Caleb Booker

This is the second of a series dedicated to answering two questions:

1. Why are virtual worlds a good alternative to existing technologies?
2. How can one best get a Return On Investment (ROI) from virtual world ventures?

There is now an archive page for past entries. Feel free to explore the topics that appear there and email me if you feel that there is a topic that needs to be covered.

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Forword

While I had intended to launch directly into a post about “Meetings 101″, as I collected my thoughts it began to dawn on me how enormous the topic really is. There are so many sub-topics and digressions along the way that a single post attempting to sum up the whole thing would be hubris. There’s a reason facilitators are necessary for many of these things.

So this week I take a good look at avatars in great detail, building the case for why they’re worth considering and how to best leverage them.

This will probably be my longest post ever. It runs a bit long as it’s written for completely new users, and the topic tends to deal as much with corporate politics as it does with psychology and science. Feel free to skim to what catches your eye, it’s ok, I won’t be offended!

NOTE: the off-the-cuff format is just going to have to be what this series uses as, while I feel motivated to get these thoughts together in some kind of order, I don’t feel motivated to create something ready to print. Yet.

As a result please forgive my lack of specific references. This is just a collection of things I remember having studied, experienced or tested in the past, so do add comments if I’ve missed something or if you’ve written something that applies!

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Are Avatars Really Useful?

People grapple with this one. Customizing and piloting an avatar is an extremely satisfying and important process, but from the perspective of someone who has never done it the whole thing looks like you’re playing with dolls. Even having gone through the process themselves, it often takes weeks for people to stop feeling like this must be just an extraneous toy.

Executives don’t have weeks, so let’s just get down to the point, shall we? What is the actual return on investment in working with avatars?

Again, we return to the arenas of perception and psychology. As it turns out “seeing yourself”, or something that represents you, is a powerful thing that makes communication work even better than it does in real life. That, and I always did think I’d look better with darker hair.

So, what is an avatar?

Google “avatar” now and you’ll get references to a cartoon, an upcoming James Cameron movie, and of course stories about gods descending to the earthly realm and creating a corporeal form. This last is, in fact, where the word originally comes from. For our purposes, however, let’s just focus on the modern use of the term: it’s the graphic that represents you on the computer.

Here are ten examples of avatars from ten different worlds, chosen at random. (Sorry about the Qwaq pic I couldn’t find one with quite the right angle.) Take a good look and see if you can pick the one that seems out of place ?

Hint #1: It’s not the World of Warcraft Paladin. I could have used a picture of a medieval Second Life avatar with a bazooka growing out his left ear so let’s put wardrobe aside.

Hint #2: It’s not that Kaneva avatar that looks like he’s going to kick your ass even more than the WoW guy does… for whatever reason they think that’s just good marketing.

Hint #3: No, it’s not the web.alive guy. He’s just tired.

No, the one that doesn’t belong is our pixelated friend from Habbo. Now, there’s nothing wrong with the world per se and a great number of kids identify with these little guys. For enterprise purposes, however, it’s lacking a few things that we’re going to go ahead and presuppose are important:

1. Size matters. When your avatar only occupies a tiny percentage of the frame, it seems insignificant. Every other world above allows you to zoom right in on your avatar, letting it fill your frame. Show me a user that doesn’t ever want to do that and I’ll eat my hat. (See last week for more info on this.)

    

2. There’s a base level of graphics detail we’ll assume is necessary here for a real enterprise play. Even Qwaq, which is as business-oriented as a world can possibly get, went through the process of acquiring photo-realistic avatars.

    

3. 2.5D is less than 3D. There, I said it, and I don’t care how many academics or game geeks want to lynch me for it. Many will argue that 2.5D (a locked camera perspective on the action, making it “two and a half” dimensions) is as valid a medium as 3D, but let’s face it: the more something is like the world we live in, the easier it is for us to make a connection. Let’s not mess about here.

So there we are. Avatars. Seemed a lot tougher to get through than I thought it was going to be when I started this section… what next? Ah, yes:

First Person vs. Third Person Perspective

Understanding the difference in how first person perspective affects people versus third person perspective goes a long way toward explaining why you need an avatar at all, rather than just a “camera”. Take a good look at these two images, snapped at just about the same time.

