Last week, I asked you to assess Linden Lab’s performance on its promises for its first three months since Philip returned as company CEO and asked us to judge the Lab by actions, not words.
While I personally find the time-frame a bit on the short side to be looking at very concrete results, Linden Lab helped out shortly thereafter by producing a list of the sort of stuff you were supposed to have noticed. I’m willing to attribute that to coincidence rather than insecurity, though the timing seems to be a bit of a stretch.
Conveniently, Linden Lab has given us its three fundamental metrics for assessing every project: Fast, Easy, Fun.
Since the Lab expects its work to be judged against these criteria, it makes sense that we use them as a yardstick. I added a fourth for this poll: “Stability”
I gather that some of you believe that I should have perhaps included another. There will be a new poll in the first week of January covering what you thought about Q4.
These sorts of things are important, because the impressions that people have are more significant in determining usage, adoption and attrition than actual reality.
If something feels clunky or slow, it doesn’t matter very much whether it actually is or not. People respond to their personal impressions rather than to absolute metrics.
Now, on to the results… While I’ve never been in a system that uses letter-grading, I’m pretty sure I can muddle through it based on your poll responses. Here we go:
Fast
“Has Linden Lab sped things up and reduced lag in the last three months?”
Clearly, the majority of respondents didn’t feel that things were any faster, or weren’t sure.
Those who did notice a difference were mostly evenly split, but a slightly larger number felt that Q3 had seen a decline rather than an improvement.
Grade assigned: C-
Easy
“Has Linden Lab improved your ease-of-use or SL workflows in the last three months?”
Ease-of-use improvements fared rather less well than speed improvements, in your opinion, over Q3.
More of you thought it got harder rather than easier just during this 12 week period.
Grade assigned: D+
Fun
“Has Linden Lab made your Second Life experience more enjoyable in the last three months?”
“Fun” fared even worse than “Easy”.
More of you noticed a difference over the last three months, and fully half of you felt that difference was a decline in overall enjoyability in Q3.
Grade assigned: D
Stability
“Has Linden Lab made Second Life more stable in the last three months?”
As with “Fun” there’s more perceptual difference showing here than for either “Fast” or “Easy”. About the same number of you noticed a difference as those who reported a difference in the previous category – which is interesting in and of itself.
More of you felt there was an improvement in this area than in any other category.
My own metrics seem to bear this out. While grid stability seems to be on a bit of a decline with the ‘bad’ days a bit worse than previously, there are a few additional ‘good’ days in the mix when things are improved.
How your particular experience fares, seems to depend a lot on the day.
Grade assigned: C
When January rolls around, we’ll gather up your impressions again, and perhaps add some additional criteria. I’ll also see if I can improve the overall polling process to make things easier for you to give feedback.
*finds Tateru a fresh box of red pens*
To be fair, (which I am seldom) in that first chat he gave, the one with COO Bob Whatshisname, Rosedale seemed to be asking for 6 months, there was a lot of “by the begining of next year” or words to that effect slid into his answers. Well thats the impression I got. So perhaps this could be a little soon like you said Tateru, perhaps it could be mid-terms.
Im not exactly sure how you arrive at “D”‘s and “C”s if 51% of respondents said they failed to notice any improvement/ or were not sure if they noticed any, plus those who said it was plain worse … this to my mind would make an “F” for fail (50% being the pass/fail line)
Just BTW
“a list of the sort of stuff you were supposed to have noticed.”
http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/technology/blog/2010/10/14/back-to-basics-technology-improvements
Is a list of stuff that mostly has not been delivered yet. (out of the seven points three are “coming soon”, one only works with v2 and one is fixing v2 which shouldnt count at all, seeing they are only fixing what they broke in the first place and dont get any brownie points for that) So most of that list is “Verba non Acta” which perhaps counts toward an “F” as well.
And I’m of the belief that most of the major disturbances, (and there has been more disturbances for users in the last 3 months than improvements) or changes or whatever you want to call them have little to do with Rosedale being back. Most of the stuff seems to have been in the pipe longer than 3 months.
Looking forward to the next lot of polls
I’m working from the notion that a “C” represents the status quo – in this case how things are at the beginning of the period covered by the poll (from what I’ve read about letter grades, a C represents an average score). That way I have room for indicating degrees of improvement or of decline from that mark.
“F” isn’t quite so useful in and of itself because it doesn’t distinguish between the various possible grades of failure.
Darn, I missed the poll. That what I get for tuning in late.
Yes, Trinity! She is a fresh box of red pens but not without her witty ability to see through the smoke and mirrors.
Tateru, you are a reasonable grader, but at least the graphics should have been….pie charts.