Last Tuesday the Lindens introduced Dazzle, a new "First Look" version of the client which adds a translucent, glowing hue to the confusing user interface, universally reviled as the chief culprit behind Second Life's paltry 10% retention rate. It's a project described by fronted [See Update below] Torley Linden, who's promoting it as a major step to improving SL's usability. Gray windows now look glassy, dark green frames changed to a silvery blue.
Pham Neutra of SLOG gave it a try, however, and remains remarkably unimpressed:
What has happened is basically nothing more than the application of a new skin and color scheme. Cosmetic changes... The illogical grouping of commands into menus with arcane or misleading names is still the same. Some important commands are still well hidden, rarely needed ones appear in the menu top levels.
As a First Look client, Dazzle may add user suggestions before becoming part of the official release, so we should give Torley and team the benefit of the doubt. (Especially Torley, whose dedication to SL is unimpeachable.) On that score, Pham has some great questions for the Lindens, which will make Dazzle a real improvement:
- Have the interim versions been tested with real users (especially newbies) in a controlled environment?
- Was there any comparative testing (old and new versions with different groups)?
- What were the goals of this project?
- Which measurable performance indicators have been defined to check, if (which) goals have been achieved?
I can only hope the Lindens are privately trying to answer them.
Update, 2/25: I misunderstand Torley's role on Dazzle: "I don't front it (I just do the community-facing communication, and some bug-reporting and initial-round feedback," he tells me by e-mail, "and I didn't have any major role in how it looks."
"(Especially Torley, whose dedication to SL is unimpeachable.)"
Hmmm. I agree that Torley's dedication is unimpeachable, as is his energy and inventiveness. But let's just say he and I apparently have very different priorities and taste. So no, I'm not sure I'm ready to give Dazzle the benefit of the doubt. But LL announcements have said this is a first step that will allow deeper changes to the UI, and *that* effort I am ready to give them the benefit of the doubt on.
Posted by: Otenth Paderborn | Friday, February 22, 2008 at 07:31 AM
I am in complete agreement with Slog's conclusion. This is nothing but the equivalent of adding bling to the interface (or shiiiiiny, as my friend Rick put it). Torley being the driver behind Dazzle goes a looong way to explain things :).
Posted by: Rheta Shan | Friday, February 22, 2008 at 08:00 AM
pretty or not i can't use dazzle because they put in more code somewhere that makes large scale building difficult. plus it is the most jerky version yet. apparently the UI is using more resouces than it should. the UI should use the least resources. Now if LL were really smart they would have used built in OS menu and windowing features instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. or if trying to come up with a slick UI to go with a 3D world they should have looked at WoW and EQII for hints. Why do some people insist on trying to hammer a claim to fame stake in the ground anyway? UI psychology is well documented. there is no excuse for a badly designed UI. an application with a bad UI design indicates there is poor product management in place.
Posted by: Ann Otoole | Friday, February 22, 2008 at 08:15 AM
Um, I kinda liked it. :-P
I think Slog is right, "What has happened is basically nothing more than the application of a new skin and color scheme. Cosmetic changes. Pure facelifting... "
But, that's all it was supposed to be at this stage, isn't it? Anyway, Torley's blog post led me to believe so with this:
"Does Dazzle have any major functionality changes? .... Beyond user interface aesthetics, not really."
So I wasn't expecting anything more than a basic color change. I actually thought the change was nice. And whether it's my imagination or not, the Dazzle browser hangs a lot less (less laggy) than the latest Windlight release.
But there are definitely some glitches with it, to be sure and I think the questions posed for the Lindens would help take the UI in the right direction.
Posted by: Myg | Friday, February 22, 2008 at 09:35 AM
I haven't personally played with Dazzle yet, but it looks very reminiscent of the OnRez viewer that the Sheep put out last year, at least in terms of color scheme. I thought that looked pretty, but the glassy windows actually felt more claustrophobic when they took up monitor space, as opposed to the standard grey backgrounds. I'm sure they have the same amount of transparency, but for some reason the lighter-colored Dazzle looks less transparent to me, and I feel like it blocks my view of the world.
Posted by: Kit Meredith | Friday, February 22, 2008 at 09:44 AM
I wonder how much the important changes would take more restructuring of the infrastructure that manages assets and such. It would be cool if say you could have a special browser for your textures. In Windows Explorer I can browse a folder of photos in Filmstrip View, and see what those photos are. Would that take a lot of extra bandwidth on our client side, or a lot of extra resources on the server side?
Posted by: Androgyne Michinaga | Friday, February 22, 2008 at 12:44 PM
I need to get around to searching in Jira for what I really want: to be able to resize the text by individual window, not the whole UI text size at one go.
I'd like a larger text in the IM/Chat window, where there's actually new material happening, and aside from that, tiny text on buttons and menus, which never change, and I very nearly have memorized.
Need to get looking for this....
Posted by: Cyn Vandeverre | Friday, February 22, 2008 at 02:24 PM
I haven't seen Dazzle yet, but if it's just old wine in new bags as the Dutch saying goes, then what's the point? I guess this is a case of premature .... ehmmm... let's say it came out too soon. The upgrades 'under the hood' as Torley put it, are more important in the long run. I understand that they need testing - but what's not needed is a glitzy new package in order to 'sell' the test version.
In the longer run, yes, we need a very different UI. The current one is rather confusing. Working with newbies I think I can conclude that most screen buttons can be done away with, with the exclusion of the Map, Search, Inventory and Communicate button. All the rest can be in a drop-down.
Posted by: Laetizia Coronet | Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 06:15 AM
I've posted a small, admittedly somewhat biased, pictorial review of the Dazzle interface revamp on my Flickr stream. It is so ridiculously easy to poke fun at it I'm nearly ashamed to have done so. Well, nearly :)
Posted by: Rheta Shan | Monday, February 25, 2008 at 02:31 PM
Thanks for the corrective update, Hamlet. People attribute to me far more than I'm actually responsible for.
I'd encourage anyone who has great UI ideas and wants to help out, to come to Benjamin Linden's User Experience office hours.
* When: Thursdays @ 3:00-4:00 PM PST
* Where: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Beaumont/148/155/46/
(Yes, one's happening as I write this.)
We're listening to Resident feedback, are going to be looking through the Dazzle issues on the Issue Tracker soon, and there'll be more updates to come.
Posted by: Torley | Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 03:12 PM