Randy Hinrichs is CEO of 2b3d, a virtual world company with offices in Second Life. He stopped by today to demonstrate the locales that they’ve built to help clients conduct business and do work online on Second Life.
We were treated to a tour of their office. Features included board rooms, employee training facilities and medical training facilities. These spots are augmented with communicative and training tools. For example, the board room includes slideshows, blackboards, and other live conferencing tools.
Randy explained (and demonstrated) one advantage of Second Life. At a fast-food training booth, he walked through the paces that a future employee might take to learn the procedures for his job. The simulated experience is well-suited to convey mechanics and procedures that are hard to teach via powerpoint or lectures. How do you teach someone that they have to wash their hands for a full 20 seconds? The simulated experience is more capable of conveying that experience than traditional methods.
Some topics that came up in conversation:
How “inefficient” is this environment for accomplishing work?
There were a number of responses:
- There exist some frustrating quirks, but the gains in contextual and social cues are worthwhile.
- Second Life at this point is comparable to the early Web: it is a particular culture; people aren’t sure about what to do with it (they’ve tried selling traditional stuff on it and failed – think Pets.com); but it is populated, people are here, and they are innovating.
The monetary model of Linden Labs is different than the completely free model of the Web. How does this affect the future of Second Life?
- Linden Labs is not the only player. We will have to watch this and other companies as they explore different platforms and business models.
The 3D interface is known to cause vertigo for some people. Have you run into this issue with your clients?
- We haven’t really.
- This type of interaction is in demand by the next generation and we anticipate more adoption in the future.
- Potential solutions might be having different interfaces that bypass the vertigo effect for different users.
