Impressions of the new user experience ..

[Silent Mistwalker]

3 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

This has been done MANY times, both by LL and by resident helper organizations. Quite a few of the builds are still available.

Examples:

• Orientation Island/Help Island (LL). This was the second version of the New User Experience, and consisted of two regions. A publicly-accessible version is still available. Orientation Island had a linear progression of learning stations, while Help Island was more free-form with several help areas accessible from a central arrival point. (I can't remember what they called the original NUE version...it was the one with the city build, and the volcano, and the rats you ran over while riding a Segway. Exiting the island landed you at an Infohub. Anyone remember that one?)
• Learning Island/Social Island (LL). This was the official NUE until recently. The Social Islands still exist, but the official LL Learning Islands have been removed. Social Island 10 is publicly available and is clogged with the usual crowd of nitwits, showoffs, and predators you used to find at Infohubs. A version of Learning Island still exists for users entering via the Firestorm and London City signup portals. Again, Learning Island was more linear in nature, while Social Island allowed one to wander at will from area to area.
• Welcome Island (LL). This is the current official NUE, the one Coffee reported on at the start of this thread. It's basically linear, although you aren't forced to do things in any order. While residents cannot return to the original island once they leave, there is a duplicate which is publicly accessible, called Welcome Back Island. (The Guide Book refers to it as "Welcome Island Public" though, which should result in most residents never figuring out how to get there.)
• Caledon Oxbridge University (resident). This is a very large, very detailed, and very linear tutorial, with a huge amount of information available. It walks the new user through several "colleges", each a building with a number of information posters. This build demonstrates the main shortcoming of the linear tutorial approach...a huge proportion of newcomers simply run through it, taking no time at all to read the information. These people (mostly gamers) treat such places as a race course to be completed as rapidly as possible.
• New Resident Island (resident). In many ways similar to Oxbridge, NRI offers a more diverse and free-form learning experience. However, to get the most out of it, the user has to take it slowly and pay attention, clicking on things that may look quite different to the previous educational things they saw at the last learning location.
• Ajuda SL Brasil (resident). The longest running help area for non-English speakers, this is a relatively free-form build, and has an enormous selection of freebies. It has, like Oxbridge and NRI, live helpers available.

 

You forgot one:

start [Phoenix Firestorm Project - Wiki] (firestormviewer.org)

[Solar Legion]

Oh for ...

Not everyone coming into or using Second Life is here for the weapons/combat. Many are - in fact - here more for the social aspects (some for the RP too).

No new user should ever be subjected to any sort of anti-troll training beyond showcasing the very features that will help when such a thing occurs.

[Lindal Kidd]

21 minutes ago, Tama Suki said:

they should implement rooms where LL teaches how to defend against the cursed horrible trolls.

Caledon Oxbridge had the best (IMHO) resource for this, the 90 minute long Avatar Safety course. This was offered once per week (by yours truly) and was maybe the best-attended of the Oxbridge courses. However, I'm not teaching at present.

[Solar Legion]

5 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

This has been done MANY times, both by LL and by resident helper organizations. Quite a few of the builds are still available.

Examples:

• Orientation Island/Help Island (LL). This was the second version of the New User Experience, and consisted of two regions. A publicly-accessible version is still available. Orientation Island had a linear progression of learning stations, while Help Island was more free-form with several help areas accessible from a central arrival point. (I can't remember what they called the original NUE version...it was the one with the city build, and the volcano, and the rats you ran over while riding a Segway. Exiting the island landed you at an Infohub. Anyone remember that one?)
• Learning Island/Social Island (LL). This was the official NUE until recently. The Social Islands still exist, but the official LL Learning Islands have been removed. Social Island 10 is publicly available and is clogged with the usual crowd of nitwits, showoffs, and predators you used to find at Infohubs. A version of Learning Island still exists for users entering via the Firestorm and London City signup portals. Again, Learning Island was more linear in nature, while Social Island allowed one to wander at will from area to area.
• Welcome Island (LL). This is the current official NUE, the one Coffee reported on at the start of this thread. It's basically linear, although you aren't forced to do things in any order. While residents cannot return to the original island once they leave, there is a duplicate which is publicly accessible, called Welcome Back Island. (The Guide Book refers to it as "Welcome Island Public" though, which should result in most residents never figuring out how to get there.)
• Caledon Oxbridge University (resident). This is a very large, very detailed, and very linear tutorial, with a huge amount of information available. It walks the new user through several "colleges", each a building with a number of information posters. This build demonstrates the main shortcoming of the linear tutorial approach...a huge proportion of newcomers simply run through it, taking no time at all to read the information. These people (mostly gamers) treat such places as a race course to be completed as rapidly as possible.
• New Resident Island (resident). In many ways similar to Oxbridge, NRI offers a more diverse and free-form learning experience. However, to get the most out of it, the user has to take it slowly and pay attention, clicking on things that may look quite different to the previous educational things they saw at the last learning location.
• Ajuda SL Brasil (resident). The longest running help area for non-English speakers, this is a relatively free-form build, and has an enormous selection of freebies. It has, like Oxbridge and NRI, live helpers available.

