The Alphaville Herald

Alexa Linden’s Pre-Halloween Treat – Viewer 2.0 Feedback

by Alphaville Herald on 09/11/09 at 11:12 pm

Second Life 2.0 viewer feedback leaked to world+dog

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

Players eager to try the super-secret new Second Life 2.0 viewer may want to hold off a bit after reading what appears to be early resident feedback Alexa Linden accidentally sent to the Battery Street Irregulars mailing list October 30th. The Battery Street Irregulars are a group of players who test the nightly builds of the alpha version of the Second Life viewer – a battle scarred group willing to risk lost IMs, damaged inventory, and carpal tunnel syndrome documenting problems in the official viewer.

As best we can tell, someone with a copy of Alexa's mailing had a bit too much to drink at a seedy bar somewhere in the Zinda adults-only continent, lost track of time, then rushed off with a well endowed escort for a private pose ball testing session, leaving a notecard containing Alexa's mail on the bar. The provenance of the document is not entirely clear thereafter, although it does show evidence of having been in the hands paws of more than one babyfur, and about half the grid.

After carefully disinfecting the document, Herald analysts agreed that the comments in Alexa's e-mail suggest the Lab is intent on reinventing the chat interface from first principles, risking recapitulating user interface mistakes of the past along the way.  Pithy comments such as "trying to follow group chat … is an experience roughly equivalent to trying to read a newspaper through a telescope" pepper the feedback.

If the e-mail is genuine, the new 2.0 viewer appears to be still very much under construction – which may give the Lab a chance to fix the problems outlined below. Certainly anyone who has typed an embarrassing message into the wrong chat pane certainly can sympathize with Alexa's e-mail usability issues, and hope for a better SL client.

From:  Alexa <alexa@lindenlab.com>
To:  bsi@lists.secondlife.com
Date:  Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:33:17 -0500

* Summary – This weeks assignment was to objectively contemplate
communications tools.

I had initially decided the best way to address this was to point out some
of the history of chat and instant messaging systems. I will  forego that
and focus instead on the tool that most people have embraced as
recognizable. Pure objectivity in this instance is an irrational  design
step since a time-proven general consensus on the way these tools perform is
widely accepted and understood. In fact, in my 4  years of helping residents
learn to use SL, teaching them to use chat or instant messaging has NEVER
proven to be a task that could not  be explained and mastered in less than
ten seconds. (except for this guy Chris Abraham who was featured on
Metanomics a couple of  weeks ago. Apparently he was in SL long ago and has
returned after bashing Linden Lab to somehow uplift and save us all. He has
met  with M Linden, Dusan Writer, was a guest on Metanomics and was actually
asked to come back a week later and give a presentation  without making any
effort whatsoever in all of those visits to even see the chat bar down below
or realize that you must place your cursor  there in order to type. This is
a SPECIAL kind of laziness/ignorance that no graphical interface can fix).

======================================================

Perhaps the application that all instant messaging is based upon is
Mirabilis ICQ. This application was really the first to organize chat  tools
in such a manner that an intuitive interface was produced. It includes a
quick overview of friends and whether or not they are online,  it clearly
lists the friend's name/nickname and provides quick interactivity with any
chosen friend by clicking on their name.

When a message is received, an ICQ message will flash or light up, you are
given an option for the type of alert that you prefer to receive.  The
person sending the message can be found easily because their name is
displayed clearly.

Does the current SL viewer do this? – Yes

Does Viewer 2.0 do this? – No.

========================================================

Viewer 2.0 reduces the easy to find name into an icon on a taskbar that
takes up about 1/8th of the viewable area that should be made  available for
viewing the amazing 3d world that is Second Life. Even though it eats up all
of that real estate, it does nothing to make  finding the person you wish to
speak with any easier, it forces you to hunt the icon your friend is hiding
behind. Only displaying their name  if the cursor is passed over the
chiclet. Not even childrens video games attempt to personify others with
icons. I know. For the past week I  have watched a 4 year old enter several
computer games for children that were totally new to her and instantly
acclimate to instant  messaging without being prompted to click on a ducky
or a horsey or any other sort of cute icon to manage it.

