[survey] Second Life questionnaire - 5th year thesis study

[AikaFuwa25]

Hello everyone !

I'm a UI / UX master student and I am currently working on my end of study thesis on open world games. Part of my study involves the habits of players in the open world, and more particularly of Second Life.

For that, I carried out a small questionnaire to better understand these habits and to analyze them.
https://forms.gle/x9eobWqt5ygApjou6

Thank you for your help ! 🙏

[Storii Darkheart]

7 minutes ago, AikaFuwa25 said:

Hello everyone !

I'm a UI / UX master student and I am currently working on my end of study thesis on open world games. Part of my study involves the habits of players in the open world, and more particularly of Second Life.

For that, I carried out a small questionnaire to better understand these habits and to analyze them.
https://forms.gle/x9eobWqt5ygApjou6

Thank you for your help ! 🙏

I just want to let you know it’s mildly confusing to have the former users section and the current users section both have the same questions be required answers even though one of those sections is not applicable 

[AikaFuwa25]

Hey Storii Darkheart, thank you so much for you answer. I change that, I'm so sorry you have to do it twice...

[animats]

That's considered a "please do my homework for me" posting.

If you want to do something useful, try taking a close look at the new user experience and its problems. Go to the places that offer new users help, and watch and take notes as people show up with problems. Go to Firestorm Help Island, or New Resident Services at Kuula, or Caledon Oxbridge.  Just sit down within chat range of the action, watch, wait, and take notes. (Taking video of others without permission is not permitted by the terms of service, but you can take a few stills to illustrate your paper.) These places are all run by volunteers, not SL staff. Talk to the staff when they're not busy.

The two standard new user problems are "What do I do now?", and "How do I fix this #!$% clothing problem?" Spend enough time in world to see both go by a few times. That will give you a sense of the UI / UX problems. What would you do to make that better?

To get a better sense of games within SL, I'd suggest visiting two games - the Amazon River experience, and Cocoon. The Amazon River experience has a very elaborate new user tutorial and uses the Second Life experience system to enforce game rules. Do the tutorials and play a bit to get a sense of how they did that. Cocoon is a cyberpunk role playing space. it's complicated, it has a lot of rules, it has serious roleplayers, and it's visually striking. Interviewing people there would interfere with roleplay, but you can just tour. (Cocoon asks that you wear an out of-character tag, offered at the entrance, if you're just looking.) Those two are examples of places with a complex user experience which they try to explain to new users. Think about how that could be improved.

Other useful places to visit are London City and Social Island 10. You can go there and ask new users your questions. To talk to some more experienced users, try visiting Builders Brewery, where people learn to build. There are usually people there and most are willing to talk. You might also sit in on a meeting of Server User Group or Content Creation User Group or Open Development User Group and meet some of the people who make the machinery go.

[Storii Darkheart]

Those are good ideas but those aren’t what the survey questions are asking. They could go to any of those sims and wander around but that won’t get them the information they’re looking for in terms of usage habits. 

[Prokofy Neva]

33 minutes ago, animats said:

That's considered a "please do my homework for me" posting.

If you want to do something useful, try taking a close look at the new user experience and its problems. Go to the places that offer new users help, and watch and take notes as people show up with problems. Go to Firestorm Help Island, or New Resident Services at Kuula, or Caledon Oxbridge.  Just sit down within chat range of the action, watch, wait, and take notes. (Taking video of others without permission is not permitted by the terms of service, but you can take a few stills to illustrate your paper.) These places are all run by volunteers, not SL staff. Talk to the staff when they're not busy.

The two standard new user problems are "What do I do now?", and "How do I fix this #!$% clothing problem?" Spend enough time in world to see both go by a few times. That will give you a sense of the UI / UX problems. What would you do to make that better?

To get a better sense of games within SL, I'd suggest visiting two games - the Amazon River experience, and Cocoon. The Amazon River experience has a very elaborate new user tutorial and uses the Second Life experience system to enforce game rules. Do the tutorials and play a bit to get a sense of how they did that. Cocoon is a cyberpunk role playing space. it's complicated, it has a lot of rules, it has serious roleplayers, and it's visually striking. Interviewing people there would interfere with roleplay, but you can just tour. (Cocoon asks that you wear an out of-character tag, offered at the entrance, if you're just looking.) Those two are examples of places with a complex user experience which they try to explain to new users. Think about how that could be improved.

Other useful places to visit are London City and Social Island 10. You can go there and ask new users your questions. To talk to some more experienced users, try visiting Builders Brewery, where people learn to build. There are usually people there and most are willing to talk. You might also sit in on a meeting of Server User Group or Content Creation User Group or Open Development User Group and meet some of the people who make the machinery go.

