New Learning Space, New Interface

If you have visited Shimmer Island before (slurl) then you will have arrived at the beach house and no doubt ventured to the first floor learning resources, which have been in place for a couple of years now and continue to prove popular. In creating these I wanted to produce a learning space with access to materials that allowed us to return to a more intuitive and tactile experience like books as a means of accessing information; when you think about it, asked if anyone would rather use a new library of operating system to get information, you can hazard a safe guess as to their preference.


Just lately though I have been thinking about the way we associate form with function, not just Oh its book and therefore has words to be read, but also, this looks like a library so it musty be full of books! So I began considering breaking with the traditional associations, form from function and explore the possibility, advantages and preference of creating a learning space that appeared to be more in keeping with a relaxing chill-out space, populating it with learning / information resources whose appeared would be more in keeping with their immediate environment rather than function or purpose. For a location, I bought in a new sky platform “Secret garden in the Sky”, which seemed ideal for the project.


To access these new resources an avatar simply approaches close enough, within 2 meters, at which point a label appears telling what it is, if you are not interested in the content then simply move out of range and the label disappears. Should you wish to open the resource however simply stay in range and the object will morph into a screen, retexture its surface to the opening page? At the moment until web-page on a prim achieves more functionality, I am still employing the use of pop-up windows.




There is I feel a more ambitious project waiting for me here though in the production of resources that respond to avatars, rather than avatars having to make all the selections and choices, but as I say that’s a further extension of the project. Please feel free to come along to the main beach house anytime and take the teleport to the sky garden and let me know your thoughts and impressions.


Bye for now Skipper