The volcano and such was the second, not Orientation/Help Island. The second was the Atoll build with the progressive stations, volcano, city and such.

[Lindal Kidd]

3 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

You forgot one:

Yep, and NCI too. I wrote about the ones I'm most familiar with, but it wasn't meant to be exhaustive.

[Lindal Kidd]

1 minute ago, Solar Legion said:

The volcano and such was the second, not Orientation/Help Island. The second was the Atoll build with the progressive stations, volcano, city and such.

My senility may be showing, but that's not how I remember it. The volcano/city/castle build predated Orientation Island/Help Island.

[Solar Legion]

3 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

My senility may be showing, but that's not how I remember it. The volcano/city/castle build predated Orientation Island/Help Island.

I went through both. OI/HI on this account and the Atoll build much later on a now banking alt. This account went through OI/HI and the banker went through the Atoll.

OI/HI was in use when I joined (2006) and the Atoll phased in about a year or two later. I know it was active around 2008 at the very least - I recall visiting it as a Mentor and shaking my head at the overtly gamified presentation. To this day I contend that the Atoll orientation system is to blame for a fair few of the Gaemerz type expectations of the era.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Solar Legion

[Solar Legion]

Putting this as an additional post to the above: The Second Life wiki currently shows the Atoll version as the entry for "Orientation Island" - the actual original builds for both OI and HI can be found as Orientation Island Public and Help Island Public(2).

[Lindal Kidd]

I joined in May 2007 and came through the Atoll experience. I remember creating an alt a few months later and leaving her on the Atoll to answer newbies' questions.

In my recollection, OI/HI happened a little later, and my alt got kicked off the Atoll when they went to the new system. I recall sitting on top of the wooden sign at the OI arrival point, handing out New Resident Help Kits to arriving newbies, and then joining the official Mentors and hanging out at Help Island.

Or maybe there was a still earlier version of OI/HI, predating both???

Hmm...I wonder if my chatlogs go back that far?

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, Tama Suki said:

WT stands for Weapon Testing sandbox. Very, very well known. 😕

Not so well known as you might think

 

 

1 hour ago, Tama Suki said:

I am beginning to understand that the most active forums here are populated with people who have not the slightest experience in these things.

A large portion of SL users are not here for anything related to combat.  Some are here just to create; others to socialize; others to explore and/or take photos; others for a combination of those things,  etc......

 

[Solar Legion]

1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I joined in May 2007 and came through the Atoll experience. I remember creating an alt a few months later and leaving her on the Atoll to answer newbies' questions.

In my recollection, OI/HI happened a little later, and my alt got kicked off the Atoll when they went to the new system. I recall sitting on top of the wooden sign at the OI arrival point, handing out New Resident Help Kits to arriving newbies, and then joining the official Mentors and hanging out at Help Island.

Or maybe there was a still earlier version of OI/HI, predating both???

Hmm...I wonder if my chatlogs go back that far?

OIP/HIP are the builds from 2006ish and previous. The Atoll with the City, Volcano and such came later. LL also did a lot of flip-flopping on the NUE at the time of the Atoll.

[Tama Suki]

47 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Caledon Oxbridge had the best (IMHO) resource for this, the 90 minute long Avatar Safety course. This was offered once per week (by yours truly) and was maybe the best-attended of the Oxbridge courses. However, I'm not teaching at present.

I may have seen a Machinima regarding this.
If I'm not mistaken it was a bad avatar taking bad things out of cotton candy, right?

[Tama Suki]

I'll just take an URL from youtube and get there! 😜

[Silent Mistwalker]

8 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I joined in May 2007 and came through the Atoll experience. I remember creating an alt a few months later and leaving her on the Atoll to answer newbies' questions.

In my recollection, OI/HI happened a little later, and my alt got kicked off the Atoll when they went to the new system. I recall sitting on top of the wooden sign at the OI arrival point, handing out New Resident Help Kits to arriving newbies, and then joining the official Mentors and hanging out at Help Island.

Or maybe there was a still earlier version of OI/HI, predating both???

