Peering Inside: Disorienting experiences

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to introduce a friend to Second Life. We'll call her Susan. That meant a run through the current orientation system. The whole process was an eye-opener, especially the part where Susan tried to beat me to death with her keyboard.

The last time I saw a Linden Lab orientation island it was one of the old ones (2005/2006). The new ones, though (2007/2008) - well, it's surprising that the retention is as high as ten percent.

The absolute highlight of the experience was a nude avatar by the name of Adam Neal, who ran around in circles for ten minutes or so yelling "ADAM NEAL CANNOT BE STOPPED!" -- no, really. That was one of the good bits, actually. The rest was worse.

This particular model of orientation island is laid out on several sections, and new users get a HUD object that triggers on nearby objects and places, presenting the new user with a succession of tasks and instructions. The orientation HUD presents two types of task: Required tasks, and optional tasks.

Oh, if only that actually worked.

Susan rapidly found that the HUD was largely broken. The HUD would consistently refuse to advance through required tasks. You could start over easily enough (if you weren't too frustrated to check your surroundings for the tiny reset sign). You could also get shoved into another section by a clumsy user, essentially causing the HUD to throw away whatever lesson you were on, and start something different.

I asked her how she felt about the HUD tasks. She glared at me and tapped the screen, 'Look at this. It's a required task. "Click the flashing arrow to continue", so."

She clicked. The arrow disappeared. Nothing more happened.

'So, what do I do now?', she asked me, 'Can I actually get into SL-proper from here now? Because, it won't let me complete orientation.'

'Yes, unless they've done something peculiar with the sim code you can still get through, HUD or no HUD.'

She arched an eyebrow at me, 'How would I know that? This is not what it says.'

In less than a minute, another stumbling block.

'Where is the Chat button?' she asked, as I returned with coffee, 'I don't see it here anywhere.'

I leaned over and looked at the screen. Sure enough, the HUD referred to the 'old school' user-interface, rather than the current one. I explained this.

'So, you're telling me that in all the time since the user-interface was updated not... wait. How many people work at Linden Lab?'

'Supposed to be about 250 or so at the moment.'

'So, out of those 250, not one single person was remotely interested enough in new users and what they were doing to update the primary orientation tool so that it wouldn't drive people crazy?' she added some muttered imprecations.

Adam Neal made his grand entrance at this point. Long limbed, and bare-assed, he ran circles around the other new users smoothly and in high style. "ADAM NEAL CANNOT BE STOPPED!" he proclaimed in all-caps.

Momentarily, he seemed to be the clean-limbed Greek hero of orientation, naked, powerful and athletic in his newbie skin and flowing mane of hair, like some digital Achilles or Odysseus. Moreover, he truly seemed unstoppable -- unlike the orientation system itself, which was quite fallible by comparison.

We had to laugh at this point. That might have been the only thing that broke enough tension for Susan to make it the rest of the way.

By our tally, two thirds of the HUD tasks simply didn't function, either because the HUD itself didn't do what it was supposed to when it was supposed to, or some matching facility on the island itself didn't itself operate. In three places it directed the user to UI elements that had moved or been renamed and no longer matched the descriptions.

Finally, Susan said 'Please. Just help me get out of here.'

The exit sign offered her a landmark to the Nova Albion Infohub at Miramare - Infohubs largely doubling as mainland welcome areas.

Situated on the border of four simulators, where a new user will experience unexpected motion-prediction during their first border crossing, the area is also surrounded by some narrow, deep canals that are easy to fall into (no guard rails or barriers). Things that experienced users don't much think about.

A few moments later, Susan was at the bottom of a canal.

Flying, however, was one of the lessons that she had successfully completed (despite the flight lesson area apparently not being large enough for both her and her camera, so she was unable to see where she was going for the majority of it).

Susan reached for the Fly button, and hoisted herself out, though without the studied precision of a more experienced user, she flew (unawares) across the sim border - and motion-prediction took her far from her goal.

She attempted to return, and the border crossing again made her overshoot the mark. She tried twice more before attempting to beat me up with the keyboard and logging out.

'How,' she asked me, 'does anyone get through this at all? I've never had trouble with the tutorial or orientation for anything else. If I didn't have a specific reason to be in there, I'd be uninstalling right now.'

I had no answer for her, because I was asking myself that very same question.

Susan's smart and has had a ton of experience with virtual worlds, and game-worlds both, and the process really balked her. I'm certain that the orientation HUD usually behaves better than that (despite it being out-of-date), though bear in mind that the users we hear from are the ones who ended up staying anyway. Presumably they're the ones that things worked for rather better than this particular ordeal.

The important thing is the experience she had. Essentially, it was wretched, and discouraging -- even for me, just looking over her shoulder, and there seemed to be many avoidable issues.

So ... why weren't they avoided? Unlike Adam Neal, it seems many newbies can be stopped.