Caleb Booker

The other day I was asked for best practices in corporate sims in Second Life. Here’s what I came up with:

1. Build fresh, don’t refurbish. Many will offer you general purpose areas, but if productivity is important there’s no substitution for creating a space specifically for your needs.
2. Buy, don’t rent. For reasons both of security and technical performance, there is really no substitute for owning your own space rather than renting someone else’s.
3. Get help, especially if you do rent. Many companies spend a year or two getting their feet wet and hoping staff work things out for themselves. Save yourself massive amounts of time and money by getting experienced outsiders to handle the details for you and advise on best practices.
4. Make as complete a list of what you want to be able to do in this space as possible before planning the layout.
5. Function before form. All design work has to begin with laying out what needs to be done and how we’ll do it. This absolutely has to be your first concern.
6. Form is still critical! Once functional design is established, plan out ways to enhance the area’s look and feel. Virtual spaces are practical because of the way people naturally think about how they’re relating to others, so as long as we’re considering the human element we should acknowledge that everything should respect two basic design aesthetics: comfort and simplicity.
7. Signs: Text is the enemy. Graphics are your friend.
8. Don’t hand out text files (Notecards) expecting people will be grateful. Use video (machinima) or basic simplified signs to instruct.
9. Test your space! Get someone who has no idea how to use Second Life to use the arrow keys and walk around your space. If they can’t get around, you need to redesign.
10. More on signs – use legible fonts, few words – similar guidelines as PPT slides
11. There are many technical hurdles (an over-abundance of scripts, prim count limits, etc…) that only experienced users will know about, so do get the help of an expert

Of course, later on I found out they were actually asking for a list of corporate sims that demonstrated best practices… ah well.

Posted on April 2nd, 2009 under business, content, new media, virtual worlds. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.