Two weeks ago, at the Life 2.0 quarterly summit, I gave a special keynote at the invitation of organizers John Zhaoying and Rissa Maidstone who were kind enough to invite me, and to accommodate my handicaps and timezone enough to make it possible.

While I am, perhaps, known for statistical data and numeric analysis, those are just the things that put food on the table. Human factors are far more interesting, and no metrics - however detailed and methodical - are complete without the consideration of the human factors involved.

With that in mind, I chose to discuss the interplay of four key human factors and their role in virtual worlds. The audience was very generous in their appreciation, and the bright discussion afterwards was very stimulating.

Below the fold is a transcript of the talk, reformatted to be a little easier on the eyes.

One of the things about virtual worlds is that they defy understanding from a distance. Our notions of the experience in the world are colored by our notions of what goes on on video screens and inside computers.

Do your research, do as much reading as you please, shoulder-surf someone as they go about their business in Second Life, even. When the time comes, you'll still come in with misconceptions - possibly vast misconceptions.

"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself." -- Morpheus, The Matrix (1999)

To an outside observer, a virtual world appears to be something else; something different yet familiar. It's that sense of familiarity that fools the process of perception. Perception is primarily a process of recognition.

That process of recognition is part of the strengths of a generalized free-form virtual world, and - at the same time - a significant weakness. As a visual metaphor resembling the operation of the real world, it allows the use of existing knowledge and instincts to be applied to an artificial, digitally created space.

On the downside, however, other familiar patterns interfere with the recognition process. Worlds like Second Life are variously recognized and expected to perform as more regular computer applications, or as games before we expect them to behave like worlds.

It's not a failing to obtain misconceptions of virtual worlds - it would be silly to suggest that you wouldn't.

Whether you step in to Second Life with no background in virtual worlds, as a keen observer/commentator/critic who is spending their first time on the inside, or even coming from another virtual world - you're wrong.

I was wrong. We were all wrong. That's just how it is.

Even the early part of your time in Second Life has the opportunity for bolstering rather than puncturing the bubble of misconception - by the very nature of virtual worlds - their existence as persistent visual metaphors, and their breadth and scope. So, while these misconceptions are inevitable, the more interesting thing is that they are (or can be) valuable.

Several factors act on Second Life users, of all ages - because they're basic factors that act on all people. For want of any better terms, let's call the basic trio Satisfaction, Novelty, and Friction.

Novelty is why so much of the mainstream media takes old news and then repackages it as 'new' news. In the war for the attention of readers/viewers, novelty is a weapon - as is the illusion of novelty. We're human. We like novelty.

Satisfaction is the feeling we get from accomplishing goals. Not other people's goals, though - we get it from accomplishing our own. Granted, there's a natural tendency for us to adopt the goals of others as our own - but that's a whole different discussion.

The (self-assessed) perception of the achievement of self-set goals gives us a feeling of satisfaction. Satisfaction is fuel for the drive-machine and the basic substrate of enthusiasm. Satisfaction involves learning, accomplishment, and perceived reward.

Friction is the most complex factor of the three, and, I'll freely admit, has the worst name of the three.

Friction derives from overall stress, the perceived inability to achieve self-set goals, the perceived inability to create self-set goals, drama of all sorts, perceived cost (in resources, or time) and boundary conditions of choice (so many choices of similar value that you cannot decide, or so few choices that you feel trapped or constrained).

These three factors plotted over time look a bit like a biorhythm chart, with a few key differences.

One is that - all things being equal - Novelty will fade over time. We accept that in MMOs the novelty of content has an average lifespan of about six months. MMO operators - that is MMO operators that have not gone out of business yet - inject fresh content and features into their MMO approximately that often. This gives a boost to novelty, if only for a while.

Another, is that Satisfaction tends to level off. It can fall, but again - all things being equal - it rises to a particular point, and then levels out.

If at any time, Friction exceeds the sum of novelty and satisfaction, well - you're out of there.

*Pfft*, gone. [waves a hand]

This applies to virtual worlds, communities, RL jobs and quite a lot of other human activities.

You can see those factors at work in aspects of your own life with just a little thought.

Friction is only broadly predictable. So much of it depends on subjective human interactions - platform and technical difficulties, however, keep the fundamental baseline higher. Ultimately for a longer-term user, ongoing platform difficulties, technological barriers or user-interface grumbles won't drive you away, but they make it easier for other, relatively minor dramas to become the final straw.

