Now that the newly-minted Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble, is not quite so much “the new guy” as he was the first time that I interviewed him, I’ve been nosing around the PR corner of Linden Lab to see if I could get him back for a second round.
While there was a lot of calendar juggling involved, Humble and Peter Gray (Linden Lab’s PR manager) managed to find a little time in a busy schedule for us to get together and talk.
On this occasion – though I didn’t have as much time as I would have preferred – we were able to go in-world into Second Life and talk in real-time, reclining in some beach-side deck-chairs; a pleasantly non-businesslike setting. During the course of things, we got just a little distracted here and there, on some fascinating topics which I very much hope to revisit in future, but the core focus of the discussion was about usability.
Usability is one of the three drums that Humble has been beating since he settled into the big chair at the Lab: Service, usability and lag. Usability is one of the most interesting ones, since many times in the past it hasn’t been clear whether Linden Lab even thinks of usability in the same terms as the rest of us.
So, that’s where we began…
Speaking as a user, quite often I’ve been moved to wonder whether the Lab defines ‘usability’ in the same sort of way as the rest of us.
RH: Sure, well I suppose it’s a philosophy. And it’s that Second Life is magic, but Second Life stops it being magic.
That might sound a bit weird, but let me elaborate. There is so much in SL that I adore and so much of it seems just out of reach. Either by UI, or service or a lack of seamlessness.
So in general, I want to make it all just work and work well. That’s usability in my view. So it’s a broad term.
Making it do what it says on the tin?
RH: Yeah, exactly.
To me, Second Life is endlessly fascinating. The people and the creations, the serendipitous encounters and all of that. It just seems like you slam into a wall just about every time you turn around, or try to take a step.
RH: Yes, that’s exactly it. And when one of those walls is removed it just feels like a Summer breeze. Everything feels better. So I know its getting a little tedious by now when I keep harping on about service, usability and lag. Its all a part of the same thing in my view. I want to get all that working and do it this year.
The other part is new users. Poor usability hurts us all because it stops a significant number of new people joining and trying it out….
New users keep us all going.
“it killed me seeing thousands of people every week simply fail to even get to meet anybody in-world, or even move one meter” |
RH: Yeah they do, and the number of new users we get trying Second Life is amazingly high compared even to large MMOs. There is something about Second Life that is evergreen – it’s truly stunning – so it killed me seeing thousands of people every week simply fail to even get to meet anybody in-world, or even move one meter.
Some fell at registration (that’s better now). Some fell at navigation (that’s a bit better now). Many still fall at finding anything to do that they want. That’s the next focus.
Although I will say even though it may not show up as big numbers on concurrency, a larger number of those new users are already sticking, which is nice to see. It shows that we can move the dial.
Basic Mode is a part of that.
RH: Right now Basic Mode is deliberately a separate thing so it can iterate very, very fast without impacting the full viewer. But that’s changing fairly soon, I think, when they become integrated.
Better integration of basic/advanced mode in future iterations – so we won’t have to restart the viewer to switch between them?
RH: Yes, that’s correct. Ideally it should be seamless. Even more ideally it should just add and remove elements as you need them. And have a intuitive layout. That’s a bigger issue, though.
You know I’m going to have to bring up the Viewer 2.x UI – and also that Viewer 2.x seems to be unaccountably slower than 1.23 was, with identical settings – you didn’t really come in until 1.23 was already gathering dust a shelf somewhere.
Sluggish is the word that comes to mind, compared to the late 1.x codebase, at least on many systems.
RH: Ah, I didn’t know that. I will ping folks and see what i can dig up. No reason we should ask folks to use something slower that’s for sure.
As for the UI layout, it is… well… to be changed 
Which leads to the question… how, exactly, do you evaluate potential changes to the UI?
RH: Right now the process is simply finding very obvious things that most intelligent people would find unintuitive or burdensome. I admit that’s a stop-gap measure.
More long-term when it comes to actually add things and hopefully increasing features? I don’t know. My instincts are to solicit a lot of feedback, then go quiet and implement, then return for further feedback. But I am open to other approaches. With search for example the team did a bunch of AB testing which was handy.
How do you see third-party viewers fitting into that ecosystem? I mean, is the widespread use of TPVs a good thing for Second Life and the Lab, or is it a sign that the official viewer isn’t currently meeting the needs of many users?
I think our friends who work on 3rd party viewers are an asset to usability.
Second Life has many features, and I think it’s wonderful that our many different kinds of users can have options in how this kind of thing is presented.
