Nick Wilson at Metaversed:
Virtual worlds are complicated. Prohibitively complicated. The initial learning curve is so great in Second Life for example, that most people don't stay. It's just too hard.
I don't want to sound like an elitist here, but the story of learning process too hard and long is plain wrong. I was wondering why I hear that over and over again before I became a mentor. Then, when I got back to the orientation and help islands I was amazed by the state of mind of some noobs.
I am not talking about just a couple of them, it's a large percent of them. And it's not about building, scripting and other "advanced" skills. We are talking about basics of use of the virtual environment. And let's have in mind that each of newcomers have basic skills of (non-SL) use of computer and internet. They had to find secondlife.com in their browsers and fill in the (not quite short) registration form.
So… do you know how many people have problems to get out of help island? For those of you who forgot those moments… help island is the one where you teleport from orientation island (where you do the tutorial). That means you already teleported once. You spend some time there, get used to the world, pick some freebies, make some appearance. It has a panel which teleports you to the infohub on the mainland. And that panel has big green rotating EXIT sign. It screams so one can see it from almost any point of the island. When clicked, panel gives you a notecard and a landmark. So what's the problem?
Or take the other from the list of most popular noob questions: "How do I find [insert something here]?" When one starts new piece of software for the first time, the common thing to do is to check the interface. Just take a glimpse through the menus and buttons. Or am I freaking software usage genius because of doing that? Especially if there is a row of always-on-the-screen blue buttons. If they are so accessible, they might be useful. And the fifth of them says search. What could that be? Search is not something introduced with second life, it is a regular part of both the internet and your desktop.
I know that we all have our moments of not seeing the obvious, but these are not the rare cases. Spend one hour mentoring and you will have at least one of each questions. So many times I was tempted not to answer those. If they are so stupid they better not go to the mainland. Let's live in a smaller but happier community. But, on the other hand, I tend not to be a fascist and answer silently sighing behind my monitor.
It is not about simplicity. Most of the time, people are lazy to read and even more lazy to think. They want othersto answer questions they should find answers themselves. They want to be taken by the hand and guided. They want to enjoy their idiocy. And sometimes we help them. We answer their wishes. We partner them in their crime against themselves.
I am not saying that initiation process cannot be better. There is a lot of space for improvements, but doing that with the main idea of making things simpler will probably be a bad favour for both the community and the platform.
That’s not just an Orientation Island problem…that’s the problem with most of the human race! :D
Maybe they should remove all help from the Orientation Areas. Make it a totally Darwinian process which would raise the intelligence level of SL by a few points.
OK…maybe not. This is why I’m not CEO of Linden Labs. All my bright ideas would send the world down in flames.
“I don’t want to sound like an elitist here, but the story of learning process too hard and long is plain wrong.”
Apparently you *are* one of the elite (like me btw) that had a good start and took some time to walk around at Help Island ;-)
It’s like reading manuals in first life. Many “complicated” devices are returned to the shop by their owner, because they shouldn’t work properly. However, it appears that most are working fine, only their user did not read the manual.
I think it is not different for SecondLife. Many new people leave it in frustration, only because they were too eager to look what’s in that colourful package, without reading the instruction in that boring manual.
Argent, yes, it is not the problem of SL exclusively., I love the idea of Darwinian process. But I am glad you’re not LL’s CEO, those mustaches would look really bad on you. :)
Zipp, I refuse to be elite just because I get my way in using four arrow keys, ctrl, alt and a mouse. And I never walked help island before I started mentoring.
I hate reading manuals too, especially badly written ones. And I’ll always support the action of writing better guides and building better orientation places instead of making things simpler. But, nobody ask me.
Oops, I’ve understood you wrong about the help island ;-) And I totally agree that the quality of the average manual is bad. For SL, I think the basics at Orientation and Help Island are quite ok, but apparently for some people even that is too much. That says more about the people than about the environment.
I loved this post. It’s so true. But first I’d like to state that being an elitarist does not mean being a fascist. It’s not the same thing at all. Tough once again I have to agree with dandellion; when about one month ago I registered an “alt”, I had to face a large amount of bumbs from naked noobz (not to mention the things they told me…) so maybe the question is… why are those people on Orientation Island? Probably who is *really* doing a bad favour to the community are newspapers & tvs who keep talking about SL without a clue. That generates curiosity in ppl that do not wish to be on the grid and that do believe to find in SL some sort of artificial paradise. Let’s just leave marketing to social networking on the web so that only curious and interested ppl who knows what “www” does mean, come to the meet us.
This could be bad for businees someone could object. But honestly how much money do you think a “naked-bumping-noob-who-only-looks-for-sex” could spend in SL? Youporn is free, they will eventually go there sooner or later.
@Eidur
ahem… I actually got curious about SL after reading about it in the papers ;-) I didn’t have any social network online before, and am very happy I got here this way. :)
The first point you’re addressing, even if it’s the last you’re stating, it’s the most important one, and it’s completely right. I mean that people should learn on how to learn. It’s a matter of intelligence and giving the right mind shape to solve problems.
But, that’s a generalized problem. Like Argent Bury said: “It’s a problem with the human race!”.
You’re talking about an ethic and learning problem, generalized. It’s not about SecondLife, at all. It’s on a different level. Simply, it applies also to SecondLife.
~
On the other side, and due to the fact that it isn’t related with SL, the software suffers from MAJOR implementation faults and BAD usability. It’s BAD, really BAD. It doesn’t even compare with most of the 3D games out there.
It’s not a matter of learning, or mindset. It’s a matter of *design* (interaction design, user centered design, graphic design, architecture design).
A good design have good affordance (cfr. Norman), it doesn’t need any manual and “simply works”, WITHOUT LIMITING expressive or functional features.
That’s why, even you’re completely right on the human side, I think that your statements doesn’t fully apply to the SL issues.
So… Make It Simpler? SURE! :)
Eidur, I like your “choose your customers” philosophy, Though, naked “your hawt” noobs are not the same as “clueless about where to click and where to go” noobs. Two groups that slightly intersect. Both to be avoided.
Zipp, maybe you came through the papers review, but you’re a rare cat.
Folletto, I agree about bad usability. I just missed to stress enough that difference between usability and simplicity. Though one leads to other… it is not the same thing. If one makes software (and yes, this is a problem with many applications, not just SL) to be simple it might lose usability, which I will always object. If one wants something simple, give them tetris to play. If good usability bring simplicity, then the goal is achieved. So, I’d rephrase your last sentence in “Make it more usable so it become simple? SURE!”
@ Zipp
give me the name of that newspaper so I can write them a hasty letter :P (joking of course) :)))
@ Folletto
Well, maybe I’m addicted to this world and to the people that lives it (I recognize I really am) but I cannot stop to state that the first thing that has to be addressed about usability is “building tool”. Most of my problems with SL comes from “time-issues”. That said if I could build with less effort that actually needed (translated: less time wasted) maybe I’d already started some business or project. Now I just need someone to do that for me (of course I am not so willing to pay for something that should meant to be *fun*). The whole community (and the Lindens too) could only benefit with that. Or maybe they are in the builidng biz as well with some alt?
[...] already provoked an interesting response on Living In The Metaverse, in a post whose title – Make It Simpler? No, Thanks – gives you a sense of its point of view. The author disagrees that Second Life specifically is [...]
[...] we dumb down virtual worlds? Living in the Metaverse says no as that would be pandering to lazy [...]