Adaptive Path Blog

Andy and I finished up our work with Linden Labs and Second Life at the end of last week. We presented our findings and recommendations to the team, and had some good discussions about future directions they can go in. It was an intense, fun project, full of unexpected joys and experiences.

The team we had on this project was great. The folks at Linden are amazing—so insightful, so passionate, so committed to making Second Life better for their residents. That was probably the thing that stood out the most to me—just how passionate everyone we worked with was; both on the Linden team and the residents we talked with. People just don’t get excited like that with enterprise software. We couldn’t help but get caught up in their excitement. It led to a very fun project—much laughing and good team spirit as we explored the world together.

As Andy mentioned when we started this project, at Adaptive Path we don’t have a prescribed methodology that we apply to every project. Rather, we have approaches that we tailor to each individual situation. It was interesting the way our approach changed and worked in the unique environment of Second Life. Some things, like the way we conducted interviews, were the same as in the real world. If anything, they were enhanced by having a visual representation of the interviewee and us on the screen. (Though I think we still wish that we had found an animation to let us shake hands and other forms of body language.) At other times we found that our usual methods didn’t work so well. We’d start whiteboarding and then realize that we had just drawn a web interface. We had to consciously remind ourselves to step out of the web box.

The response we have gotten to this project has been overwhelmingly positive. Residents and the blogosphere alike are happy that Linden is working on making their product better. Blogging about the project as we were working on it was also something new for us. We thank Linden for being open to us trying this form of a case study.

I think the AP team has realized that there may be something in the future of virtual worlds and it’s something we’ll be watching, and participating in. I know I’m not ready to abandon Andromache Ayres yet—she’ll still be hanging out in Second Life in the future.

So thanks Linden Lab, for this opportunity. You have a great team and were a great partner to work with.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Second Life Case Study. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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