Recent announcements by M Linden indicate that Linden Lab is beginning a new initiative to redesign the Second Life Viewer from top to bottom. While details are not specific at this time, the announcement and rumblings I’ve heard seem to indicate both a complete code and UI overhaul. This is great news as the current Viewer, though very feature rich, is very intimidating for new users and cumbersome for more experienced users.
It could be considered very timely that Second Life Resident, Dusan Writer, launched a UI redesign contest in recent weeks. The contest’s main goal (and criteria for judgement) is to redesign the Viewer to make it simpler for new Residents to use. The prize? L$800,000 to the winning Resident. Note: At the time of this writing, finalists have already been announced. (I would have loved to have entered my designs to this contest, but my workload prevents it. Boo. Next time, Lindens. Next time!)
You can check out the very creative and thoughtful contest entries here.
Today, I’m going to cover an entry from contest finalist, Jacek Antonelli, who presented her designs during Ben Linden’s UX office hour yesterday afternoon.
Antonelli discussed her approach and design rationale with a captive audience who definitely expressed great enthusiasm over her UI modification ideas. She explained that she wanted to achieve four (4) things with her designs:
- To introduce UI revisions that represent “low-effort changes that yield significant benefits.”
- Revisions that are feasible to implement without requiring long time commitments and large teams.
- To make the UI better for all Residents - not just focusing on new users. (This certainly pleased meeting attendees who are largely very experienced SL users)
- Not to tear the current UI apart and start from scratch.
Jacek’s UI featured menu re-organization, reducing existing UI clutter with fewer buttons on-screen, and grouping UI elements according to function.
I’m not sure how I feel about the design and size of the buttons UI elements in the design, but I think these are simply representations at this point. Jacek also indicated that it would be useful if Residents had the ability to resize buttons and UI elements to suit these needs/tastes. Also, while Jacek’s design showed menu items in specific groups, she also indicated her design concept would allow for Residents to customize buttons and groupings, saying, “I’d really like to see a system where you can drag any item from the menu to make an equivalent button.” Awesome idea.
One of the standout features introduced in her design was a “social corner” - a grouping of UI elements that revolve around a user’s social activities in Second Life - Text and voice chat, and the friend’s list. It also included a clean notification system that would take the place of the existing “IM Received” button that appears when a message comes in. Instead, her design shows a clean flyout which would notify the user of incoming messages and indicate the number of messages/IMs waiting.
Finally, Jacek introduced her concepts for a re-organized Inventory. The first thing I noticed was the surfacing of the filters by Inventory item type as a Quick View (which are present in today’s Viewer, though hidden and confusing to use - File > Show Filters) on the main Inventory window view. This makes it easier to look at specific asset types without having to muddle through the entire Inventory to find what you want.
The context menus (right-click) include options that allow you to mark an Inventory item as a “Favorite”. Doing this places them into a new Favorites tab in the Inventory. I really, really, really like this idea! It would make it easier to find those items that you use all the time (be they outfits, scripts, objects, etc.). Jacek also noted that you could mark an entire folder as a favorite which would place it and it’s entire contents into the Favorites tab. Favorite items would also be denoted by a subtle color shift to make them more noticeable in the regular Inventory view.
The context menu also featured two filtering/search items - “Search this name” which takes the asset’s name and places it into the search bar at the top of the Inventory floater. This wold allow you to quickly find duplicates or items with a similar name. I can see this as being very useful when you accidentally move parts of an outfit into different folders and then can’t find all the pieces anymore. The other menu item discussed was “Filter this type”, which would take the asset type and apply it in the Quick Filter menu, allowing you to view assets of the selected type only.
Finally, the asset context menu featured one other very useful item - the Send To menu. This feature allows you to move assets in your Inventory around without having to drag and drop or open lots of windows to get organized. The ‘Send To” feature lets you select a folder in your Inventory, and also displays quick access to recently used folders.
You can check out Jacek’s full contest entry here. If you’re interested in learning more about the contest and the finalists’ submissions, the final UI designs will be presented by the contestants on July 22 at 2pm SLT.
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Remedy/82/163/24
Posted in UX, User Interface, Viewer | Comments (3)