Is this efficient? No.

Does this make the interface more intuitive? No.

Does this do anything to bolster the viewers usefulness to those that are
vision impaired or possess other disabilities? No.

Are most people generally accustomed to using chat in this manner? No.

Is this graphical bloat? – Yes.

===========================================================

Mirabilis ICQ was one of the first to introduce file sharing via drag and
drop.

Is this present in the current viewer? – Yes.

Is this present in viewer 2.0? – Yes

The current viewer is far more efficient at this since it is virtually
impossible to do in 2.0 with both the inventory and profile screens
residing in the sidebar.

Intuitive? Nope.

Efficient? Hardly.

==============================================================

Mirabilis ICQ and almost every other Instant Messaging program allows fonts
to be resized in IM.

Is this present in the current viewer? No.

Is this present in 2.0? No.
 
If you want to make things easy for residents to understand, allow them to
make the instructions and other functions of the interface easy  to read.
They just might stay in SL given the opportunity that option lends them.

=================================================================

Many chat programs allow for tabbed Instant Messages.

Grouping IMs into the same window to make them more manageable via tabbing
was and is insanely desirable in any other chat program I  have ever used.
Add ons were created for that specific purpose and people flocked to them.
Software developed specifically around this  much wanted feature was once
produced by BPS Software ( http://www.bpssoft.com/ ) for AOL and AIM until
finally AOL and AIM decided to  incorporate this feature themselves. There
are several add-ons for Yahoo Messenger that allow instant messages to be
collected and  organized into a tabbed window. YTunnelPro (
http://www.ytunelpro.com/ )is an example of software that allows for that
convenience as  well as other security functions in Yahoo Messenger.

I saw those programs come into their own. I know and worked with some of the
people that developed those products and they do very, very  well with them.

I hope you can appreciate how difficult it is to be objective with regard to
certain portions of the chat tools when I saw so many chat users  rush to
purchase these tools back when many people were still quite paranoid about
using a credit card online. They did though and they  did it in great
numbers because tabbed instant messaging proved to be an acceptable and
intuitive way to understand and organize chat.

Does the current viewer have tabbed IMs? Yes.

Does 2.0 have tabbed IMs? No.

================================================================

Conclusion.

There is a lot that ain't broke that could use a lil help but it don't need
fixin'. There are new things that aren't making things easy to  understand
and they are showing themselves to be inefficient at this point. I want it
to work, but there are 30 years of trial and error behind  the psychologies
and technologies that make IM and chat intuitive to the general population.
I think we may be able to build a stronger.  more efficient mousetrap but it
seems unlikely at this point that we are heading in the direction of a
better one.
Personally I find the small, non-resizeable chat windows pretty
unuseable and I find myself reverting to using the (Legacy)
Communications window, can't wait to see the replacement for it. Also I
find on the People side panel, Friends tab, where it lists online
friends at the top and then all friends on the bottom to be not very
intuitive, most people are used to things like IM clients having online
lists on top and offline lists below that.

­­­­­­­­
Summary:
Our meeting on Tuesday was fun and very productive. We work well together.

A lot of this week was getting around to communications issues we have
previously brought up at meetings, and in our last few week summaries.
Cosmetic issues still plauge nearby chat, more then a handful of people
talking at once is not readable. Nearby chat toasts for object's chat do
not handle icons right, showing the last speaker's/a random users icon
instead. And a handful of font issues.

Many group chat functions are not implimented yet. But we did manage to
explore group chat as much as we could.
One issue that occured to me is that many groups do not have an
insignia/picture, this makes their IM chicklets unidentifiable.

New users also have no profile picture, again making their chicklets
unidentifiable.

"Share" is still a mystery to me…

I think with a bit of touching up the communications system will work
out, most usability problems are cosmetic issues.

