IA Summit in Second Life

We simulcast three sessions from the 2008 IA Summit into Second Life. Here's Andrew Hinton delivering his closing plenary
"Linkosophy." Also simulcast were Jared Spool's opening plenary "Journey to the Center of Design" and Jason Hobbs' "Hotel Yeoville."

This was pretty easy and inexpensive to do. The stream was hosted through NetroMedia, who were super helpful throughout. The cost for the three-day conference, including setup, was $300, and we didn't come near using the available bandwidth. (Actually we had a month of service we could have continued to use.) Additional bandwidth, in case of massive interest in your programming, is pretty inexpensive, too.

Technical details - quick summary:
1) I captured video and audio via an external camera and connection to the audio board, sent to my Macintosh laptop. (If you have built-in video and audio in your laptop, you could also point those at the speaker and capture that way.)

2) I encoded and sent the signal to NetroMedia using the free Quicktime Broadcaster utility (there are equivalent ones for PC).

3) As a landowner in Second Life I set the media stream there to the URL provided to me by NetroMedia, and I created a large screen on which the media would be displayed.

Post a comment or contact me via LinkedIn if you want to know more details. Other snapshots from the experiment are on Flickr. At some point this summer I'll post video excerpts from the sessions as well.

Wayfinding in Second Life - An IA Puzzle

The founders of the Nonprofit Commons sim in Second Life asked me for input on how to improve navigation for visitors to this 3D environment. The sim houses the virtual offices of more than 25 nonprofits, including CARE, Alzheimer Society of Ontario, AngelAID, Transgender Resource Center, Missouri Humanities Council, Techsoup, and the IA Institute.

What fun! The discussion is taking place on the NPSL wiki. Following an IA approach to a SL buildout, I suggested we determine the key scenarios, articulate factors that affect wayfinding, and then brainstorm possible solutions.

For instance, a first-time visitor might arrive at a main teleport site looking for a particular office; a return visitor might come just to explore; or someone could be at one office and want to get to another one.

Factors affecting wayfinding include signs that rez slowly and that visitors don't even recognize as signs; low awnings that obscure the storefronts from a flying position; and an orderly grid of buildings in which all places look very much alike.

Possible approaches include big navigational gestures that will register to new visitors even in a slow-rezzing environment (fortress-of-solitude arrows? a compass rose?); some way to distinguish the quadrants of the sim in a broad fashion (particles of color? memorable monuments?); and providing detail where called for (business names only on the main signpost, but logos on corner signposts?).

Other brainstorms include a single teleport hub to channel visitors through a designed wayfinding experience; a Welcome Center; street names; wearable HUD (heads up display); robot guides; and more.

Visit the discussion and please offer your own suggestions.

IA in Second Life - Redux

The remixed Information Architecture in Second Life: Summit Redux slidedeck was presented this weekend to DCIA, the Washington, DC information architecture crowd. The deck summarizes observations of panelists Josh Knauer, Andrew Hinton, Lori Bell, Beth Kanter, and Sarah Dilling on 1) opportunities for information architecture work in Web 3D and 2) how IAs can use Second Life as a platform for collaboration and education.

Technical: Web 3D and Telepresencing

Shared 3D virtual environments like Second Life can be used for group meetings. I know of three basic approaches. Each requires significantly more infrastructure than the last.




The simplest approach is just to meet in Second Life. This enables you to talk, share slides, and do things together.

The next most complicated approach is to augment a real life meeting with some Second Life participation using Skype as a streaming server. This can be done using items found around the home, but provides an awkward connection.

A true mixed reality event links all locations together fairly well. It requires more equipment and more setup, but allows participants to see, hear, and speak to one another from either real life or Second Life.

An argument for using Web 3D for telepresencing, and some tips on how to do it, are in my slidedeck Using Gaming Platforms for Telepresencing.

Technical: Real Life/Second Life Event

I moderated a panel discussion on Information Architecture in Second Life at the IA Summit in March. It was a joint Real Life/Second Life event, and it worked rather well.

