When given the option to download the latest Radiohead album for free directly from Radiohead’s promotional website, 2.3 million people opted to download it through BitTorrent.

This factoid comes from research just released by Big Champagne and MCPS-PRS. I picked up on the news here.

The research goes on to explain that venue familiarity was a key determining factor for those downloading the album. People find things through channels they are familiar with on the Internet, and for 2.9 million people, P2P networks happen to be what they know instead of the URL of the Radiohead website.

So how does venue familiarity apply to virtual worlds?

A major reason why branded web-based virtual worlds have gotten traction in the past few years is venue familiarity. Disney’s Club Penguin may not be a household name today if it had not been distributing its games on Miniclip, a site that is known by youth as a top destination for casual games.

It goes without saying that the web offers the largest number of “familiar venues” of online users. When you combine these familiar venues with a virtual world experience built with a portable and embeddable technology like Flash, the result is a very cost effective way for publishers to maximize their exposure and reach, not to mention integration with their existing content.

I’ll be moderating a discussion on the topic of podcasting in Second Life at Orange Island Amphitheater on Wednesday at 12PM PDT. The panel is part of the Orange Island media event series happening all week.

Whether you are already a podcaster or thinking about getting one started, I’m hoping for a lively discussion about what it takes to start a podcast, how to keep it going and avoid burnout, and some thoughts on where podcasting is headed.

See you on the radio.

Just a quick note to those already registered for the (sold out) vBusiness Expo being held in Forterra OLIVE — I will be representing Electric Sheep Company on the Thursday 11:00 PDT panel discussing “The Future of Virtual Worlds”.

The panel is a solid mix of the usual suspects in the virtual worlds industry including Bruce Joy of VastPark, Nicole Yankelovich of Sun, Darius Lahoutifard of 3DXplorer, Corey Bridges of Multiverse Network, and Christian Renaud of Technology Intelligence Group (formerly of Cisco).

In case you cannot attend, I’m moderating a similar panel at the LA Virtual Worlds Conference in just a few weeks. Where did the summer go, anyway?

I have been reading the book Designing Interactions and particularly liked David Liddle’s simple approach to categorizing the progression of technology development.

He suggests there are 3 stages to technology adoption:

1. Enthusiast Stage:

A small group of users adopt a technology because they love and appreciate technology in an aesthetic way. The fact that the technology may be a bit difficult to use is attractive and fun to enthusiasts. They are most interested in exploiting capabilities with little regard for actual productivity gains or lifestyle motivations.

2. Business Stage:

Once enough enthusiasts are using it, one of them figures out how to do something with it in their work to add productivity. It is in this stage that the technology’s interface are somewhat stabilized and some uniformity emerges. The technology may still require special training but the productivity gains are worth the burden.

3. Consumer Stage:

With the technology now in a growing number of hands for business use, the technology now begins to reach a price point that is affordable for the masses (or those picking up the tab for the masses, in the case of marketers). It is in this phase that the important controls become automatic and the learning curve is fast. The style and the technology’s affect on lifestyle are the key motivations at this stage.

I liked this breakdown as I think it provides an interesting way to look at the current state of the virtual worlds industry. Of the technologies I’m aware of currently available and in development, there seems to be solutions at every one of these stages.

What do you think? How would you classify our industry when mapped to Liddle’s stages?

You can watch an excerpt of the interview David provided for the book here.

Last week we launched WebFlock. It is by far our most ambitious effort ever to reach the masses with many different types of custom virtual world experiences.

We have learned many lessons over the past three years, chiefly among them has been consumer behavior as it relates to virtual world use. As we set out last year to develop WebFlock, there were key technical and design issues that we knew had to be addressed in our product if it is to break through to consumers. Here are five of them:

1. Computing power

Only a minority of the Internet population has computer hardware powerful enough to have an optimal experience in virtual worlds like Second Life. Based on our informal research, it could very well be less than 5%.

Better hardware will make its way into the wild and, trust me, we’re ready to flip those switches when it happens. To reach the mass Internet audience today, however, we chose to target 3-4 year old hardware for the WebFlock engine.

This is quite the opposite approach taken by virtual world and MMO platforms that target new hardware with their designs and then degrade the quality of the experience for those with lesser specs. Aside from the technical complexities it introduces, this approach carries a risk of undermining one of the key features of virtual worlds which is uniformly representing the shared space to all users.

We decided to standardize on 3-4 year old computing technology, also assuming little or no dedicated 3d processing capability.

2. Sign-up Forms

One of the greatest barriers to having the masses experiment with virtual worlds is the dreadful sign-up form. Virtual worlds are a unique interaction for many consumers and so they are often best understood through experience. As I’ve blogged before, sign up forms must die, especially sign up forms that restrict a users ability to understand the website they are browsing.

