Making Second Life easier to use, especially for brand new users, has been one of Linden Lab's main challenges for a while. Now the company is bringing in a third party design firm to help it tailor an experience suitable for users just joining the virtual world. The Electric Sheep Company previously worked on a similar project, designing their own, scaled-down viewer for their efforts at bringing new CSI audiences into Second Life, specifically because Second Life was too challenging for brand new users. Linden has recognized the problem for some time, but with its increased focus on productizing Second Life, and assumedly selling it to new users, it seems like they've ramped up efforts to find a solution.
"Shortly after I started, we kicked off a project to reinvent what we call the 'first hour experience' (our web experience, the viewer, and the way we acclimate and acculturate users inworld) for new users," blogged CEO Mark Kingdon. "We’ve made great progress and will be working with an award-winning interactive design firm to help us complete the reinvention and bring it to life. Yes, we are creating a viewer that is new user friendly!"
ok... so who got the job?
Posted by: JD Ives | October 01, 2008 at 01:47 PM