out the actual paying customers .. while trying to get more NON PAYING people into SL. I just don't see the logic here. This has not worked for the two years that I have been in SL .. and I don't think a fancy ad agency is going to make up for the lack of hardware.

Their website is... awful.

Hideous, hard to navigate, inconsistent, cluttered, hard to _read_ even.... what am I missing here?

~Lefty

... clearly I'm not alone in remembering what was said when it was announced about the floodgate for free accounts was opened, and can say "I told you so".

Remind me, what's the percentage of paid accounts v unpaid accounts?

It does seem unfair that there's pretty much nothing that a free account can't do that a paid account can. I'd suggest either bin the monthly fee altogether and just let people pay for land they want - or restrict 'free' accounts to 250 inventory items or something.

I totally agree though that 'fluff on the outside' to get people in will not make any difference to the 'substance on the inside' once people get through that first few hours in-world. What happens then, they miraculously become experts in SL, or they're just abandoned to leave us no better off than we were before the fluff.

Judas priest! We HAVE new users up the yin-yang now! If you want quality users who have guts stay and grow with SL then make the entrance HARDER, not easier. All that's happening now is you're getting fly-by-night jerks who come in, grief a little then split when it gets hot, only to pop up again a week later with a new face. A little more discrimination and a little less ease of use seems to be in order.

How about saving your money so you can keep the price of OS down.

Is it really that hard for newbies? Obviously some of us didn't find it that hard or we wouldn't be here now! I thought SL was for adults not school kids.

Instead, make it worthwhile to become a premium member. Then once a member they are more likely to stay.

I am still wondering why I have remained a member, can someone tell me what I get for my monry?

My freebie account friends seem to have more fun than me, sponging off the paying residents.