SL UI Design Contest Winner (and a lot of photographs)
August 13, 2008 11:35 pm
Miss Rheta, can I haz three kisses? Errr… I mean… last night, at Metanomics, a long time of waiting and anticipation finally ended, as Dusan Writer officially announced the three winners for the Second Life User Interface Design Contest. In reversed* order:
- th place to Miss Rheta Shan, for an incredible re-design from the Second Life UI. She threw the current design completely out of the window, and realised a design that focusses on ‘what the user actually wants to do/achieve’. A deserved win! A Flash execution of Miss Rheta’s concept can be experienced on Dusan’s site.
- nd place for Miss Jacek Antonelli. Ground breaking in Miss Antonelli’s design is an extended - and way more intuitive - design for inventory management.
- rd place goes to Roy Cassini, who focuses on ease of learning for newbs. Getting rid of all orientation islands (<- check, but lost the link) and implementing user orientation in the viewer, teaching him basic functionality as more functions become enabled.
May we have a round of ‘woot!s’ and ‘applaud gestures’, please? I’m so glad I get to use my ‘SLinovation’ tag on this blog again! ;) Of course, as stated before, all the entries contained great ideas and a mixture - Frankenstein, I believe Dusan called it - of all the proposals would be a killer-client. (But Lindens, for starters, could you please implement Jacek’s inventory management ideas? ;)) I also owe Vincent Nacon a huge apology, as I skipped mentioning him in my previous overview post. Yes, his was a ‘late’ entry, but definitely worth mentioning. View it here!
More on the winning designs - and illustrations with their entries - can be found on - of course - Dusan Writers’s blog. You’ll also want to take a look at New World Notes, where Hamlet Au highlighted some of the most ground breaking ideas from all the contestants. Not very fond of reading? No problem, SLCN.TV filmed/machinima’d the Metanomics ‘Enhancing your View’, where Mr Writer announced the winners, and where Adam Frisby, known for heavy involvement on OpenSim - Adam Zaius inworld - shared his knowledge about XBAP and Xenki (and a whole lot of other stuff way above my head!). Running joke of the evening was ‘rendering virtual worlds in the clouds’, a reference to this techcrunch article. Oh yeah, almost forgot, that SLCN.TV video is here.
As for a very, very late entry, there’s an idea from Bob Wellman, which I’m rather sure he feels strongly about, as he could not help himself but posting it on two of my blog entries relating the User Interface Design Contest. So, here’s Mr Wellman’s idea:
What I would like to see in the UI is maybe not possible (you tell me). A screen that’s too crowded with too many things in one small space is the problem. Rather than try to find better ways to fit too much into too smaller space why not rethink the issue. How do we get more space?
I would like the option to use a second PC screen/monitor. One PC screen/monitor would contain the view of the SL scene that I am looking at and nothing else. The second one would contain all the controls and pop up windows. This way I can see where I am going and do stuff and chat at the same time. For building especially this would be great. Lets face it many people have PCs that can control 2 monitors and maybe even old screens that could be used for the second one.
Is this a radical enough redesign for you! Maybe the second screen could have an option for beginner, normal and expert mode, allowing new users just the basic options to get started and expert allowing all options. Also given a whole screen to play with gives more scope for laying out controls in an easy to use way. I am sure that there are many reasons why this will be difficult to do but my first question is if it can be done should it be?
Feel free to pull this apart or adapt the idea as you see fit guys. Lateral thinking is needed here.
Personally, when I feel I have to much on my screen, I just make the UI smaller. And one could of course also buy a bigger screen. Still, worth a few thoughts, as having one screen just for ’seeing’ SL, without HUDs, without inventory, without buttons, just virtual world, would be a great ‘immersionalistic’ experience, no?
And now? Rest of the pictures time! (If you got that far, looking back at the amount of linkage in here, that is.)
* Does somebody know how to get revert the counting of an ordered list in html? Or is it impossible? Yeah, so it goes 3, 2, 1 … in stead of 1-2-3. Duh! ;)
One Response to “SL UI Design Contest Winner (and a lot of photographs)”
Just make it possible to put the UI in a separate window. Those who have one big monitor but don’t run the client fullscreen can still benefit, and those who have two monitors can just drag the other window over, and poof! (Or if you’re English, “and Bob’s your uncle!”)
Care to comment?