My opinion is that the transition of code bases has been rough over the past year or so. My hope is that by the end of this year that transition will be mainly behind us and the focus can be on expanding a unified code base that benefits all our customers.
Are there any usability items tentatively slated for… oh, say by the end of the quarter?
RH: Oh a bunch!
I think the next thing you will see from us are a much improved login screen, new newbie avatars and chat fixes – I run into group chat issues every week. Today in fact.
That obviously needs to be fixed. I’m not going to commit to dates just yet though. I hate disappointing people.
That’s all we had time for, but I’m hoping to follow up with Humble on service and lag in the coming weeks.
As I mentioned, there was quite a bit of ancillary chatter in addition to what you see here, and I came away with a better understanding of the Lab’s new CEO, and his drive to overhaul the more delinquent aspects of the Second Life service. I get the feeling that Humble isn’t just gunning for the low-hanging fruit, as the Lab has done traditionally, but is determined to tackle the hard, awkward stuff, whatever it takes.
And that’s a good feeling. Given more time and future occasions, there’s so much more that I would like to interview him about.
Since the beginning of Humble’s tenure, the Lab seems to be accomplishing more and faster than I can recall it ever doing. Not entirely without its problems, to be sure, but things sure are happening, as the Lab seems to be ploughing its way through long lists of delinquent tasks and feature-requests at an unprecedented rate.
“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”
Win or lose, Humble doesn’t seem satisfied with the Lab just continuing to do what it has always done, and I think many of us would agree with him there.
| Now that the newly-minted Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble, is not quite so much “the new guy” as he was the first time that I interviewed him, I’ve been nosing around the PR corner of Linden Lab to see if I could get him back for a second round.
While there was a lot of calendar juggling involved, Humble and Peter Gray (Linden Lab’s PR manager) managed to find a little time in a busy schedule for us to get together and talk.
On this occasion – though I didn’t have as much time as I would have preferred - we were able to go in-world into Second Life and talk in real-time, reclining in some beach-side deck-chairs; a pleasantly non-businesslike setting. During the course of things, we got just a little distracted here and there, on some fascinating topics which I very much hope to revisit in future, but the core focus of the discussion was about usability.
Usability is one of the three drums that Humble has been beating since he settled into the big chair at the Lab: Service, usability and lag. Usability is one of the most interesting ones, since many times in the past it hasn’t been clear whether Linden Lab even thinks of usability in the same terms as the rest of us.
So, that’s where we began…
Speaking as a user, quite often I've been moved to wonder whether the Lab defines 'usability' in the same sort of way as the rest of us.
RH: Sure, well I suppose it’s a philosophy. And it’s that Second Life is magic, but Second Life stops it being magic.
That might sound a bit weird, but let me elaborate. There is so much in SL that I adore and so much of it seems just out of reach. Either by UI, or service or a lack of seamlessness.
So in general, I want to make it all just work and work well. That's usability in my view. So it’s a broad term.
Making it do what it says on the tin?
RH: Yeah, exactly.
To me, Second Life is endlessly fascinating. The people and the creations, the serendipitous encounters and all of that. It just seems like you slam into a wall just about every time you turn around, or try to take a step.
RH: Yes, that's exactly it. And when one of those walls is removed it just feels like a Summer breeze. Everything feels better. So I know its getting a little tedious by now when I keep harping on about service, usability and lag. Its all a part of the same thing in my view. I want to get all that working and do it this year.
The other part is new users. Poor usability hurts us all because it stops a significant number of new people joining and trying it out....
New users keep us all going.
"it killed me seeing thousands of people every week simply fail to even get to meet anybody in-world, or even move one meter"
RH: Yeah they do, and the number of new users we get trying Second Life is amazingly high compared even to large MMOs. There is something about Second Life that is evergreen - it’s truly stunning - so it killed me seeing thousands of people every week simply fail to even get to meet anybody in-world, or even move one meter.
Some fell at registration (that’s better now). Some fell at navigation (that’s a bit better now). Many still fall at finding anything to do that they want. That’s the next focus.
Although I will say even though it may not show up as big numbers on concurrency, a larger number of those new users are already sticking, which is nice to see. It shows that we can move the dial.
Basic Mode is a part of that.
RH: Right now Basic Mode is deliberately a separate thing so it can iterate very, very fast without impacting the full viewer. But that's changing fairly soon, I think, when they become integrated.
Better integration of basic/advanced mode in future iterations - so we won't have to restart the viewer to switch between them?
