* Yoowalk, good but not good enough
In the last few issues of this newsletter I’ve discussed graphics-based Web services that use visual techniques and metaphors to present complex data in ways that improves its accessibility and comprehension. There’s been a recent surge of companies trying out new representations of the Web and in this issue I have a very new player in this market, Yoowalk.
In the last few issues of this newsletter I’ve discussed graphics-based Web services that use visual techniques and metaphors to present complex data in ways that improves its accessibility and comprehension.
There’s been a recent surge of companies trying out new representations of the Web and in this issue I have a very new player in this market, Yoowalk. France-based Yoowalk – slogan “Walk around the Web” – is focused on the European market.
The presentation is a Flash-based virtual world that doesn’t require you to install any software to use – the publishers repeatedly claim that Yoowalk is a “no-download virtual world” which is just plain ridiculous as you have to download something to see any Web site (in Yoowalk’s case it is a lump of Flash).
Yoowalk’s virtual world presents a selection of Web sites in an isometric view of a grid-like streetscape albeit a very simplified one. Lining the streets are boxes (analogous to buildings) that stand for Web sites and that are decorated with some kind of representation of the site. Your avatar can perambulate around this environment, enter the virtual buildings or take “elevators” to other locations.
You can choose which “country,” “village” or “walksite” to be in and a mini-map shows your locality. You can also jump via menus to a list of predefined places.
You move around the Yoowalk world by circling your mouse around your avatar until the cursor points in the direction you want to go and then clicking. The camera orientation relative to the Yoowalk world never changes so all buildings are on the far side of every street.
In Yoowalk your avatar is a tiny figure that you walk or fly around to change your location.
The behavior of the avatars is odd. When at rest they occasionally alternate between a rather fey “weight on one hip” stance and an “at attention” pose – neither is even vaguely cool and there are no avatar behaviors you can use such as jumping and dancing. If you want to fly, your avatar transforms into a generic butterfly … again, not really cool.
In Yoowalk you can see the avatars of other users if they are visiting the same location as you and “chat” with them. You can also instant message using either the built-in chat services or log in to AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN so you can instant message people outside of Yoowalk.
You can just go through doors and up or down staircases by clicking or you can walk your avatar to these features. I found walking to features harder than I expected as I couldn’t always align to doors and stairs – I kept walking into the adjacent walls. I would have thought it smarter to “channel” avatars as they walk towards features so that they autoalign with them – it hardly seems sensible to make the user fiddle around to align exactly with a feature as the goal of Yoowalk is, I presume, to get the user to interact with the service’s content and not to train them in avatar control.
Anyway, when you enter Yoowalk “buildings” you will find an interior populated like an office, a gallery, a house, etc., or a generic room with the front of the Web site it represents plastered on a wall along with any other banners and images plastered on other walls – they are all clickable if they link to something.
Clicking on one of these will pop up a window showing the site’s contents and another problem is revealed – the pop-up is a fixed size that is smaller than most Web site layouts thus requiring you to scroll the window – this is just lame. I found that under Firefox on OS X this pop-up window flickers horribly making the browsing experience totally useless.
If you register you get persistence of your avatar customizations, your last location, and you can build a list of “friends.” I registered and discovered that my location defaulted to Brazil. Why not ask in the profile for a preferred location?
With registration you also get your own room, which you can decorate and furnish. Your room can be public or private (available only to friends) and open or closed. You can also select the location of your room in a small number of “villages.”
Site owners will be able to customize their own buildings but that feature has yet to be made available.
Customizing your avatar allows for lots of choices of hair, eyes, eyewear, and even socks – rather pointless as avatars are so small that the details of features like socks are pretty much hidden. At the end of customizing, Yoowalk pops up a dialog that explains how to clear your browser cache so that you can see your newly customized avatar. I’d rate that as lame too.
Allow me a quick rant – there’s one thing that Yoowalk does that I’ve noticed other sites doing that irritates the hell out of me: They add unnecessary dialogs. For example when you finish updating your profile and you click on “save,” Yoowalk confirms that your changes have been committed with a pop-up dialog which you have to, in turn, confirm by clicking the “go away” icon.
This is really bad design as the presentation of the dialog isn’t fast and because the user has to identify what they need to do, then move their mouse and then click it adds a totally unnecessary interruption in the smooth “flow” of user interaction.
The target of Yoowalk is the consumer market. At the bottom end of representations of the Web is what you get in the major browsers, while the top end of it are the likes of Second Life, which are too complex for the majority of consumers. Yoowalk is aiming for a more compelling general consumer experience than the standard Web browser that is easier to use than Second Life. I think they have a way to go.
Yoowalk is an ambitious attempt at an interactive 3D rendition of the Web and the publisher has obviously spent a lot of time and money on their implementation. Even so the service lacks polish (a certain “je ne sais quoi”?) with weak user interface design and over-attention to pointless detail. Without a lot more refinement and improvement of the user experience Yoowalk will most likely be an “also ran,” but an interesting one all the same.
