Posts Relating To: design

Second Life Contacts are Odd

Second Life names are com­plex. Unlike the real world, an SL name is more than just a label, it’s unique to you and it makes you con­tact­able. It’s almost as if it’s your email address or phone num­ber is float­ing above your head whenever you’re out and about. Yet if someone wants to keep a …

January 28, 2010 – 1:56 pm | By Aaron | Posted in Thoughts, second life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Virtual World Design Guidelines Courtesy of Microsoft

Between 1995 and 2001, Microsoft developed and oper­ated it’s own social vir­tual world. Named V-Chat, the ser­vice allowed users to cre­ate their own text-based, 2D, or 3D envir­on­ments in which they could chat and inter­act with other users. In it’s six years of act­ive ser­vice, V-Chat saw two major iter­a­tions, an act­ive end-user com­munity num­ber­ing …

January 9, 2010 – 7:20 pm | By Aaron | Posted in research, second life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (4)

Second Life and Poor User Centered Design

Yes­ter­day I wrote a post about how copy­bot­ting can essen­tially be seen as the con­sequence of bad design, I spoke about how the design of Second Life is such that some people are will­ing to take great risks in-order to com­pensate for design related prob­lems. I think it’s safe to say that much of those …

December 16, 2009 – 2:43 pm | By Aaron | Posted in Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Copybotting as ‘intentional human error’

I’ve been read­ing quite a lot of blog posts on the topic of copy­bot­ting recently. For those who don’t know, copy­bot­ting is the blanket term used to cover Second Life pir­acy. Its name comes from the pro­cess where an auto­mated avatar (bot) sys­tem­at­ic­ally inspects and then rep­lic­ates an in-world item — although it now tends …

December 15, 2009 – 2:00 pm | By Aaron | Posted in Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)