Summary of testing experience:

Major bugs prevent me from using the viewer full time (mostly non
display of object IMs which is a show stopper for me, I see the issue
is marked fixed in JIRA, but has not yet trickled down to our build).
I hope we get a new build soon that will allow for continuous daily
use of the viewer 02.

This week we were testing the communication tools, while I reported
the actual bugs that I was able to find, I think this is the right
place to mention that still after 3 weeks of using the new interface
that particular part feels like it would need a major design rethink.
As it stands now, it's a step back in usability compared to the
current production viewer.

Major problems with it:

* Local chat breaks the feeling of immersion and conversation flow,
it's too much in-your-face.
* Local chat log has maximal size, and cannot be re-sized beyond that.
* Local chat log does not become translucent when it loses focus
* IM/Group chat is not re-sizable and they don't remember their
docked/undocked state and position
* No easy way to switch between conversations, such as with keyboard
to cycle through local chat, IMs and Group IMs
* All incoming messages are treated the same, making it very easy to
miss very important ones. For example, region restart message will
disappear quickly if you have an active group IM chat going.
* Working with scripted objects while you are participating in an
active Group chat becomes almost impossible. llDialog windows get
moved around by incoming messages making you chaise them all over the
screen in an attempt to click on the right button.

* Same goes for hitting permissions dialogs from scripted objects.

I mentioned this last week, but we never got around to it, I still
think it would be useful to get some clarification about some issues
at our weekly meeting:

* Guidelines on reporting usability issues
* Guidelines what should be reported wrt the UI. Your weekly homework
instruction said not to report UI issues unless they block
functionality, but I am not entirely certain where the line goes, what
is UI issue and what is a bug that should be reported.
* Feedback on getting the design spec, and can usability issues be
raised over that spec.

Summary:
Like written in the first week, the communication system is the
vulnerable and weak spot of Viewer 2.0. At least for the build we got. I
tried not be biased, though the result stays the same.

More detailed:
I'll begin with the open chat. Testing in this area was done together
with Aimee, Dante, Drew and Yann.
The chat toasts are fading way to fast, which renders every text with 3
or more lines of text unreadable without the "Nearby Chat" floater.
Considering how fast the toasts vanish, it's kind of silly to allow the
users to close every single toast via on-mouse-over effect.
Any discussion in crowded areas is not followable at all without "Nearby
Chat".Like written in EXT-1507, focus of the chat toasts seems to be on the
writer rather than on the message. This is done by highlighting and
bolding the name, by adding a picture and fancy icons. Compared, the
message font is to small. It's even cutting off characters at the bottom
of the toasts (EXT-2003).The chat icons are buggy for objects (EXT-1656), don't seem to be cached
and also don't seem to add value. The user is overstrained.
It might become a little better when EXT-818 is implemented and multiple
toasts from the same user are merged into one toast.
Long names are wrapping and overlapping with text. There is a green icon
next to the timestamp where we thought it might be a voice indicator. In
case that's true, then the thing is buggy, since it always shows up in
green, regardless of voice settings. In case it isn't, then we're
clueless what it could be and it should probably be omitted.
Shout and whisper are malformed (EXT-1982). Emotes are weird with these
in general. Maybe use text formatting to highlight emotes. I'm a fan of
italics in that case.It's currently kind of hard to whisper in the client. I stumbled upon
EXT-252, which told me how to manage it. According to a wiki edit by
Soft Linden, Shift-Enter might become a shortcut for whipser too (
https://wiki.secondlife.com/w/index.php?title=All_keyboard_shortcut_keys&diff=prev&oldid=631923
<https://wiki.secondlife.com/w/index.php?title=All_keyboard_shortcut_keys&diff=prev&oldid=631923>
). I'd certainly welcome that.However, I don't know if it's wise to have Shift-Enter for whisper,
Ctrl-Enter for shout and Alt-Enter for crash (explanation: Alt-Enter
toggles full-screen and that seems to be very buggy and maybe even
unsupported in Viewer 2.0). So maybe consider to disable Alt-Enter.
Enabling chat bubbles for chat did not disable the chat toasts, which is
kind of annoying. This should be changed (EXT-1622). Furthermore, the
chat bubbles feature should be in the "Chat" tab of preferences, not in
the "Advanced" tab.The nearby chat window should turn transparent when it looses focus
(EXT-1881) and it should not use the Landmark pushpin icon to *pin* or
*unpin*. It should rather use same doc/undoc icon as the other floaters
(EXT-1573).

