I live in BC, so I see BC
My car’s insured by ICBC
When I am blind, and can’t quite see thee
I’ll “see” the world with BCI

Glossary

BC = British Columbia, Canada
ICBC = the Insurance Corporation of BC
BCI = Brain-Computer Interface

Photo by Robert Nyman on Flickr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.

Not so long ago, everyone was chattering about this new gadget called “the piano.” You could create complex music in your home for the price of a cow. Music would be transformed!

Three years on, it seems the piano-chatter has stopped. Why? I decided to investigate.

I went to the home of Mr. Stewart Bell, musician and piano enthusiast. He sat me at his piano and showed me how he played a few of his favourite ditties. Then I tried. Dear me, the “music” I made nearly broke my ears! The interface is dreadfully complicated. It’s no wonder most of the people who tried it gave up quickly. Clearly the piano must be made easier to use: one should be able to produce lovely music within the first ten minutes.

I also found the whole process of “playing” the piano to be dull and frustrating. It should be more fun. Perhaps they could add an achievements system? One could get points for using the piano. Your points could be posted to a global score board, so you could compete with your friends. Prizes could be awarded to the top-scorers.

Speaking of friends, the whole piano experience needs to be integrated with Facebook. Twitter too. Maybe even Flickr: you could post photos of yourself playing the piano for people to tag and comment upon.

Lastly, the graphics on the piano sheet music are so 19th-century! Making them 3D would definitely snazz them up. Kids these days are turned off by things that are old (e.g. Alice in Wonderland, and Lego blocks).

Frankly, even if all my suggestions are heeded, I doubt the piano can be saved.

The piano is doomed. The piano is dead.

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Disclaimer: If you have no sense of humour, the above post was a work of satire, inspired by the recent blogospheric bemoaning of the Second Life user interface. Image credit: Moritz von Schwind, 1868. The man at the piano is Franz Schubert.

Over the past week, I let some friends alpha test my HUD-based tour system for Second Life. I got plenty of feedback (thanks!) and made some of the easy minor changes that were suggested.

Unfortunately, there was still one big problem that wasn’t easy to fix, a mostly unarticulated problem: people weren’t using it. For example, many would try on the HUD but never do a tour. Why? I’m still finding out. A common theme is that the system requires you to do too much: you have to browse the website to find a tour, then teleport to the start point, then make sure you’re wearing the HUD, then click the HUD to activate the tour, then move your avatar to the next point, and so on… it’s all a bit much.

I’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming ways to make the whole process easier (and more “delightful” as Linden Lab would say). There’s still a long ways to go. Such is life: I’m no Edison, and even he didn’t figure out how to make a good light bulb with version 1.0!

Photo Credits:  Carbon filament bulb by Rpongsaj on Flickr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.