Because of the seamless technology decisions we’ve made with WebFlock, anyone that lands on a web page can instantly be immersed in a virtual world with a basic avatar and user name. From there, they can choose the pace and degree to which they commit their personal information with the site.

3. Immersiveness

When confronted with the need to support 3-4 year old computers, many of the competing web-based platforms resort to a single camera perspective using a single isometric (2.5d) renderer.

We wanted something more immersive and flexible, so we incorporated multiple rendering systems that range from 2d up to 3d to best cater to a variety of social and gaming experiences within WebFlock. The added flexibility of multiple views is great because it takes the manual work out of camera control that exists in some 3d environments and it greatly expands the possibilities for a variety of interaction types.

4. Software installation

There are certainly ways to make software installation easy for consumers through plugins and in-browser setup, but based on our experiences it had to be even easier than that.

Downloading and installing software takes time, it may require special computer privileges (particularly in the case of shared family computers or corporate IT environments), and for many consumers it’s simply the fear of causing harm to their computer resulting in future hassles.

For these and many other reasons, we decided it was important to target Adobe Flash, which is the only standard web browser solution that can render virtual worlds for over 90% of web browsers without any additional software installation.

5. Network access and speed

Too often when a consumer commits to installing virtual world software they are immediately disappointed to find that they have yet another step — downloading all of the content. This can take minutes up to hours depending on connection speed. We decided that WebFlock had to load within seconds of landing on a web page so we chose to use progressive download as users around the world.

We also have needed to address access through corporate and ISP firewalls, which we have found to be restrictive of most virtual worlds. Firewalls can be tricky so we have a few mechanisms designed into WebFlock for getting through them and will probably continue to evolve this feature set for quite some time.

There seems to be a new wave of interest in interface design with regard to the use of 3D environments for 2D data and applications. Is it happening because there is new research that backs it up or is it just a baseless, recurring (ooooh…shiny) trend?

There have been many attempts to do this on the computer desktop over the years, none of which have garnered much market share.

It was not until recently that this concept reached a mainstream market. Apple’s Cover Flow is likely the first mainstream instance of such technology. What we don’t know is what research and resulting usage statistics look like for this design choice.

Besides Apple software, there is also recent experimentation happening on the web.

These blips on the radar could be happening for a number of reasons.

Maybe Papervision3D, a tool for creating 3D environments in Flash without additional browser downloads, has renewed the interest in this concept. Maybe web developers are taking stock in the growth of the virtual world sector. Or, maybe developers are experimenting with ways to make their projects more game-like.

Better than reality is the goal of computer interfaces according to usability pundit Jakob Nielsen. Many attempts to force the use of 3D “put the interface in the way of the users goal.”

While he is known for caring little for “eye appeal” in his theories, Nielsen chimed in on the subject of “3D for 2D stuff” in 1998:

“Evolution optimized homo sapiens for wandering the savannah - moving around a plane - and not swinging through the trees. Using 3D on a computer adds a range of difficulties:

[1] The screen and the mouse are both 2D devices, so we don’t get true 3D unless we strap on weird head-gear and buy expensive bats (flying mice).

[2] It is difficult to control a 3D space with the interaction techniques that are currently in common use since they were designed for 2D manipulation (e.g., dragging, scrolling)

[3] Users need to pay attention to the navigation of the 3D view in addition to the navigation of the underlying model: the extra controls for flying, zooming, etc. get in the way of the user’s primary task

[4] Poor screen resolution makes it impossible to render remote objects in sufficient detail to be recognizable; any text that is in the background is unreadable

[5] The software needed for 3D is usually non-standard, crash-prone, and requires an extra download (which users don’t want to wait for)”

Solutions to these problems are in the works, but as of today, Nielsen’s arguments 1,2,3 and 4 still hold true in 2008 and his 5th argument was only recently dismissed.

So when should we use 3D?

Nielsen says 3D is great for visualizing… well… 3D stuff.

“When you visualize physical objects that need to be understood in their solid form. Examples include surgeons planning where to cut a patient: the body is 3D and the location of the tumor has a 3D location that is easier to understand from a 3D model than from a 2D X-ray, mechanical engineers designing a widget that needs to fit into a gadget, chemistry researchers trying to understand the shape of a molecule, planning the layout of a trade-show booth.”