I don't mind doing someone's homework for them for 15 minutes if they are in the field of UX and design. Why not?

It's very poorly conceived and worded, but that's fine, he can learn along with doing his homework.

Given that the person in charge of Reuters UX, for example, is a former griefer and griefer scholar, I think it's good if the UX field broadens out with more perspectives.

[Alwin Alcott]

...left the form at "gender" ... so tired about that... give at least a choice to skip answers.

[Doris Johnsky]

9 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

...left the form at "gender" ... so tired about that... give at least a choice to skip answers.

I would put the gender I am in SL, no matter what my RL gender is. In my case they are the same, but no, I wouldn't' reveal that to anyone were they not.  Not sure I could trust you.

[Storii Darkheart]

What a petty thing to leave a questionnaire over, especially when it asks what gender you identify as not even just what is your gender 

[Quistess Alpha]

33 minutes ago, Storii Darkheart said:

What a petty thing to leave a questionnaire over, especially when it asks what gender you identify as not even just what is your gender 

a) It's not relevant, and the assumption that women and men are so different they might need different UX considerations seems a bit sexist.

b) Non-binary people exist and are valid. The survey seems to have been edited to now have NB and an "other" option if it didn't already.

Edited August 20, 2021 by Quistess Alpha

[Storii Darkheart]

It had the option the entire time. 

[Rolig Loon]

I am truly underwhelmed by the questionnaire.  Aside from proofreading errors, many of the questions are vague and impossible to answer.  

[Yukiko Yeshto]

I am confused about the headline of this survey, especially in combination with the picture being used. "Gaming habits - Second Life (2003)" ...is this refering to the year 2003? 

Edited August 20, 2021 by Yukiko Yeshto

[Eggy UwU]

just a few suggestions on this survey:

questions themselves:

1. "how old are you?" -- i'd suggest making this question for ages 18+ because second life does not allow those to be underage on here.
2. "what kind of goals have you set for yourself?" - i'd suggest making this question more clear, i'm not sure what you meant by what kind of goals. second life goals?
3. "do you create your own objects?" -- have you done research into the second life way of creation? through prims and through mesh?
4. "are you apart of a group of players?" -- what kind of groups? like friendship groups or what?"
5. "what were your expectations regarding this game?" -- what kind of expectations? i would get more into the specifics.
6. "can you describe how you feel during your games?" -- i would suggest maybe doing research into the aspects of second life being a "game" vs. being a "virtual world."
7. "are you an active part of a gaming community?" -- does this relate to second life?

overall:

• please check your grammar and format of the survey. a lot of it did not make any sense.
• do some more research into second life as a whole. i feel like you don't understand a lot of the aspects of what SL really is.

regardless, best of luck.

 

Edited August 20, 2021 by Iggy UwU

[Cuuka]

I've made the survey, hoping it will help !

[Finite]

9 hours ago, AikaFuwa25 said:

Hello everyone !

I'm a UI / UX master student and I am currently working on my end of study thesis on open world games. Part of my study involves the habits of players in the open world, and more particularly of Second Life.

For that, I carried out a small questionnaire to better understand these habits and to analyze them.
https://forms.gle/x9eobWqt5ygApjou6

Thank you for your help ! 🙏

It would be funny if the actual thesis is about the habitual nitpicking of open world players particularly on the forums and the survey was just bait.

I thought the survey was fine. It asked questions. I answered them.

Also, SL is intended for 16 and up. 13-15 year olds can access certain specific regions. 16 and 17 year olds can access general rated sims. - SL Wiki.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Finite

[Silent Mistwalker]

Oops. I think I might have kind of accidentally skewed some results. 

We weren't supposed to answer a question with a question were we? 🤔

[sirhc DeSantis]

What does this gig pay?

eta 'Have you ever played Second Life ?' so doubles my fee

Edited August 21, 2021 by sirhc DeSantis

[Alwin Alcott]

9 hours ago, Storii Darkheart said:

It had the option the entire time. 

it doesn't have the ability to leave this question blank, as it is non of anyones business to know. And the questions following do nóthing with the result of that specific answer, so it's not even relevant for the whole, just a go on the hype of the moment to have a gender question.

btw .. if you answer questions or remarkt fór the poster... what's your part in this? The only one i expect to counter remarks is the OP, they are the only one knowing the why and what.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Alwin Alcott

[Max Nova]

I'm always happy to help a student. 

[ValKalAstra]

Adding onto what @Iggy UwUmentioned above, your research design is flawed. You have, in essence, chosen a "quantitative" approach to reach "qualitative" results and as a result, your research design is struggling against the restraints of the used methodology.

