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Hilary Mason, an Assistant Professor in New Media and Computer Science at Johnson & Wales University, joined us last week for "Virtual Business Innovators" to talk about her in-depth statistics gathering system "SLMetrics". We learned quite a bit about statistics, how they can be used, and how the Metaverse might be completely reshaped by their influence.
You can watch the video or listen to the MP3 via the links above. This session's synopsis comes courtesy of Sloan Skjellerup of Rockliffe University. Her overview follows:
Synopsis
Mason’s first Second Life project was “Virtual Morocco”. In collaboration with the ministry of tourism for the Country of Morocco and a group of undergraduate students willing to volunteer their time, the team set out to research ways of using technology to help promote tourism in Morocco and develop a space to encourage cultural exchange. The group in Morocco loved it so much Hilary’s Immersive Media team was granted funding and support to develop a “Virtual Morocco”, Casablanca. (need SLurL here)
SLMetrics was born from the Virtual Morocco project. Once the team had completed the build, they discovered it would be necessary to develop a unique system in Second Life to accurately define their progress. SLMetrics is a suite of tools enabling in-world sensors to gather data. The collected data is backed up to the MySQL database and accessible on the website allowing the team to analyze and visualize the collected data.
With SLmetrics landowners can see the number of unique visitors, their entrance and exit paths, know how long they lingered and what objects they interacted with. This information gives a landowner a clearer “picture” of how their space is being used rather than just a stream of static numbers. We can answer a number of questions from this combined information:
- How can we design spaces from the ground up that encourage people to engage in particular actions?
- How can we take an existing space and “redesign” it to encourage people to engage in particular actions? What can stay the same?
- How does Second Life relate to real word business, training and education?
The basic SLMetrics system tracks unique avatars as they pass through an area. It records the time spent in the whole area, specific locations they spent the most time in, and the paths they walked. Mason is working on integrating an ‘Action Stream’ data model. Her team has already collected Action Data information across commercial sims, marketing sims, cultural and educational sims and is just starting to do the analysis to build more generalized models.
Surprisingly, privacy concerns were hardly mentioned by the meeting attendees. Onder Skall briefly addressed the subject. Why not have the individual landowners inform an avatar upon arrival that they are using the SLMetrics system and offer the avatars a link to the “Opt Out” site, or, a pop-up allowing them to either “accept” or “deny” participation. Mason in-turn suggested it would be possible for her to create a Kiosk where people may register to “Opt Out”. Currently SLMetrics does have a privacy policy in place and right now, there are two ways to opt out:
- Ask Hilary Mason for an attachment from SLMetrics to wear that broadcasts a code so that the sensors will never record you.
- You can opt out on a website form requesting that your name be automatically deleted from the database.
Linden Lab’s TOS already gives landowners the right to track who comes to the space and how they use it. A person can not place the SLMetrics sensors on land they don’t own. Mason encourages people to have privacy policies in place on their sim/s.
There is a movement among Academics to define “Open Standards for Metrics Data” enabling us to share data between different systems. Mason has been working on this concept with Eric Hackathorn (of Maya Realities (http://www.mayarealities.com), known in Second Life as Hackhaven Heartford. Masons’ team will be giving a presentation on Open Standards for Metrics Data January 12, 2008, in Boston at the Immersive Education Symposium, Boston College.
Meanwhile, Mason’s team needs more data! If you would like to set this system up on your land, go to http://www.slmetrics.com/slmetrics.php and sign up.