Reta Shan Wins The Dusan Writer "Noob UI" Contest

After a long selection process and competition between numerous worthy competitors, here's a glimpse of the first place winner of metaverse developer Dusan Writer's contest for an alternate Second Life viewer with a "noob friendly" user interface.  It's by Rheta Shan, who'll take Dusan's L$500,000 award (roughly USD$1850)... and use it to cover usage fees to her extensive SL mainland property holdings, which she'll donate, she writes on her blog, "to any number of charities or artistic project(s) that can put it to good use."

Here's a Flash-powered animated page demonstrating how Rheta Shan's UI works; once you launch it, just click the blinking icons to progress.  It's an elegant, streamlined user interface with several powerful features.  In my opinion, Rheta's UI is unambiguously superior in every particular to the current user interface offered in the official Second Life software of Linden Lab. 

That said, I'm not convinced Rheta's solution is ideal for very new users.  Why?

Well, I think a truly beginner-centric UI will include mouse-driven avatar navigation, instead of keyboard controls.  The onscreen toolbar should be limited to the very most essential functions-- say six.  Building should remain an option for noobs, because that's SL's unique value proposition, but that should be mercilessly streamlined, as well-- see Maxis' Creature Creator for Spore for ideas.

Anyway, Dusan has the official announcement on his blog; runners-up are Jacek Antonelli, who presented an appealing replacement for the existing horrific inventory system, and Roy Cassini, who designed a great new user orientation system. Eric Reuters, by the way, also has a nice write-up and interview with Dusan here.  Rheta's pioneered a great step forward toward Second Life's ultimate mainstream adaption.  The only question is, will the actual company that owns the world follow her?

Comments

[Nexii Malthus]

I somehow doubt a linden developer picking this up any soon.

We anyways need a third party client developer,

Mozilla anyone?