This is exacerbated by the lack of a pretest and preliminary research into the field. The user experience is further made sour by unclear questions and assumptions that are not really applicable to SecondLife.

On top of that, there are aspects that rattle against scientific ethics. Personal questions should always include an option to not answer. It also needs a data and privacy declaration going beyond "anonymous". 

My honest recommendation is to rethink what you wish to know and question your tools. The questions you ask would be much better served in qualitative interviews (structured or narrative). Using something like Grounded Theory for analysis, you could get a much better understanding of what SL is and which aspects most shape the user experience. It also might be a good idea to go native for a while, get a feel for things yourself.

With that in tow, you could then branch into a mixed method approach with a survey based on your interviews, showing you not only did your homework, so to speak, but also that your results have a purpose and reason.

Your survey as it is now will most likely sabotage your thesis if for no other reason that it confuses and annoys users with assumptions, mistakes and curiously enough, bad user experience.

/edit: That said, I filled out the survey either way.

Edited August 21, 2021 by ValKalAstra

[LittleMe Jewell]

While it says anonymous, since it is using Google Docs, if one happens to be logged in to Google on the browser, it automatically associates the person's Google account with the form.  I had to bring up a browser where I wasn't logged in to my Google account before proceeding.  I probably would have used a truly anonymous survey tool.

As previously mentioned, many of the questions a too general or vague, making it difficult to answer.  The very first question could be answered yes by anyone that had simply visited the Second Life main web page, without ever actually logging in.

As to the question 'Are you still logged in to Second Life' - I'm pretty sure what you mean is "Do you still log in to Second Life', as opposed to actually wanting to know if I am logged inworld at this moment.

The question about 'How much time' do I spend there, has vastly different answers for me depending on whether it is a weekend or a weekday.  Even calculating an average across all days provides a misleading answer since the time difference between the weekdays and weekends is so large.

'What are the notable changes that your avatar has experienced' -- Not sure if you mean my own personal experiences inworld, the technological changes inworld, and/or some of the major changes that have happened with LL itself that have reverberated inworld.

"What island are you in" -- I truly do not even understand what this question is wanting to know.

'Are you part of a user group' and 'If so, what are your goals' --- This shows that you have very little, if any, practical knowledge of SL.  I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of Groups in SL are Store/Sales groups and Land Groups.  To me, those types of groups don't have Goals associated with them.

There are questions about Goals and Expectations -- which can validly be answered with "None" -- which are then followed up with the question "Have they been reached", and that question requires a Yes/No answer.  If I had no Goals or Expectations for something, then a Yes/No answer is not relevant.

 

Your survey introduction indicates that English is not your first language.  In the future, if you are going to put a survey out in English, I would suggest that you run it by a few people that do speak English as their first language.  That might have helped with the ambiguity of some of the questions.

 

 

As a side note, I'm curious how you came up with your age ranges.  Anytime one doesn't just use decades (20-29, 30-39, 40-49, etc...), I'm curious as to what prompted them to use the ranges they did.

Edited August 22, 2021 by LittleMe Jewell

[Lillith Hapmouche]

21 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

This shows that you have very little, if any, practical knowledge of SL

To my liking, that's the key part of the whole survey... 

Sadly, I didn't get any further. Didn't feel like making up a ton of pointless answers.

[Chic Aeon]

Well this thread gave me a choice between chuckle, eyeroll and running into a corner and pounding on the walls.  But it did wake me up (was nodding off over Blender).

 

I really do NOT understand why these folks (not just the OP) come to SL (maybe for a day - maybe for a week) and expect to  do a thesis on the platform. I mean REALLY?        

 

Long, long ago (before mesh for sure so maybe 11 years) someone contacted me about making a short video story about Second Life. She was paying well in USDs. It turned out to be part of her thesis and I have no doubts about her presenting herself as the machinimatographer.  In the end I didn't do the project. She had no concept at all so far as what Second Life was and kept arguing about  #1 doing things against the TOS and #2 doing things in machinma that you couldn't do in SL (one example was running your finger across a dusty table) -- eyeroll anyone? 

 

What makes this thread even worse for me is that MY state just past a law that students (better put that in quotes) no longer have to prove that they can read, write or do math in order to graduate from HIGH SCHOOL.   I taught college for a couple of decades. To say I am royally upset about this is very much an understatement.  In essence our tax dollars are going to pay for babysitting services. GEEZ.

 

OK. Awake again. Back to work.  

[So Whimsy]

I remember in the previous forum iteration that people who posted these kind of topics were laughed out of the forum (to put it nicely). It's nice to see some nowadays participate to help, how fruitful that is however remains to be left unsaid.