So far to open chat. Now chat with people farer away:
Besides calling cards, there is currently no way to initiate a friends
conference. That applies for the viewer we're using atm, however, recent
JIRAs by ProductEngine folks indicate that friends conferences are
working for other internal branches. E.g. EXT-1857 indicates that you
can select multiple friends in the friends list. This isn't possible for
me, though I guess that it's possible in the viewer they're using to
repro the issue. Again the remark: It would be really helpful to know
the roadmap.On a related note: It seems to be possible on the internal branch to
view a list of groupchat participants (e.g. EXT-1856). This is an
urgently needed feature. Both: list of participants, groupchat
management (mute etc.) as well as the ability to click on names in
groupchat to pull up profiles (EXT-1936).
Group chat should be styled the same way as IM chat, which means in this
case, that it should display the group logo where the regular chat has
the other Resident's profile icon (EXT-1936).
IM and group chat windows are to small by default and *need* to be
resizable (EXT-1694). I'm also not a fan of the new
<name> – [hh:mm]
format for IMs and groupchat. However, I can see that having a linebreak
after the initial indictor and grouping messages from the same sender is
certainly a benefit for low width IM windows. So maybe have
[hh:mm] <clickable name>: \n <grouped messages>
format instead.The group chat and IM chiclets are hard to keep track of. When I got
more IM and group IM sessions open at the same time, it's not as easy to
quickly jump to a specific window, since I need to navigate via these
tiny icons. And – as Aimee said – there are quite some groups which are
lacking group icons, which results in having lots of indistinguishable
default questionmark icons in there. Maybe that will make groupowners
set an icon when their groupmembers are annoyed by it… A nice thing
would certainly be, to follow Dirk's suggestion and allow the users to
set extra favicons, instead of shrinking down their profile pictures.
This *might* be an improvement.@group sessions in general: It would be good to be able to close a group
chat session without completly terminating it until relog. Means: When a
group chat is currently silent, I'd like to get rid of the chiclet
without beeing afraid of missing out on group chat in case someone
starts it again. This isn't possible with the regular viewer either,
though the limited space within the bottom chiclet bar, is making this
feature even more needed than before. So having two different close
buttons, one meaning "close until there's a new group IM" and one
meaning "close until relog or manual re-open of groupchat".
For 1 on 1 IMs, please let the viewer send (EXT-1628) and
receive/display (EXT-1629) when the other Resident is typing. This is
standart for almost every IM application. Also add a notification in the
IM window when the other Resident logs off (EXT-1877) and fix emotes in
there (EXT-1958 & EXT-1958) <- again: I'm a fan of _italics_.
After some chatting via IM I got to say: In case all of the above
becomes fixed, then I think that I can live with the new windows. It
doesn't *feel* as comfortable as before, but it might work. At least 1
on 1 IM sessions…

Notecards:
Notecards have always been poor and still are. I like that URLs are
parsed. It would still be neat to have some text formatting in there,
but I don't think it's not to much of an issue for this review now.

Friends list:
Double click on a group should initiate a group chat, not open the group
details sidebar thingy (EXT-1592). I'm missing the ability to click on a
"show on map" button to see someone's position (when permission is
granted) and the alternative via the Map is broken (EXT-1988).
The ability to sort friends into folders is a common feature in IM
messengers, is asked for by Residents and would certainly be welcomed by
new users as well. (Bonus points when it's possible to add the same
Resident into multiple folders, like *collegues* and *friends I'd like
to share a glass of wine with*).