The interplay of these three factors is as vital to the new user experience in a virtual world, as it is to the longer-term experience. At every moment, at subperceptual levels as well as often at perceptual levels, you are assessing a tripartite cost-benefit analysis of these three factors - are you getting enough for what you are putting out? Is it worth it?

If you look at the first 30 minutes of new user experience in Second Life - try to remember your own - you might wonder why people make it any further.

You did - but the fact is that many of them don't.

Second Life has far more Novelty to some of us than others, but the Novelty of that first half hour can be relatively low. Satisfaction can't be said to be all that high for most of us during that initial period either, and Friction initially is very high.

We start out feeling a bit lost, obstructed by our poor grasp of the user-interface, and our inability to achieve simple goals at the outset - walking, flying, sitting, or tapping out chat without jumping around like a spider with St Vitus Dance (chorea sancti viti).

How on earth did we make it through our own initial user experience?

Mostly through misconception.

Our whole cost-benefit calculation was skewed by the simple fact that we thought Second Life was something that it isn't - and that changed the whole paradigm of our learning and internal goals.

Misconception is a key, fourth factor in the early stages of adoption.

This is a sword that cuts both ways.

Misconceptions can give you a grace-period. A bubble that sustains you through the early phase of the new user experience - but equally, some misconceptions can prejudice against the experience you actually receive, causing you to bail out of the process before you ever get a chance to perceive what lies beneath and give it a true, subjective assessment.

One of the problems with leveraging this is that Misconception is very subtle, personal and tends to defy articulation. As you leave the bubble of misconception, your connection with that paradigm - that weltanschauung fades away and you have a hard time distinguishing how your perceptions now differ from how they were then except in the broadest of strokes.

Another problem with leveraging the positive side of misconception is that in a virtual world like Second Life, there are a veritable horde of valid paradigms.
None of us sees more than a fraction of the world and the interactions in it.
Second Life is not just a place - it's a million places with as many flavors.

Sandra and Joe have a Second Life child, and maintain a familial relationship as a microcommunity, part real and part role-play.

Jeremy and Ian have a BDSM relationship as part of a larger group of couples within Second Life.

Lily is a Second Life sex-worker from the United Kingdom.

Owen is a Second Life builder and consultant who earns a living helping corporations, universities and colleges set up shop.

David is a professor, exploring Social Studies with his Second Year students, and discussing usability and community with his academic peers.

Tateru is... well, I might have to get back to you on that. I'm hardly certain myself at the present time.

Teachers, students, socializers, business owners, shoppers, celebrities, itinerants; in all our grand diversity, as we are in the physical world.

We can't agree except in the broadest possible terms what Life is - so it's not likely we can agree very much on Second Life - except to say that it is what we are experiencing, and to leave it at that.

The experiences are so many and so diverse.

What is always most important, however, is what makes us alike, rather than what makes us different. Our most fundamental common factors, are Novelty, Satisfaction, Friction, and Misconceptions.

None of these four items are safely ignorable from the perspective of any provider of a human experience - yet in practical terms, they are factors that we only dimly understand or identify when we attempt to provide such experiences.

In gaming circles, industry luminary-veterans such as Garriott, Koster, Levine and Spector have worked on the refining of these assorted factors as they apply to games and gaming. Their work, their ideas, and their formulations add new depth, and a genuine craft to an industry that has, in the main, relied more on art and serendipity.

Long development cycles, however, make for slow experimental results, a disproportionately large influence from serendipity, and a preliminary evolution that may stretch well beyond the lifetimes of the participants.

On the Web as it has evolved through various incarnations, groping its way into Web2.0 - we've studied the nature of interaction, use-cases and usability, adoption, traffic and engagement.

Web2.0 has spiraled upwards meeting human factors with technological support. Vast efforts have been undertaken to accommodate the humans, and those efforts have yielded genuine and lasting value.

Second Life - as a platform - has the opportunity to examine, experiment and evolve the practical applications of these four very human factors within realistic and useful time-scales, if only we can afford the time and the near-continuous attention to do so.

For the sake of deriving optimal value from the platform as humans, as organizations, and as corporate entities, however, I will leave you with this final thought:

Is this something we can afford not to do?