Silvertomorrow’s Weblog

Good day;

I received a link to Christine Crawford’s “An SL Orientation for your review” post on Nabble 2 from a friend. I visited the orientation an respectfully submit the following findings for your review.

Landing Zone

Observation: I landed directly in front of the first station, which was good.

Suggestion: I would always encourage you to put the instructions for any action, to the left of the view, not the right. Most visitors will be used to reading from left to right and the instructions should be the first thing they see.

Observation: I immediately noticed that the walkway leading to the next station was surounded by water. When I was a “Newb” walking was sometimes “problematic.” I intentionally simulated a laggy session and poor navigation skills and this is where I wound up! Many “Newbs” who don’t yet understand flying, would “drown” at this point…

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Suggestion: Guard Rails!

Observation: The “Welcome to Kuttara Zen” sign includes information seemingly designed for those who want to dance and those who want to “learn skills often used in SL.”

Question: Which of these activities (dance vs obstacle course) is the primary focus?

Comments: If learning is the primary focus, the invitation to learn should be on the left (see above). The text phrase “Right click and Touch this sign…” is also a little confusing.

Suggestion: Switch the learning and dancing invite text. Rewrite the obstacle course text to read: “To receive a NoteCard with instructions for the Obstacle Course, do the following: “Right-click on this sign, then left-click on the “Touch” menu item. Left-click on the “Keep” button on the pop-down menu.”

Note: You actually employ this type of instructional phrasing in the NoteCard provided by the sign!􀀂

Lantern / Notecard #1

Observation: The welcome message calls this place the “Chinsen Shuyo Teinen New Users Obstacle Course” I was introduced to this location by Christine Crawford as the “Kuttara Zen Avatar Training Trail”

Suggetion: Stick with a consistant, easy to say, remember and BRAND name!

Observation: Presumably “Task 1″ has already been accomplished.

Lantern / Notecard #2

Suggestion: Put the lantern “deeper” into the “zone,” so the visitor is better positioned to “Look around this stone platform” when they approach the lantern.

Lantern / Notecard #3

Observation: The “Lantern 3 Instruction Card” tells the reader that the “big pink tree… it (SP) due west.”

Question: Until the avatar reaches the sea bed and the embedded directional reference, how does the participant discern “West?”

Suggestion: Correct spelling and capitalization errors in this and other notecards and eliminate any references to compass directions, where directions are not clearly visible at the point where the instruction is being given.

Lantern / Notecard #4

Comment: When I first learned how to fly, I found it was easier for me to start by pressing the key and then using the Pg-up / Pg-dn keys for altitude control.

Lantern / Notecard #5

Suggestion: You may want to put an actual number (5, etc.) on the lanterns, to help with orientation. You may also want to warn people from holding down their directional arrows and flying to far. Because an exercise like this has the potential to send someone far from their intended location, you might want to include a Landmark and instructions to click on it if they get “lost.” 􀀀

Lantern / Notecard #6

Comment: The feather is a nice gift!

Question: What are these survey questions trying to evaluate?

Lantern / Notecard #7

Comment: Nice that you give people some instruction in “dancing.” It really is “one of the most important social skills of Second Life.”

Closing:

Congratulations on your orientation project. With a few tweaks, and some spelling and grammar corections, you will have a great tool to help “Newbs” learn about SL. I hope my feedback is helpful in reaching that goal.

ps. Nice quote from Winston Churchill Christine!
“However beautiful the strategy, we should occasionally look at the results.”

Respectfully,

Valiant Westland

Dear Christine,

I saw your SLED post, and was interested to go through your orientation experience.  The orientation experience has been a very hot topiv on the mentor’s SLVOL (SL Volunteers List)

It is a very nice piece of work.   The instructions are clear, and the design flows well.

I’m assuming your 7 stations are not intended to be a total course introducing SL.  As a SL mentor, I spend most of my mentor time on the  Orientation Islands where new persons first land.  For the vast majority, getting their avatar to look the way they want it is the immediate and burning concern.  But tackling that would take another 7 stations by itself.

The next is to answer the question “What can I do in SL?”  They consider learning to move, communicate, use their inventory and search all just things to be done to get to that burning question. Naturally, many are quite impatient to get the tutorials out of the  way.  Your design is an improvement over the current hub and spoke  orientation of Linden Labs.  IBy indirectly answering pieces of the  “What can I do?” question, you provide a motivation to move on in a  clear and directed way.

Station 7 (dance) might be a little less clear for a new person. A little quibble on the overall design of this – you ask a new person to look up and click on the dance ball.  That assumes they know how to move their camera properly.   After your very careful tutorial on movement – that leap is a big one.

Specific terminology that might give a new person pause is “The instructions on the opposite side of the pavilion show how to use the  pink and blue dance balls (left click on one and choose “Dance” or “Sit” whichever is displayed. Your avatar will be held in a dance- ready position until a partner clicks the adjacent dance ball”    For  a new person – “Why pink and blue – and which should I take?”   and  “What does “held in a dance-ready position” mean?”

Also – I believe the note card is in error here:  “TTPS: When using the pink and blue dance balls, make sure you click the StandUp button on the bottom of the screen before you click on the dance ball. If you accidentally do this, you will need to close SL (File >Quit) and sign back on again to get rid of the problem.”    It IS possible to stop  animations on yourself without a relog, contrary to the note card’s
instructions.  “WORLD/ Stop All Animations” does the trick.

Hope this helps

Edward Griffith (SL)
Ian Graham

Silly me – forgot to mention one other thing . . .

I also peeked at the slide show . . .
The layout and design on your slides is fine – no quibbles.  SL gives you one big handicap though.  Textures take forever to rez.  That’s  not your doing, but you might want to design for that can cut the  information on each slide – and go with a 256 x 256 texture  – and  break things into more slides.  In my subjective experience – cutting  textures from 512 to 256 cuts loading time by a little less that  2/3.

Of course – Your mileage may vary.

My response to Ian:

Ian,

Thank you VERY much for your detailed review of KZ. I agree that avatar customization is a vital and immediate interest of most incoming residents. We felt that the scope of such an endeavor was too much for the assignment that we had in the BSU T&L course. However, I am currently designing a customization module for my final master’s project which I will post here when it is complete. In addition, we hope to develop a camera control module in the future which will be added to the beginning of the course since it is obviously one of the more important skills. I’m glad to see your review supports our own.

Your other suggestions are very astute as well. I am also concerned about rez time for the job aids (slideshow) and I will try to fix that using your suggestions. I was hoping to use a pre-rezzing slide show viewer but have been unable to locate one.

Thanks again!

Chris
(Silver Tomorrow)