Furthermore, the permission matrix is missing and it's urgently needed
(I want to know who got rights to edit my objects, without the need to
click through 200+ profiles… I think Aimee got a Jira for that?).
The gear options aren't hooked up yet, I guess?

Profile:
The partner link should be clickable (EXT-1553), same with the group
links, which are incomplete (EXT-1646). The "Account Status" should
change from Resident to "Scripted Agent" in case that's set via the
Dashboard.The "more" link is often not displayed in profiles when text is to long
(part of EXT-1503) *and* the annoying sound should go away (EXT-1995).
But to actual usability: The profile lacks information. Why is this
important for communication? 'Cause it lacks the box which previously
indicated which language(s) the other Resident is able to speak. I can
not stress enough that this should not be omitted (EXT-1978).

OK, I'm slowly coming to an end.Object IMs are a known bug and about to be fixed in the next release,
but what I'd also like to have: Some kind log for system notices. Like:
"Resident X accepted/declined your friendship/inventory offer".
These previously ended up in the "History" and I could look them up
there. Now, they're at best shortly displayed in a toast that vanishes
after a few seconds (e.g. Resident X came online), or completly lost at
worst (e.g. Object return). All these messages should end up on some log
which I can check. Maybe put it in "advanced" but it's certainly
something I'd want to have a look at from time to time.

Last but not least, something we've all been curious about:
What does the mysterious "Share" button do? It's located in the IM window…
Any insight on this "share"d via the mailing list would be much
appreciated!

Notes:
Timestamps in group IM are worthless if you're the only one talking,
since they don't refresh when you type something well after the first
thing that bears your name.

We REALLY need a fresher build. Several fixes seem to be in place, but
we're still "finding" them. Plus, the notecard fix implemented in 1.23.5
is still missing from the build we have. If we get too separated from
the devs, they're going to take our feedback less seriously, because
we're using such diverse builds.

Since receiving the test viewer, I have been trying to use it not just
for the testing hours, but as my regular day to day viewer, to make a
sincere effort to adjust more to the new interface and avoid falling
back on the familiarity of the old one. However I commented fairly
verbosely in my Week 1 email about communication in this viewer, and I
am afraid everything I said there still stands, rather than quote it
here I would suggest considering this email as a continuation of what I
wrote before.

Overall I like the idea of the new notifications system, though as I
mentioned before I believe the layout is currently pretty much upside
down. It is far more manageable to deal with incoming notices of
different types asynchronously, than trying to step through the old blue
dialogs in order. However I am puzzled by the approach to actual
communication, the general philosophy of the new interface seems to be
to pull related information together into a single place, this approach
being largely embodied by the use of the sidebar to group related UI,
but the opposite seems to have happened to communications, which in the
past was conveniently tied together but is now overwhelmingly disbursed.
I don't like the way conversations are chopped up into disjointed bits,
for both local chat and IM, that jump around the UI. These notifications
are all but useless, the only thing they convey is that chat is
happening, if your eyes happen to be on the screen for the very few
seconds they appear, it is completely impossible to actually extract
information from them as they dance around the screen. The way each one
is laid out gives the wrong emphasis between who is talking and what
they are saying, the large 'reply' button (capital 'R' please) wastes a
large amount of space taking up a row of its own in the toast, it is
also something of a misnomer, usually when I click it it is just to read
the conversation, not necessarily reply, as a new user that would deter
me from clicking it at all, for fear of accidentally butting into a
conversation.

To give some idea of what I find I need to do to make communications
useable when not actively testing the new UI, I keep the Nearby Chat log
open all the time (I also did this with the old viewer), usually placed
in the top left corner of my screen. The legacy communicate window I
keep open during group IM conversations in the top right, at a width
roughly twice that of the new IM pop-ups.

