Filed under: News and developments by Digado

Recently Dusan Writer challenged the community to design a new user interface for Second Life. The emphasis in the contest seems to be a ‘light’ client, for new users to find their way in Second Life during the first hours/days. Dusan reserved 500,000L (roughly 1,830$) for the best design, 200,000L and 100,000L for the 2nd and 3rd place. Omissions will be accepted until 29th of June.

VIEWER INTERFACE CONTEST

Rules and Criteria
I am inviting the creative, brilliant, thoughtful, insightful community of SL to submit designs for a new Second Life client. We can call it a “newbie viewer” or a “junior client” - whatever terms you want to give, the criteria for the contest is as follows:

- Design an interface for the Second Life client that would improve the experience of a new or inexperienced user.

- There are no rules for what should or should not be included in the viewer. However, nothing should be added that is not possible with the current viewer. For example, while it might be nice to be able to groups your friends together, this isn’t currently possible, so it would not be an acceptable feature and your submission would be disqualified. The objective is to present the current features of the viewer in a new way. This doesn’t mean you can’t remove features. It just means the design should be based on existing and supported features.

- Designs are just that - designs, not prototypes. You don’t need to know code to participate. Please submit screen designs in TGAs, PNGs or another SL-compatible image format. The winners will be required to submit their original digital files (Photoshop, Illustrator, GIMP, or other graphic program) to receive their prizes. Submissions should be no less than 1024 x 1024 resolution. Submissions MAY include a notecard if the entrant feels that an explanation is useful in providing context to their submission.

- There is no limit to how many screens you can submit in order to visually demonstrate the concept.

- Up to 10 entrants will have the opportunity to present their entries to the judges and explain the rationale.

Resources:

1. Killing Sacred Cows: the SL interface
2. SL User Interface Roadmap Wiki
3. Second Life struggles with Interaction Design
4. Dazzle not helping User Interface Program

Posted on: June 6, 2008 | Share on: