It is not the features. It's not even accessing it on a web browser. (Though that's nice, I doubt the tech will be where it needs to be to be useful anytime soon.) No, it is the damn interface. It's too complicated. We've known it for nearly a decade and it's only gotten marginally better. It needs to be dumb-simple.
I've previously praised Viewer 2.0 for being a great improvement. I should clarify - it is a big improvement for existing users of Second Life. Except the sidebar; we all know that sucks.
Rather than go into a long explanation right away, let me post a screenshot and give you an idea how a new user sees Second Life.
(click the images for a full-sized version of each.)
And here's my ideal browser for a new user:
So clean, so minimal. Look, I even kept most of the top-bar! Let's run through the changes.
1. Sidebar reduced to one tab. When it opens, then you can have all the different tabs. Once the sidebar opens ... geez, that's a monumental mess. The easiest improvement, if we're going for low-hanging-fruit here, would be that the first time you load each tab, it has a help screen describing what's in each tab and how to use it. You'll click "ok" and it'll then load the tab from then on.
2. Inventory sucks. It needs to work like Windows / Mac, with all the usual copy/paste shortcuts, view as icons / thumbnails, etc.
3. The bottom? Clean. Bottom bars make the whole client feel "caged in".
4. What's important on the bottom? How to chat. That's it.
- The headphones icon has replaced "Speak". It's far more intuitive that headphones means "You can use your headset to chat" than "speak".
- Volume control moved from the top-right, where it is hidden, to next to the headphones. The two logically go together. I kept the media play button there as well for the same reason.
- The happy face? Gestures. Again, universal icons with obvious meaning.
- I've kept most things. I think the Viewer 2.0 changes were good up top, for the most part.
- "Second Life" has been replaced with "SL Grid Viewer", since that is the name of the app, and the "Second Life" brand is silly and escapist.
- Removed L$ and Favorites. These will appear the first time you use them / need to use them.
- The time is in YOUR TIME ZONE. Seriously, is it that difficult? If Linden Lab insists upon using the server time, then both should be displayed.
Second Life's interface is a web browser plus a 3-D video game interface. Now, fortunately the web browser is a ubiquitous standard. Features that come from a web browser, such as the location bar, the top-left pull-down menus, etc, don't need much explanation, as long as the functionality works the same way. Games, however, are still foreign to a large percentage of the population, and so even basic concepts like, "Steer your avatar with WASD, and use your mouse for interaction" need to be taught and learned.
How do
What does a new user need to learn? I'll take this straight out of my methodology for orientation spaces that I co-designed at Involve:
- This is your avatar. It is a representation of you. You will use it to interact with the world.
- Move around with your WASD keys, or your arrow keys.
- Most functions are similar to a web browser. Click to interact.
- Hit enter to pull up a chat window. Escape to close it.
- Alt-click and hold for zoom.
- E and C / page-up and page-down for flying.
- You can teleport between places in one area via touch, and places on the map via landmark or map.
See how easy it could be to learn with a simpler interface and a more rationale orientation curriculum?
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19 comments:
too bad they couldnt even get the "webpage bar" correct.
it got 4-5 functions!?, plus its clickable and the best/worst way to get world info.
IE and firefox conflict- and none of its any standard---
that "side tab" looks awful silly and lonesome....;)
yada yada. maybe the new "creative director" will tkae notice....;)
c3
I doubt it's possible to educate someone that's convinced they're right and you/we dont know anything {Linden Lab}
Google Chrome (the web browser) doesn't come with a bookmarks/favorites button at the top. If you want one, you have to install an "extension."
As far as I know, SL doesn't have an extensions architecture. You can't just go grab extra add-on functionality and hook it on.
Firefox calls them "add-ons."
Drupal has "modules" and "themes."
WordPress has "themes" and "plugins."
SL has ______?
I started using Second Life in 2005. The interface was the thing that seemed like it needed the most work. Over the years I saw they spent their effort on Mono, embedded web pages, changing from blue to gray, lighting effects, better wind, fancier primitives, and lots of other things. But the interface is still essentially the same. I gave up on Second Life when I realized the interface wasn't going to change. Their priorities are on things that aren't important to me.
nice to see criticism backed up with proposed improvments
F adored
This is one reason interface design is hard: what's 'obvious' to the designer isn't necessarily obvious to any given user.
I'd assumed the smiley-face was the Friends List, not Gestures. And the picture of the (mic-less) headphones just confused me, because it looked like it should be maybe volume, but the universal symbol for volume control is right there next to it.
I think "Gradually Reveal The Interface" is much more important than "use picture of headphones instead of 'speak'".
WoW, Civilization, zillions of games do a decent-to-good job of having a new-user interface-tutorial. The viewer has a little of it, but it seems haphazard and unfinished. More work there would be good...
@all: Thanks for the comments
@Dale:
Realize I mocked this up in about 15 minutes. My former Creative Director was better at making universally recognizable icons than I was. I'm certainly open to suggestions to alternatives, but there's a reason we used symbols on signs and interfaces - they work better than plain text.
Ultimately, the reduced interface is, as I describe in my post, just step 1. The "gradually revealing the interface" is the ultimate solution. Agree with you, definitely.
I agree with pretty much every thing you wrote, Hiro. I am all for the minimalist approach to the viewer and I have posted about it on LL forums and elsewhere. But, I would go further and colapse the address bar at the top too. I want to see my world and not the left-overs from the age of 2D browsers fixed in my face.
I want total control of what is in my face!
Gaga Gracious
lol, damit. I would go even further!
No bottom icons or chat bar either. Simply typing something would open the chat window where I fixed it and the size I fixed it at, and hitting Esc would close it. I would open function Icons with keywords or hot keys too. Anything to un-clutter my view of the world!
It's a 3D world. It's my world. If I want to look at roses in my 3D garden then, like a work of art. That is all I want to look at and I don't want someone else forcing me to have it any other way.
Gaga Gracious
" but there's a reason we used symbols on signs and interfaces - they work better than plain text."
actually they dont. "plain text" used well works better as non intrusive interface for all of those trained to use that language.
the reason ICONS exist is to "standardize" space/layouts and not have to deal with localization -language issues for globally created software/interfaces.
every icon is "questioned" and must be verified in an "extra" mental step beyond the "symbol of letters/marking" that make up a languages text.
interfaces are by nature- not direct communication mechanisms - they allways are an "interference"
@Gaga: "m" for mouselook.
@c3:
"... for all of those trained to use that language."
There's your first problem.
"the reason ICONS exist..."
is because they are a continuation of symbols, which are far more ancient than any language. I'm sorry, but an icon showing a mouse with the left-button highlight is far more intuitive and takes far less time to process than the words "left-click your mouse", etc.
yeah..? what if i use a mousepad on a laptop, or a kensington turbo trackball?
icons vs text interface are for financial reasons in the real developers world.....
language is learned by any normal infant in a culture since ITS the symbology used PRIMARILY by the parent.
symbols dont predate language, their usage IS language.
@c3:
What about it? Whether they're icons or text, how does having a trackball or mousepad on a laptop change anything? They're both frickin' impossible to use with any degree of use.
Language uses a different part of the brain than symbols. And I think you're thinking too much like an Aspie, here. Body language is far, far more important to an infact than language.
Using symbols is not language. You're equating language with communication. The two are completely different things.
I b'leve Cube meant to suggest that if a user uses a touchpad or a trackball, then a picture of a mouse may not be "far more intuitive" than some words...
I suspect a key point here is that *nothing* is going to be blindingly obvious to everyone, and it's more important to make the interface easily learnable than it is to make it obvious at first glance.
If you use a trackball, you've used a mouse first.
There are certainly some things that may not be obvious, but who can be learned with as much ease as the words are. Other things are blindingly obvious and nearly universal, like the thumbs-up.
"Other things are blindingly obvious and nearly universal, like the thumbs-up."
Did you pick that example to be ironic? :) I believe that in Islamic and some Asian cultures, the "thumbs up" gesture is QUITE rude, obscene, and insulting.
Another good example of my point, really. What is "blindingly obvious" to you may be something entirely different to someone else.
No, I chose that partly as bait.
Thumbs-up is a great example of something that used to be rude but in most modern places has become acceptable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumbs_Signal
Ah, so as long as you don't mind giving all of your customers from between three and twelve cultures the finger, the symbol is just peachy.
Maaaahhhvelous... :)
I don't mind giving Iran the finger. *chuckles*
On a serious note, there will always be language translations, however, the use of symbols minimizes it.
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