This is hampered by the nearby chat window being inconveniently pinned
to the bottom where it obstructs the foreground in the world view, there
is no clear indication of it being pinned as it looks like an ordinary
floater and there is a gap between it and the edges of the world view,
so to a new user it just seems to be a window that refuses to move,
unless they happen to find the pin. I assume its appearance is
unfinished though, as it doesn't seem to be styled to match the rest of
the viewer and has a number of small UI bugs, such as not resizing
diagonally, and not going semi-transparent when out of focus. In local
chat-heavy situations it would be nice to have the option (though only
as an option) to dock this to the side of the screen either into the
existing sidebar, or on the left-hand side, giving a chat history the
full-height of the window that doesn't encroach over the world-view,
this would go hand-in-hand with the previously requested ability to
UNdock sidebar panels. Chat windows jump back to the bottom every time
new text is added, which causes major problems trying to catch up with
chat history, click links or copy and paste text. Ideally the window
should remain scrolled, but a visual indication should be given when new
text is added (e.g. flash the down arrow of the scroll bar), to avoid
the opposite problem of forgetting you have scrolled up and missing the
new text. When nearby chat is closed, new local chat notifications are
covered up by any minimized windows, which also default to the bottom
left corner.

I have made a great effort to use the IM pop-ups (banning myself from
resorting to the Communicate window this week), but frankly while they
are just about usable for transient IM conversations with a single
person, trying to follow group chat in them is an experience roughly
equivalent to trying to read a newspaper through a telescope. They
appear in the worst possible place obscuring my view of the foreground
in the world view, and I have to close the oversized button and picture
panel (which is usually mostly blank wasted space) every time a new one
appears. A screenshot is attached which clearly demonstrates how the new
IM pop-up while half the size of the Communicate window causes a much
greater obstruction to the world view by obscuring the focal point of
the scene in front of me, while the much larger Communicate window
positioned at the top covers only sky, making it much less disruptive to
in-world interaction. With the Communicate window I could always see by
names on tabs who I was receiving IMs from (an interface already
familiar to new users from many other IM chat programs), whereas now I
have to actively hover over the cryptic squished chiclet icons, which
are just a row of enigmatic question marks most of the time. I cannot
emphasise enough how much more convenient and less confusing the
existing communicate window is, both from the point of view of an
experienced user and trying to put myself in the place of someone
completely new to the interface.

Group IM still has the old problem that closing the window causes an
invisible change of state; when you first log in you are listening to
chat from all your groups, but if you close a group IM window it stops
listening to that group altogether until you relog with no indication
that this has occurred. There is no way of seeing which groups you are
actually listening to. This means that unless I want to miss future
incoming group IMs I cannot, ever, remove a group chat chiclet. This is
also inconsistent with direct IMs, which will still come through.

Incoming IMs should not be included in the notification count in the
message well, as it makes this count pretty much meaningless. IMs should
only be counted in the IM chiclets, this then makes it clear whether
there are other notifications you need to deal with at a glance without
having to either view the notifications or do maths in your head
subtracting the IM counts from the notification count.

Hovering over notification toasts pauses the display of incoming
notifications, presumably to stop them jumping away as you try to click
them, but this means if you happen to leave your mouse pointer there for
a while and then move it away you either get a sudden flood of
notifications, or if only a few have been received they briefly flicker
on the screen and disappear.

Script dialog menus should be not be handled in the same way as
notifications, they are conceptually different, and having them move
about as other notifications come in can be very frustrating. Many
existing products are designed relying on the fact script menus overlay
each other to present multi-page menus, these now appear onscreen
together, effectively breaking existing content.

When trashing (err, removing) a friend from your friends list, they do
not disappear from the list until you relog. In resident profiles, the
group list should be displayed one per line to make it more readable,
and they should be clickable to view the group profiles, this is one of
the main locations that groups are discovered from.

To finish on something positive, I love the idea of the Recent People
tab, I can see this becoming very valuable, though I have some
suggestions to make it more useful. It would be good to be able to
filter, sort and group this list by how you encountered them. If you are
a member of a large group or two it just fills up with (seemingly)
random people that also happen to be listening to the same chat even
though you aren't interacting with them in any way. It would be good for
example just to be able to view the people that I was with at a meeting
afterwards, without having to disentangle them from people that were in
group chat.

END
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