Where you have mentioned Advanced tutorials, Stacks of freebies, and Teleports to random places as “seeming like good ideas” but “NOT themselves proper exits”, I wonder:

Is this mainly related to the specific objective you explain (“our guests have arrived for a specific purpose”)? Or, do you see these offerings as lacking value in a broader sense?

I might also point at a set of freely usable introduction videos for Second Life/Opensim users that we have found to be very helpful from “Ho Max”…

http://imohax.com/heyavatar/

RE: Video – not too many use it at all, and I didn’t actually find an example of it anywhere. We have a “playing video” training panel but as far as using video to give orientation, yours is the first I’ve heard mention it. Can I get a SLurl to check it out?

To be honest I’m not entirely certain it’s a good idea unless you do several hacks:

1. Make the video play automatically, without the user having to find the Play controls.
2. Put it on a particle! This way it always faces the screen.
3. Make the particle follow the user through the orientation, and sense where they are to play context-sensitive instructions.
4. Keep the area very low on prims and using tiny textures! We don’t want even a bit of the user’s bandwidth to keep that video buffering!

Technically all these things are possible right now, but rarely implemented because of the amount you’d have to spend on both coding and video (machinima) production. Having said that, if you wanted to make a world-class eye-popping orientation, that would be the way to do it.

RE: Optimal orientation time – well that depends entirely on your audience’s intentions. If the assumption is that they’re coming in for good and getting used to the environment is their ONLY goal for the day, you can go 30-60 minutes if you like. If they’re coming in for the first time out of curiosity just to have fun and explore, you can go as high as 20 minutes. If they’re coming in to attend a lecture or meeting, it had better be 10.

Having had my team design a few orientation areas, mostly for corporate customers, I oersonally favour short orientation areas with little text and a lot of images. That’s particularly important for an international audience, as 60% of all SL residents don’t speak English as their first language.

I totally absolutely agree about graphical design consistency; about having live helpers stand by; and about making the route to an event (or destination that “makes sense”) the primary objective. That makes a LOT of sense, and the exit should be *obvious*, or as obvious as possible.

Interestingly, none of those examples you gave use video, or if they do, you didn’t mention it. I wonder if you had bad experiences with video? (e.g. people don’t know how to get it to play or how to zoom in to watch, or it lags them too much, or they spend more time watching the video than actually learning how to do things, etc.). We’ve found that Torley’s videos are quite good as a *complement* — although the orientation area itself should work pretty much without the videos too, since some might never be able to see them.

In your experience, what is the appropriate (reasonable!) time for finishing an orientation area? One hour is clearly too much for VIP guests, of course. 10-15 minutes seems reasonable enough. What do you think?

Thanks for posting such a valuable resource here!

Also: putting your orientation experience or initial walkway on a sim convergence. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen that (Dell did this)! *Especially* if the borderline isn’t obvious and so your poor orientation victims find themselves crashing, disappearing through the floor and bouncing along the sea floor to the horizon.

Lastly, understanding the differences between the sexes. It’s one of those “why men don’t ask for directions and women turn the maps upside down sort of thing….” Men like to be told what the target is, where to go, how to get there… women like the freedom to explore. Both can be accommodated in a good orientation experience.

Rails – Well, see Step 1.

Dave – I’d love to see the orientation script! Is it available online anywhere?

Oh and great work in Virtual London, fantastic stuff.