He also saw a place for 3D in entertainment:

“Entertainment applications and some educational interfaces can benefit from the fun and engaging nature of 3D, as evidenced by countless shoot-them-up games. Note that 3D works for games because the user does not want to accomplish any goals beyond being entertained. It would be trivial to design a better interface than DOOM if the goal was to kill the bad guys as quickly as possible: give me a 2D map of the area with icons for enemy troops and let me drop bombs on them by clicking the icons. Presto: game over in a few seconds and the good guys win every time. That’s the design you want if you are the Pentagon, but it makes for a boring game.”

Touché.

The killer 3D application for interacting with 2D stuff will either prove out in the very near future or will disappear again for a while. We certainly have the technology now to display it, it is now just a matter of making it better than reality.

If anyone reading this has seen any usability tests or research on this topic, I would love to get the opportunity to review it.

It was great to see everyone at the Virtual Worlds Conference last week in New York. Thanks to all that came to my Platform Shootout presentation.

For those that are interested, I have added some notes to my slides and have it posted here for download. The white paper that was mentioned during the presentation will be published very soon.

The Virtual Worlds Conference is quickly approaching. There are less than seven days left before we kick things off in New York next Thursday.

If you are coming, be sure to wrap up lunch early on Thursday and head to Room 2 at 1PM for my session on virtual world platforms. This session was a huge hit at the San Jose Virtual Worlds Conference last year with standing room only, so get there early. Here is an iCal/vCal event invite (right click and select save/open) as a reminder.

For Shootout 2.0, I’ll be breaking worlds and platform technologies down into a usable framework and will address considerations for collaboration, simulation, and marketing objectives. If you happen to be with a platform or virtual world company, it’s in your best interest to be there to keep me straight on the facts and help field questions from the audience.

There’s much to cover, so show up caffeinated.

“Sign up forms must die,” proclaims Luke Wroblewski in his new book Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks.

I couldn’t agree more.

There is an emerging trend among Web 2.0 sites to employ a gradual engagement model as a way to give users a taste, often times a complete activity or experience, before asking them to sign up.

Virtual worlds and MMOs are quite possibly the worst offenders when it comes to forcing users through a registration process. Guests are often relegated to look at sample screen shots and read descriptions of a world before deciding to hand over their personal information for a closer look.

By and large, enthusiasts have populated online worlds to date. Whether they are hardcore gamers or early adopters of virtual worlds, they don’t need convinced to try a new service and they don’t care how easy or hard it is to use.

The design paradigm must change if the industry is to be successful in attracting and retaining casual users. If you are publishing a casual social or game world this year, even in 2008 there is a chance it will be the first avatar-based, immersive experience for your users.

In some ways, the Free to Play model that many world designers are using is addressing the monetary investment piece of the puzzle, but most worlds are still requiring a sign-up process before putting users into the world.

As experience designers we need to move the sign-up process from the download/sign-up page to a series of interactions in the world. The percentage of casual prospective users that are lost between the web pages describing a virtual world and the sign-up form is non-trivial. Equally significant is the number of users lost between sign-up and entering the world.

If you are still not convinced, an excerpt of Wroblewski’s book has been posted over at A List Apart.

CCP and their online game EVE Online is a delightfully disruptive force in the MMO industry. It was no surprise when I saw this on the Kill Ten Rats blog:

CCP [the makers of EVE Online] just started accepting candidacies for the Council of Stellar Management, or as their news post was amusingly titled, the Council of Stellar Awesomeness…This is a player-elected council of nine members who represent the playerbase to CCP, and CCP in turn promises to “attempt to accomodate all reasonable requests by player Representatives” and to “do everything in its power to resolve the topics presented.” They’re taking it pretty seriously, too — each term of the council requires a face-to-face meeting at the CCP offices, with travel (to Iceland!), lodging, and food paid for by CCP.

Incorporating user/player/resident feedback is an interesting phenomenon for MMO publishers. It is a hybrid of community management, governance and user-generated content.

This move by CCP is not the first time a sandbox MMO has attempted to give their high profile users a formal outlet to provide input and influence the publisher.

Second Life Views was a program started by Linden Lab and described as “a series of bi-monthly meetings with SL Residents to discuss the design and implementation of new features for SL.” To the best of my knowledge, the Views group has not met in quite a while. More recently, I noticed a Governance Team lead by Linden lab holding in-world office hours for residents to stop by to ask questions and discuss topics.

What makes the EVE Council different than other attempts like SL Views is the fact that players will be responsible to fellow players, not just advising the publisher of the MMO.

A major drawback of programs like SL Views and Town Hall forums is that users are likely to overwhelm the publisher and their ability to properly manage the input. After all, well managed MMO publishers have far fewer employees than they have users, right?

If you want to see more details about the Council of Stellar Management (CSM), you can download a brief on it here. I’m excited to see this in action in the coming months!