What: Seminar
When: April 29th, 2010 at 2pm SLT (Pacific)
Where: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-%20Deep%20Hole/53/230/26
A message from White Lebed:
Tom Hale, Linden Lab Chief Product Officer (aka T Linden) appeared to be quite surprised when I mentioned that a lot of content creators I work with were avoiding using the 2.0 viewer and felt that the new viewer wasn’t particularly useful for building and making art. T linden, the man behind the new viewer, wanted to know what specifically we didn’t like and why. That is how the idea of this seminar was born.
T Linden has bravely agreed to come to the Burniversity to talk with artists who are not happy about the Viewer 2.0!
If you are making art or building art installations, if you plan to participate in Burning Life festival as an artist, if you create content in SL, this discussion should be important for you.
Unlike other Burninversity events, this session will be held in a seminar format, not a lecture. If you, as an artist, have specific concerns, questions, suggestions related the Viewer 2.0, please, join us!
If you can’t come, but want to have a comment or a question included in the discussion, you can IM me or send a short email to white.lebed@gmail.com
As usual the chat log of this session will be placed on the transcription board.
White Lebed – the Burning Life Art Department Lead; the Curator of Afterburn Art Program
white.lebed@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/white_lebed
Prim Perfect 
>Tom Hale, Linden Lab Chief Product Officer
> (aka T Linden) appeared to be quite surprised
> when I mentioned that a lot of content creators
> I work with were avoiding using the 2.0 viewer
> and felt that the new viewer wasn’t particularly
> useful for building and making art.
Holy kaw! What planet has he been on?
Hi there:
A little clarification is in order – I was not surprised that content creators were avoiding viewer 2. As we’ve said publicly, the focus on this release was the New User experience and that we expected builders to use whatever tools they like the best (across viewer 123 or 3rd party viewers).
We’ve heard the feedback from content creators on viewer 2 lest you think I’ve been on planet disconnect as opposed to planet earth. LOL.
The viewer team is hard at work on viewer 2.1 – so get your requests in now.
What I think White is referring to is that we had builders on staff using viewer 2 (one of which is the product manager, esbee linden) who said they *preferred* building in Viewer 2. Sigh. There’s no accounting for taste is there.
The other element of surprise was that it was my expectation that shared media would be more interesting to builders and scripters.
Talk to you tomorrow…
The focus of this blog entry was on content creators, not newbies,which all Lindens keep coming back to using the corporate sound bite line. I am a content creator and, yes, I am excited about shared media, but my point was that Viewer 2 is not yet a reliable tool upon which to base a serious investment of my precious creation time. It crashes every time I open Photoshop in another window (yes, I have a fully capable computer, it is Viewer 2’s cache problem).
Any chance of having shared media on clothes items?
HeidiHo
Owner of BigOne and CLOZ stores in Qwandry, Stipe, Aulen and Houlihan
You have to remember that Mr. Hale has to remain the perfect corporate facade in the face of consumer reality. Any knowledgable geek or experienced SLer can tell in a few minutes use that Viewer 2 was pushed onto the streets far too early. They had to meet a self-imposed busines date for which their viewer was not ready. Any 3D artist that has had the Viewer 2 pile up cached graphics until it suffered a catastrophic failure can see that the core code for the viewer is a problem. It is probalby not a terminal condiiton, but it is a chronic problem for professionals who try to use it. I, personally was (and remain) excited about the use of the web based product on SL objects. BUT (big BUT) I cannot hope to waste the time needed to put this technology into my work product until 1) I can trust the Viewer to perform for me and 2) I am sure enought peopel can use Viewer 2 to make my implementation of web streaming productive.
However, Mr., Hale and other Lindens, at some point, need to acknowledge reality and quit playign innocent on VIewer 2’s shortcomings. They ought to try Kirstens S20 and see what Viewer 2 shoudl really llok liek. I am impressed with Kirstgen’s viewer, especially compared to Viewer 2, although I have recently found a web media glitch in Kirstens viewer, too.
Heidiho
Hi there HeidoHo.
Please, T Linden, not Mr. Hale. Mr Hale is my Dad and I don’t think he’s ever been in or near a virtual world.
Are you using 2.0.1? Lots of good performance and stability work in that update.
FWIW, I don’t think we are blind to some of the issues folks have raised about viewer 2 – and the team is hard at work on 2.1 as I write. Expect to see that this summer.
However, our focus and testing of the this release of the viewer was with new users – not builders and content creators.
We firmly believe that content creation and content creators are central to SL, but our goal with viewer 2 – in this first incarnation at least – was to expand the number of consumers – more people to view your art, viewer your creations, buy your virtual items. Content creation, especially integration with standard 3D creation tools (Aka mesh import) is a focus of a release later this year.
That being said, I don’t think we thought we were disabling content creators from using viewer 2. However, we stand corrected – and that’s one of the reasons I am meeting up with you all tomorrow.
I do like the idea of having to acknowledge reality in a virtual world tho… LOL.
BTW I have tried S20 – and the detachable floating sidebar and customizable button bar is a nice improvement for advanced users.
t
@T — Detachable panels in games and software (like anything Adobe) and customizable button bars (like anything Microsoft) are the expected norms so they’re not really “advanced user” features.
You had a working wheel that just needed a few improvements. Why you went to a square wheel that needs major overhauling is beyond me.
Please, notice – the purpose of this meeting is to give artists and builders a chance to provide LL with some specific information and, ideally, positively affect future tech developments. It is meant as a productive professional meeting.
I hope we will avoid making sarcastic remarks, calling each other names, complaining about general imperfections of Second Life, Linden Lab, etc.
I invited T Linden as a guest speaker to the Burniversity, because I believe it could be mutually beneficial for LL and for the art community. Please, treat him with respect he, as a guest, deserves regardless of you feelings about 2.0
The viewer is here to stay. It will evolve. We have a chance to provide LL with some guidance regarding what we want instead of waiting till changes happen and start complaining. Please, use this opportunity to the fullest.
See you there tomorrow 🙂 White
@ snickers –
Agree with you on detachable panels and on customizable button bars. I built macromedia products and adobe products for years, so I am familiar with both.
However, 15 years of making software and watching customers use it – it is always a small % of the user base which customizes their UI. Most folks just take the UI as it comes – that’s why it’s an advanced feature used by power users.
Content creators are by definition power users – but consumers are almost by definition not. Of course, some consumers become creators (that’s the wonder of second life) but the actual numbers on this are very small.
That being said – we wanted *both* features, but couldn’t get them in time for 2.0. Stay tuned for 2.1
To put it in context, a typical UGC site (like youtube) you see numbers like 1% upload videos, 10% comment, and everyone else (89%) just look at them.
IN SL, the numbers are closer to 4% are serious creators (eg builders for estates, artists or merchants), ~20% build something at all, and the rest (75%) consume.
And to answer your question about the “working wheel”. We know that lots of users like and prefer viewer 1.23. That’s why we support TPVs and are keeping 1.23 out there for the foreseeable future. So that’s great.
But we had lots of usability and new user data that indicated that the 1.23 UI with its 500 floating panels was overwhelming and complicated. Moreover, new users told us that the experience of being in a virtual world for the first time was overwhelming and complicated to begin with, and that the unfamiliarity of the UI (compared to common web or desktop software UI elements) made it worse.
Part of that is b/c a virtual world is by definition complicated, (it’s chat + skype + 3d authoring + admin tool + navigation + search + video game UI) and part of that is because the UI for viewer 1.23 had grown up without much information architecture to organize and structure the UI. Part of that is because Linden Lab, up til viewer 2 didn’t have a very strong design muscle in the company.
So that is the reasoning behind a new UI paradigm and design.
All that being said, these kinds of transitions are hard – as existing users (such as yourself) see any change in the UI as a backwards step because learning a new UI is work – it’s hard. And the difficulty is amplified by the complexity of second life. And that’s why we decided to feather in viewer 2 – with the exception of new users, we’re not forcing anyone to use viewer 2 until they want to. Even folks using viewers that infringe on the TOS (eg, those that have greifer features or features for copy theft) don’t have to go to viewer 2 – they just have to go to a viewer that doesn’t infringe.
The trick is, when you make a big leap forward, how quickly can you adjust. And the viewer team is hard at work on viewer 2.1.
Hope that helps,
t
While I agree with your percentages on creation vs. consumption, those consumers tend to be very sophisticated ones. Far more so than say the average facebook user — although even there, you have people adding gadgets and apps and things (I’ll shoot the next Farmville or Pets requester).