Field Of View

The first and most obvious issue: you can see more in third person perspective.

When you’re in first person, you just don’t have peripheral vision. Wide screens can work around this somewhat (see last week re: screen dimensions) but even then, there’s something missing. Even with a wider screen the person directly to my left would remain completely out of my field of view, as would all of the people at the other side of the plant.

This doesn’t matter so much if you don’t care about inadvertently leaving a few people out of the conversation, but generally business etiquette demands that you don’t ignore your clients!

Of course, in the real world you work around this with basic physiology: our eyes must always be on the move to see something. Placing any image exactly in the same place relative to the eyeball makes that image disappear into a grey blur. This keeps our eyes moving around, so we tend to notice people on the very outer edges of our view.

If your computer screen moved around like that, however, you’d get motion sickness! So, in general, best practice is to stick to 3rd person perspective until displays are conventionally made to surround our heads or something.

Gaining Perspective

As it turns out meeting with someone in a virtual space to have a conversation makes things quite a bit easier from another perspective: it lets you “take a step back” from the issue, think about it logically, and then contribute with something far more sane and sober than you might have otherwise.

This theory has actually been borne out among therapists who have been using virtual spaces for PTSD and conflict resolution with great success. Being somewhere and speaking to someone is one thing, but taking a step back and seeing yourself with someone having a conversation is something different altogether.

There are some immediate tangible benefits here beyond the therapeutic:

1. People speak with a combination of enhanced politeness and honesty. A rare combination!
2. There’s an increased tendency to volunteer new ideas.
3. It seems to be easier for people to grapple with new ideas and take feedback graciously.
4. In general, people just tend to relax and have more fun, enjoying each other’s company; something many find difficult elsewhere.

The text chat exception

While these benefits bear out when looking at the overall effect of voice conversations via avatars, this doesn’t necessarily apply when the conversation is exclusively in text. There’s something about the text medium that encourages 10% of avatar pilots to become blithering idiots until you stick a mic in front of their faces… and by then, well, they’ve already started so why not continue?

Possible reasons for this:

1. For some, text breaks the sense of “being there” and so consequences of their actions don’t seem immediate.
2. They feel anxiety about writing, which translates into agression.
3. They’re concerned about being misunderstood.

The phenomena tends to be greatly reduced with “mixed medium” conversations involving both text and voice, but it’s something to tell your moderators to keep in mind. If anyone knows of formal academic studies on text chat phenomena please leave a comment!

NOTE: I’m purposefully leaving out general meeting dynamics for a future post.

Training: Emergency response and other physical duties

By now you’ve probably already derived this, but let’s give it a quick once-over anyhow. When you’re training people on physical procedures, having them do it via avatar can really change everything. They’re not just memorizing instructions, but they’re watching themselves carry them out.

Getting into the real details of training best practices will need a post of its own, but here’s a quick idea of how to proceed:

1. Have them go through the procedure a few times from the safe “third person” perspective.
2. Have them “step into the role” by switching to first person now, and go through it again.
3. Switch back to third person once, then first person a few times more. This creates a memory of having actually done it for real. If you’re training them to, say, evacuate a burning oil derrick, this can be extremely valuable experience!

Ok, that covers what avatars are and how they relate to your perception of the events in question. Now, let’s get some new shoes.

Getting Dressed

Shopping. You know, I could write about five more posts just on the topic of shopping alone, and that’s actually a pretty low number if you compare what a retail expert could probably come up with.

Instead let me dip into my inventory and give you a quick once-over on the kinds of things people like to do here…

Each has a purpose or an associated culture. In order:

1. My general casual wear around Second Life.
2. The folder I labeled “Mr Generic” for business functions.
3. Our orientation model, which I re-created to do some re-shoots.
4. “Original Onder”. What I wear when it’s party time, it’s excellent.
5. Oh that, that’s … well I have to admit, it’s just fun to chase other people around in that.
6. Why be limited to a solid form? Swirling particles for art fests!
7. A promo for the Ironman movie.
8. Katamary Damacy. Big fan of the game.
9. My token “chibi style” av for when I’m hanging around Japanese sims.

I’m holding back, actually. I have dozens, although I tend to just bounce between 1, 2 and 4 and go through their obscenely large wardrobes for whatever occasion.

That’s very nice Caleb. Did you have a point, or… ?