Hmm...I wonder if my chatlogs go back that far?

The 2003 version was different from the 2005 version followed by another change in 2009/10. 

Why are you still on my lawn?

Don't have a hairbrush handy but this cane will do!

🤭

[Lindal Kidd]

8 hours ago, Tama Suki said:

I may have seen a Machinima regarding this.
If I'm not mistaken it was a bad avatar taking bad things out of cotton candy, right?

I don't recall that ever happening in one of my classes. I do recall one where a student, upset with being ejected from class for being disruptive, came back and started throwing school buses into the classroom...

[Prokofy Neva]

On 1/1/2022 at 6:00 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

Needed to do some viewer testing so rolled a new me and went to have a look at the new user experience, here are my thoughts (stock linden viewer) ...

• The gender neutral avatar is .. in need of some love. https://i.imgur.com/hEjVrvP.png - None of this is inspiring least of which being the terrible animations. The starter avatar is the very first impression a brand new user has of their 'digital self' on this platform, it needs to be passable. None of the starter avatars are great and shouldn't have decorative attachments (dog bag, ipad, etc .. there is an expectation on how such held items should behave and look, such as obeying gravity, which SL can't easily do so they look janky)
• Oh dear
• What?!
• The build is nice, well lit, welcoming. 
• The guide book, while informative (and intrusive) is too much like a book. It needs be more tied to an avatar location in the new user experience. Like if I enter the area about editing my avatar, it should show on that page. I think a HUD would have worked better that could point to default UI elements and be more situationally aware.
• A guide book isn't a replacement for a tutorial experience. 
• Needs viewer-world interactions. So when getting a free item, it opens inventory and shows you where it is rather than just some text in chat. A checkbox on this dialog with "Show item in inventory" enabled by default that opens inventory direct to the new item would work (also, the option to "Block Owner" should be disabled for Linden accounts .. accidentally blocking governor linden during the welcome experience is going to undermine the entire adventure!).
• After collecting all the "Newcomer Gifts" I end up with multiple identically named folders .. this isn't great. Either name the folders meaningfully, or dump the goodies in 'Objects', As the default viewer doesn't show folders without content, and this is the default location for stuff after the NUE .. It kinda makes sense to introduce this during the tutorial by putting stuff in it.
• The LOD of the furniture and objects at the bar is overly aggressive, this is a very light region and not on a Li budget, maybe not make the 3rd part of the tutorial path be an introduction to triangle garbage.
• There is a bar and a coffee shop and both appear under used  .. with all the seating that's to come, maybe cut bar and move the coffee, merging it with the seating. Both of these enclaves could be put to better use
• The rest of the space is filled with chairs and places to chat, which feels like filler .. it's fine (although the fire pit could be better).. some are a little large for the scale of the default avatars

 

I appreciate that the new user experience shouldn't be a destination or end in of itself, but this is very spartan. I think the idea to not create a space where users get to try out various aspects of SL is a good one. However ..

Space could be devoted to showing that users can create content and then bring that into the world (just some pictures of objects in blender or MD and then said object rotating in world), show activities that people can participate in (pictures of flying and sailing) and a floaty model of a car, show off linden homes with a few small models of the houses in suite, some SL art pulled from flickr, a home with a few rooms each decorated in a contrasting different style. 

The freebie gift items are cute, but we can surely do better with the animation

Please prevent users logged into NUE locations from getting group invites, no one needs invites to a skin store's group or to be tagged as "xyz's little whatever"

 

 

Are you sure you are in the bona fide, authentic, actual New User Experience? I read that the Lindens divert existing accounts whose IP addresses they have of course captured to another "Experience" that anyone can go to inworld or something.

I went through it awhile ago and was totally appalled in every way. If anyone would like my free artwork on this question, IM me.

But I'm not sure I saw their new ne plus ultra Experience. PS one way I got burned was that I thought if you re-rolled you could choose one of the new user names. So if I gave myself a stupid name with a number, I'd still get to put a nice new last name on it. Nope, those truly are only available for $40!

 

[rasterscan]

On 1/1/2022 at 11:00 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

 

• The gender neutral avatar is .. in need of some love. https://i.imgur.com/hEjVrvP.png -

 

 

Bwahah ! Oh c'monnn Labs you can do better than this ! Look at those hands fer chrissake ! Bwahah ! C'monnnn .. fs ...

[Mollymews]

Linden have said that they are going to introduce a new starter avatar this year sometime

i hope that it will be a basic bento/bom mesh avatar with a carefully crafted starter kit of mix n match body parts and garments