RH: Yes, that's correct. Ideally it should be seamless. Even more ideally it should just add and remove elements as you need them. And have a intuitive layout. That's a bigger issue, though.
You know I'm going to have to bring up the Viewer 2.x UI - and also that Viewer 2.x seems to be unaccountably slower than 1.23 was, with identical settings – you didn’t really come in until 1.23 was already gathering dust a shelf somewhere.
Sluggish is the word that comes to mind, compared to the late 1.x codebase, at least on many systems.
RH: Ah, I didn't know that. I will ping folks and see what i can dig up. No reason we should ask folks to use something slower that's for sure.
As for the UI layout, it is... well... to be changed :)
Which leads to the question... how, exactly, do you evaluate potential changes to the UI?
RH: Right now the process is simply finding very obvious things that most intelligent people would find unintuitive or burdensome. I admit that's a stop-gap measure.
More long-term when it comes to actually add things and hopefully increasing features? I don’t know. My instincts are to solicit a lot of feedback, then go quiet and implement, then return for further feedback. But I am open to other approaches. With search for example the team did a bunch of AB testing which was handy.
How do you see third-party viewers fitting into that ecosystem? I mean, is the widespread use of TPVs a good thing for Second Life and the Lab, or is it a sign that the official viewer isn't currently meeting the needs of many users?
I think our friends who work on 3rd party viewers are an asset to usability.
Second Life has many features, and I think it's wonderful that our many different kinds of users can have options in how this kind of thing is presented.
My opinion is that the transition of code bases has been rough over the past year or so. My hope is that by the end of this year that transition will be mainly behind us and the focus can be on expanding a unified code base that benefits all our customers.
Are there any usability items tentatively slated for... oh, say by the end of the quarter?
RH: Oh a bunch! :)
I think the next thing you will see from us are a much improved login screen, new newbie avatars and chat fixes - I run into group chat issues every week. Today in fact.
That obviously needs to be fixed. I’m not going to commit to dates just yet though. I hate disappointing people.
That’s all we had time for, but I’m hoping to follow up with Humble on service and lag in the coming weeks.
As I mentioned, there was quite a bit of ancillary chatter in addition to what you see here, and I came away with a better understanding of the Lab’s new CEO, and his drive to overhaul the more delinquent aspects of the Second Life service. I get the feeling that Humble isn’t just gunning for the low-hanging fruit, as the Lab has done traditionally, but is determined to tackle the hard, awkward stuff, whatever it takes.
And that’s a good feeling. Given more time and future occasions, there’s so much more that I would like to interview him about.
Since the beginning of Humble’s tenure, the Lab seems to be accomplishing more and faster than I can recall it ever doing. Not entirely without its problems, to be sure, but things sure are happening, as the Lab seems to be ploughing its way through long lists of delinquent tasks and feature-requests at an unprecedented rate.
“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”
Win or lose, Humble doesn’t seem satisfied with the Lab just continuing to do what it has always done, and I think many of us would agree with him there. | |  | |
Tags: Interview, Linden Lab / Linden Research Inc, Opinion, Peter Gray / Pete Linden, Rod Humble / Rodvik Linden, Second Life, Virtual Environments and Virtual Worlds
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Great interview. It all sounds very much like, at last, we are on the same page as LL…./me keeps fingers and toes crossed.
Music to my ears.
I participated in some of the group chat testing on Aditi the other day. Was outstanding to see group chat moving the way it was. If that can work on main, there will be a LOT of very happy campers.
I’m glad to hear about UI changes. even though I am a regular V2 user, I know the UI has gone it’s flaws and “pain points.” Those audio/media controls are clunky stuff, and things like Crap Mariner’s “click the clock” (VWR-17022) seem like obvious things that should never have been overlooked. Actually tackling these issues could make V2 (or whatever we might call it when Humble & Co. are done) an actual usable product by most of the grid. Good on them if they do.
Overall, I’m more encouraged by SL in the last few months than I was in all of 2010. Chat fixes. New search. Advanced lighting and shadows (now if only it worked on my Mac!), Windlight estate settings, Mesh. It’s a great mix of new, useful features to keep people coming to check things out, and important, much needed fixes to help us actually *use* the world.
So, in a word, Bravo.
I wish you could have asked him how does he feel about the fact that nearly two thirds of Second Life usage is done with viewers with 1.x style UI.
People end up using SL more than once and become regular users mostly find communications in V2 to be much harder from usability POV. The first thing both Firestorm and Kokua team have done in their V2 viewers is to allow local chat to be docked with the rest of the conversations.