Look at the number of people who use AO’s, learn to dance in clubs, use gestures, etc. They’re all purely consumers but they are more sophisticated than I think the Lab gives them credit for. Don’t forget, people are far more used to video games than ever before and they are incredibly complex. WoW has what, some 15 million active subscribers??
Plus, IMHO, Viewer2 really does little to remove the confusion for the newbie. The confusion is more about WTH do I do in-world next rather than how do I work this thing. Certainly that was my problem when I started — I was just lucky that I met someone early who took me by the hand and showed what was possible. It’s peer pressure that works to move communities in a direction — not pressure from on top or because of the tools. Heck, SL has succeeded in spite of all the bad stuff that can happen. That’s because it’s more experienced users are invested.
If you really want to break it down, then I wouldn’t have even tried to make Viewer2 be the main viewer for newbies. I would have considered making something even simpler — had two viewers really. One that has no advanced features, no content creation. Just very simple stuff that would suffice for say your first 30 days in-world. At any time you could graduate. Maybe that’s too much work to support but I think it would meet the end goal of retention much better than the current route. Take a look at how IMVU approaches outfits and getting started — I think that’s a simpler approach that has applications in SL. (Not that I am interested in IMVU but it feels much easier to get going.)
And the whole design of the new Viewer just feels clunky and closed up. Yes some seem to really like it but with 80% or so of residents voting against it, that has to tell you something. I understand the massive numbers of possible panels in the standard viewer but that could have been cleaned up.
I’m glad to see the features like real outfits (even if the implementation is clunky), the new alpha layer, better inventory, etc. But those could have been worked into a cleaned up version of the old viewer.
The other thing that would really help retention is to put back the sign-up bonus. Give people some $L to spend right away so they get used to the idea of buying virtual stuff instead of having to grub around and figure out how to get that seemingly impossible $50L for that cute outfit.
Anyway, my $10L FWIW.
We are using the new viewer and love it. I think SL will lose a lot less people in that first hour. The shared media is like the lights coming on.
Thank you White for organizing this.
Every person I’ve spoken to, content creators or not, has very little good to say about the new 2.0 viewer. The only thing they like about it are the media tools and playing with the alpha layer thing for avatars. Other than that, it’s been total thumbs down.
Really, the format of the legacy viewer was perfectly good — none of this pop out from right taking up 1/3 of your screen with giagantor black box stuff and silly navigation tools — all blocking the view.
Long ago I had switched to boy lane’s cool viewer which took the standard sl viewers to a better and more efficient level and offered a few more features and didn’t insult me with “this new viewer probably won’t work on your little crappy computer” each time i had to upgrade the sl client.
The problem with 2.0 is someone assumed new users would get stuck with this dog and lean to love it but if that were the case, the old dog that never really learned any new tricks (standard sl viewers) were always being outrun by the alt viewers the indie folks drummed up.
Why LL just didn’t bring those those alt viewer creators on board as consultants and reward them for their hard work and generous gift of all their free alt (and generally better) viewers is beyond my understanding of how things work at the Lab but it seems to me all LL needed to do was look at all those alt viewers and take their cues from them: stick with the classic legacy viewer interface, add a few extra buttons and a drop down menu or two to the existing client interface and voila! A very cool new 2.0. that doesn’t eat up mega parts of the screen and reinvent the wheel.
I would have come to the meeting but due to significant chat lag issues when more than a few people are present on a sim (and that’s my lapdoggy’s issue), I didn’t attend the seminar thing but I would have asked / suggested to T Linden to bring back the legacy interface and consider taking cues from boy lane’s last rainbow/cool viewer interface upgrade or emerald’s, etc. and simply add on the new bells and whistles via a few extra buttons and menus / menu items and let the thousands of people who do use SL and have clearly shown a preference for the legacy and/or alt viewers choose which viewer they want to use – the new clunky darth vader 2.0 one or the perfectly good, lean and improved with extra buttons for new content and easy to operate old school one with 2.0 integrated.
And I’d also suggest LL ask the 3rd party company (that sold you on this not so fab 2.0 new viewer interface) for your money back Or at the very least, they should make you a new alt 2.0 legacy based interface viewer at no additional cost. 🙂
Surely as content creators we’ve paid for this alt viewer fix via our texture uploads alone. 🙂 And they should also come in different colors to match all the shoes we’ve bought. 🙂
Thanks for your ear and your time, T Llinden.
— Pixels Sideways