Right, right, sorry! THE POINT is that there is now and always will be a burning desire on the part of the user to get their avatar “just right”. From its posture to its wardrobe to the color of its eyes, people will want to spend time getting comfortable with this thing.

This should not only be encouraged, but leveraged. While outrageous avatars can serve as unprofessional distractions, they can also be fantastic ice breakers.

The whole point of interacting in a virtual space is to communicate with people in ways you never could before. Avatars provide you with a rare opportunity to see how people express themselves, and when you ask them about their avatar (which always flatters the user) it gets them engaged in conversation with your people.

Beware the PR Faux Pas!

Before we move on from the subject, there is one thing that really needs to be pointed out. If you’re working a PR campaign in a virtual world, assume that your target audience is experienced with the platform.

This means that if you’re staffing your build (always a good idea!), be really sure they’ve had some time to customize their avatars properly. There’s nothing more demeaning to your brand than a generic “I can’t figure this thing out” avatar wearing your logo.

To illustrate, which of these looks like its their first day?

I’d rather a furry cyborg represent my brand than a generic avatar, hands down.

Avatars Don’t Need A Shower

In exploring the webcam vs. virtual world issue last week, more than a few people brought it to my attention that some serious value is brought by not having to fix yourself up for meetings. An avatar never needs to do the laundry nor do they need to do their hair more than once, ever.

Before we get into the arguments for why avatars are better than fixing yourself up a little, let’s briefly discuss dress codes.

Why dress codes exist

As much as we’d all like to pretend that we’re an evolved species, guys, we just aren’t. When we look at someone, we make a snap judgement. It’s in our nature. There are practical reasons, however, for why this is a useful way to do things. The fact is that we’re all pressed for time, and while I’d love to be able to sit down and get to know who you are as a person, we have business to conduct. I need to know as quickly as possible if you’re qualified, or focused enough to pull yourself together for the event, or interested in what we do here. Bottom line, we have dress codes for three reasons: It saves time in communication, so it’s the practical thing to do. Not to do so wastes other people’s time, so it’s unconsciously considered rude. That bitch in HR. Thought I was going to skip that one, didn’t you? Ah but #3 needs to be addressed if we’re discussing ROI! In many offices there’s an “HR Wannabe”; someone who has no real interest in human resources but does consider themselves a true fashionista. They’re the ones who think only the beautiful people have talent, intelligence, wit and success. You may have one. Ask yourself if there’s someone in the office sending a lot of memos constantly tweaking the official dress code and reminding everyone of the consequences of not following it. These parasites are treating your entire company like their own private Barbie doll collection. Make sure your more competent HR professionals are in a position to manage them before they drive everyone insane and cost you immeasurable amounts of money in lost productivity company-wide. “Fashion Nazis” aside, yes, dress codes make a certain amount of sense.

Employee efficiency

The problem is that there is a measurable amount of effort that goes into becoming presentable. Even if you discount the large amount of resources your company’s “Fashion Nazis” waste (see above), we’re still talking about your employees sleeping a little less, rushing to work a little more, and being that much less productive when they walk in as a result.

That’s effort you recover as soon as someone starts using an avatar instead of meeting in person, or even over a webcam. Just log in and you’re ready to go. In most online cultures you don’t even have to worry about wearing the same thing every day!

Besides, if we’re going to acknowledge the human need to have the people around us “look presentable”, we also need to acknowledge two other equally powerful human needs: being comfortable, and being yourself. Successful sales professionals all agree that sincerity sells far more than being clever, but if you get people worrying too much about how they look they’ll forget this. How many “phony” sales people have you met? How about just this week?

Do you want your people to feel good, or just pretend they do? Which will mean more work gets done?

Conclusions

Avatars yield returns on several levels:

1. They allow people to “see themselves” taking part in the experience.
2. Your perception of who is participating is greatly enhanced.
3. Open and honest communication between employees is greatly facilitated.
4. You always have an ice-breaker.
5. You’re always ready for work.

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Again, this entire post is off the top of my head. If I’ve missed something or if you’ve written something that can expand on these points, feel free to add a link in the comments.

Posted on February 3rd, 2009 under ROI, business, content, new media, virtual worlds. Tags: business, content, new media, ROI, virtual worlds. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.