This illustrates one of the main problems LL is facing. It’s not like LL were not aware that this is one of the main complaints. They have known it since alpha in the fall of 2009. But they have for almost two years refused to do anything about it despite numerous JIRAs, forum posts, mockup improvement proposals, etc.
I have asked Q Linden on numerous occasions about this particular problem. I was simply trying to understand how come LL ignores #1 request for improvement of the viewer 2 UI (among many others). He made it clear that user wishes, JIRA votes, and other forms of feedback play only a minor role in Linden decision process. They simply thought they knew better. Now that Q is no longer a Linden his protegé Oz seems to have adopted the same contempt to the users of the platform.
Rodvik’s most important task is to purge his company’s ranks of this attitude. The personnel policy over the past couple of years had very negative impact in this respect. People who understood SL and its user community were let go and other who are damaging the company’s chances for success by reducing its user base remain or were hired in that period.
Once the current batch Lindens understand the world they built and show understanding to the issues their users face the rest will come much more easily.
Sound promising for the future of Second Life.
@Marianne McCann, I was participating in the same group chat test. While the chat was scrolling like mad, it still failed spectacularly. With only 100 people testing it, once “chat at normal speed” message was given, I could see the chat lines I have typed 3 minutes ago appear.
Okay, so what did he say that Rosedale and Kingdon didn’t say before him?
Just after I submitted my comment, news that Esbee Linden is back came through. I was talking about the personnel and how the viewer team badly needs someone that understand SL from the user’s point of view, and Esbee is one of the few that did. This is a very good news for LL and the rest of us, and hopefully a sign of changing attitudes towards the user base.
“Right now the process is simply finding very obvious things that most intelligent people would find unintuitive or burdensome. I admit that’s a stop-gap measure.”
This is horrific. It’s not stop-gap, it’s regression.
I’m intelligent and I use a v.1-based viewer because I find v.2 unintuitive and burdensome.
I’ve assumed that the UX problem is that the engineers don’t actually use the software, so what seems ‘intelligent’ or ‘intuitive’ or ‘non-burdensome’ to them is a daily-use tool for real users. In that quote, Mr. Humble proves that this assumption is correct: UI changes are not data-driven, they are driven by what the engineers (or CEOs) think is annoying regardless of whether its a vitally-important part of the experience for the existing user base.
As an example: Please bring back the ability to search for mainland that is for sale. Tier-billable users thank you.
It is worth noting that a disproportionate percentage of users who “stick” and spend a significant amount of time in world bring RL issues with them.This is one of the oldest observations about SL society (Philip used the uncharitable word cripples). I see no sign that it is changing.
It seems to me that LL is still trying to attract young people from MMOs. Perhaps they need to change their advertising focus, maybe even directly advertising in support group web sites and magazines.
@Vanish:
I hear more concrete assessment and acknowledgement from Rod Humble than I ever did from P or M. He actually talks about the issues most users are concerned with and understands why we think they are important. I find him much less condescending than M or P; probably because he has actual background in the MMO field. He gets that users are people; that people are a great deal of why we come here and that users have a lot of suggestions and techniques that would actually benefit the company monetarily.
@Vanish, they all talked the talk, true. But I like viewer 2.7.x now that I’m using it professionally for meetings. Mr. Humble seems to know how to walk the walk. Nice interview, Tateru.
As for Philip’s “cripples,” Rosedale should have been more charitable. The online-all-the-time SLers kept the company and platform afloat.
Rod Humble has been temperate in all of the remarks I’ve read. SL needs users who will stay and spend money. Lots of us older residents don’t log in much and spend very little in-world.
Great interview—I hope you can get some more time with him. Rod Humble’s remarks always feel honest and transparent, and he speaks with clarity … It’s refreshing and I feel optimistic about SL after reading.
I have been incredibly impressed with Rod’s responsiveness to residents and his attempts to personally answer a lot of issues. He needs to get in a team that can take care of things without his direct input for customer service issues, but I am certain he is working on that now.
I am hopeful about the changes that are being made, and would love to see SL become usable again.
Frankly, after years of dealing with all the BS that the Lab has dished out it breaks my heart that we have had to stop logging in just as things are looking like they will improve. I assumed that my husband and I would grudgingly migrate to the v2 base when we had to do so. What we discovered was that now that the v1 base is being deprecated, switching to v2 not only does not solve many of our issues, but also has created enough hassles to make it not worth the trouble for us.
