Friday 15 August 2008

Incorrect behaviour?

Interesting post on the OpenHabitat blog (OpenHabitat is a JISC-Funded project) discussing an in-world meeting that went "wrong" and the coping strategies that attendees adopted to cope with the "wrongness".

The tentative conclusion is that in-world voice should be used to augment in-world chat (i.e. that chat remains the primary communication method but that the noises-off provided by voice can be used to indicate the status of the various participants).

Nice idea... especially for those, like me, who don't like in-world voice much.

It reminds me a little of the story we heard at the wrap-up meeting of the Learning from Virtual Worlds: Teaching in Second Life project about students who self-organised themselves into using in-world chat for communication and in-world voice to share music with each other.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I have to agree (well, naturally, being (a) someone who was at the meeting, and (b) someone who dislikes voice as much as -- if not more than -- yourself), and I'd add to that that your example shows that the usual outcome of added levels of technology, is that users often surprise by using things in ways that their designers hadn't intended/envisioned.

Which is, always, wonderful when it happens

Moggs Tigerpaw said...

I really don’t like voice either. I suppose it may sometimes work for things like poetry readings and stuff, where one person is addressing a group.

It certainly can’t cope with multiple conversation threads by IM and chat like Text/IM can. Also it can’t give you a history of what you may have missed.

I wish Linden Labs would put more effort into stability, or solving the disappearing skirt glitch.