Sense of Place

I think we normally speak of work being done “in Powerpoint,” “in Word,” and so forth. This morning I looked at a transcript of people discussing virtual worlds while in one. The words “Qwaq” and “Forums” appear once each. The word “here” appears 49 times. We are finally getting to the point of having discussion about the results, not the technology. The program itself disappears, in just the same same way as we usually discuss being “at a Web-site” rather than “in Firefox” or “in Safari.” (Internet Explorer users may indeed reflect their tool’s relative intrusion by thinking of their activity as being “in IE” more often.)

A few years ago, I noticed that I was trying to clean up a Croquet space before I exited. I turned off the radio. I went back to the home space before shutting it down. Why?

There was a feeling of persistence. That early version of Croquet was not actually persistent. And yet I felt that things would stay in the state in which I left them.

Now things really do work that way, and the spaces themselves take on an air of being “real.” One feels like one is entering a house, and that you leave by the front door, not from the bedroom.

I think this emergent property makes such spaces easier to use, but after three years, I still can’t explain why. I think the feeling of persistent “reality” lowers the cognitive load required to operate the applications. It feels more immediate than in today’s computer operating systems and I feel less disconnected from the computer – less like I have to think through how to beg/trick it into doing what I need.