The technical objective was to enable conference attendees on the Real Life (RL) side to hear and see panelists on the Second Life (SL) side, and for panelists on both sides to at least hear each other and the audience. In other words, we needed the minimum conditions for panelists and audience to talk with each other, regardless of their physical location.

We accomplished this via a Skype conference call and a Second Life connection through a laptop in the room. The audio was amplified from the RL laptop through the room's sound system; the Second Life connection was shared with the room through a video feed from the RL laptop to the projection screen; and audio from the room to the remote participants was managed via the mic in the RL laptop. Also, the remote panelists and the panelist running the RL laptop all logged into Second Life and met at Info Architecture island. During the discussion a number of members of the audience logged into Second Life as well and joined the others at Info Architecture isle.

During a trial run we'd also managed a direct visual hookup between RL and remote panelists through Skype via the webcams in the participants' laptops. This caused a lot of lag, while affording remote panelists only a narrow view of the first few rows of seats, so we omitted this channel during the event.

This low-tech solution required no streaming audio or video server, which is good. However it was dependent upon the ad-hoc audio from the room being good enough for remote panelists to hear... which fortunately it was. And because there was no video feed from the RL room, remote panelists were blind to what was going on in the room. This setup was centered on the physical location of the conference, and would not enable people to participate as members of the audience from Second Life only.

Participating from Second Life were Beth Kavka (Beth Kanter) and Lori Bell (Lorelei Junot). Present on the Real Life side were Josh Knauer (Hayduke Ebisu, who also managed the technical arrangements and ran RL laptop), Andrew Hinton (Banjo Quonset), Sarah Dilling (Sally Linden), and myself, Stacy Surla (Stacy Narayan).

For a look at what we actually discussed, read Beth Kavka's blog entry about the session, or see the Information Architecture in Second Life (Redux) slideshow.

IA Exercise: Catalogs

Browsing for things can be challenging in Second Life. Here are few examples of "catalogs" of various kinds.

These catalogs take the form of: a pile of stuff, a building as a container for the items of interest, books on shelves, books on a table display, a rolling index, and a wall display.

IA Exercise
Some SL catalogs take advantage of the unique 3-D nature of the environment. Some struggle with it. Some forms are useful for certain kinds of browsing. Others are frustrating -- or are frustrating at certain times. What are some great solutions to the 3-D catalog conundrum?

An IA Approach to a Second Life Buildout

The IA Institute is preparing to build a SL presence. The team is defining requirements. We're also simply trying to get a handle on the enormous job of representing good IA practice while communicating the mission, values, and activities of the Institute in a Web 3-D environment.

I've suggested starting with scenarios, figuring out key elements of the virtual environment, conducting research, then building information structures that support the scenarios. But what approach would YOU take?

Scenarios
Who are the audiences? What are the 5 or 8 things people intend to do on Info Architecture island? For instance:
* Wanting to locate and visit to find out what’s on the island
* Wanting to attend a specific event
* Wanting to acquire a tour HUD
* Wanting to organize a meeting on the island
* Wanting training in how to make buildings
* Wanting to discover points of interest elsewhere in SL

Key Elements
Identify the key elements in the virtual environment that support or hinder people accomplishing their intentions. For instance:
* Finding things (geolocations, info repositories, events, objects...)
* Creating things (info repositories, events, buildings, applications...)
* Interacting with people (meet, hear presentations...)

Research
What research is needed before scenarios and key elements can be finalized? For instance:
* Participant observation
* Surveys of other islands’ solutions
* In-world focus groups or other interviews
* Literature review

Buildout
Plan and begin buldout of information structures that support the scenarios. For instance:
* Teleport hubs for the island with appropriate signage
* Outdoor meeting place with screens for presentations
* Sandbox for building practice and tutorials
* Kiosks or other structures for delivering objects
* Catalog solutions for providing access to information repositories
* Easy-to-use instructions on “how to hold an event”
* Library of relevant case studies—e.g. “IA Challenges in Second Life”
* Think of how to support the SL build with non-SL channels

IA Exercise
Does the focus on communication and information-seeking cover enough of the territory? Are the scenarios good ones? Are the key elements sufficient? What research is really needed? What information structures are sufficient?