So after 4 years we have stopped logging into SL for the time being. Too heartbreaking and frustrating to be unable to chat, build, or play with friends. Forget doing events anymore, not even a possibility and I am done frustrating myself trying.
I am on a machine we built for developing in Blue Mars, that runs MMOs like a dream. I can play LOTRO with graphics set to high without seeing FPS drop. But I cannot walk in SL.
Rumor has it that after 4 years some sort of digital senescence affects avatars, an accumulation of years of digital wear and tear or somesuch. Being very frequent users for the past 4 1/2 years I am curious if this sounds reasonable? My inventory is just around 30K and my husband’s is around 15K so I don’t thing that is a huge contributor.
We would really love to be able to log back into SL and come do all the stuff we did when we first met in SL.
RH: Right now the process is simply finding very obvious things that most intelligent people would find unintuitive or burdensome. I admit that’s a stop-gap measure.
If he needs intelligent people to find obvious things – I’m a bit worried. I know he’s being kind-of cutesy here, but he seems to not feel much problem with the 2.x UI, when a solid majority of SL users hate it with a passion, and the other Lindens have already stated that the 1.23.x UI is not going to be carried on any longer. Which means a HUGE problem coming very quickly.
Now you know why we’re pushing to get Firestorm out as fast as we can.
Slightly off-topic, quick question; i’m curious, when you interview people, do you send them a copy of the article just as you’re posting it, or a link to the posted article, or they have to keep an eye on the blog to see how it came out together with the general public? (I wouldn’t expect you to show them the article beforehand, keeping all the authoring decisions to yourself; you don’t show them a preview for approval, do you?)
@Tigro It depends on how much slicing-and-dicing I do. I prefer my interviews to be more conversational than a straight Q&A format. It makes people feel more comfortable (I hope!) and you get a better feel for how they think. The problem is that the result can be as tangled as any chat-log.
So, there’s a process of throwing out the junk and then cleaning up, proof-reading and reorganising what is left so that the meaty bits are left and in some sensible sort of order. The problem with doing doing all of that turn-the-rambling-talk-into-an-article thing is that you run the risk of creating a hatchet job by completely misrepresenting and/or taking the interviewee out of context.
So, there’s a line, one side of which I will just go ahead and use what I have. Straight Q&A things, for example, or cleared statements. On the other side though, I’m careful to try not to misrepresent the other person and I’ll run the draft past them before I’m done to make sure that I’m not completely destroying the sense of what they tried to say.
I’ve had my own words sliced-and-diced beyond recognition in the news in the past, and that’s something I don’t want to put anyone else through
The fact that 2/3rds of users are using V1 based viewers is only useful information for navel-gazing. It at best means the Linden endorsed and facilitated TPV program is successful and most existing users are preferring customized experiences based on V1, and at worst as a few would have everyone believe, 2/3rds of the userbase are in open rebellion and simply hate V2 and its not a matter of preference at all.
Either way, its navel-gazing, and the bigger more pertinent reality and concern when it comes to usability is the fact that some really high 90-percentile number of the 10k+ sign-ups a day reject Second Life outright. That was the case with V1 and remained the case with V2.
It’d be fairly pointless to make V1 the aim again when it failed in exactly the same way as V2. The iteration numbers are meaningless. Linden Lab doesn’t have to make a Viewer 3, but they do have to continue improving the viewer with an aim towards retaining more users and succeeding where V1 and V2 as we know them never have.
‘course, the bickering over V1 vs. V2 is going to persist as long as we’re in an echo chamber of the same stagnant userbase, but its worth it sometimes to realize there’s freakin’ 10k signups a day yet concurrency floats in the same range. The vocal minority we compose seems absolutely numb to that.
@Ezra 12,000-18,000 per diem, just of late. And yes, before V2′s UI came along, V1′s UI used to get slammed just about as hard.
@Ezra On the contrary, I think that bit of information is a pretty good indication that there is something terribly wrong in the viewer development in the past two-three years. Analyzing precisely why it is so would be of great help to LL. Also in regard to user retention.
@Tateru While it is true that there were complaints about the v1 UI, I don’t think one compare that directly to the kind of reaction v2 got. One of the biggest UI complaints that I remember during v1 days was when Voice was introduced (in 1.19 if I remember correctly) which made a mess of the communicate window where one could not undock contacts from it etc. It took until 1.22 to get that part right. And then v2 came along which undid all the fine tuning that v1 chat interface got over 20 something versions.
In both cases the design indicates that it has been made by people who have very little idea how SL is used daily by its users and unwillingness to find out.