Kitely Market Categories and Attributes

[Adagio Greenwood]

Please read the Preview of Kitely Market Categories blog post and provide your feedback in this forums thread.

[Graham Mills]

Given that Kitely is supposed to be about 'Education, Training and Fun', I think you might want to consider where two of your existing commercial products in the first two areas would fit, viz Elements 1-4, CampusPodz.

[Ilan Tochner]

Thank you for your feedback Graham.

Whole world builds such as the ones you mentioned would appear in the Worlds > Complete Worlds category. This is where world templates that can be used to quickly instantiate new worlds for things such as immersive courseware will also be found.

Once this category is implemented you'll be able to choose products from there to create new worlds without having to download an OAR file and upload it into Kitely.

[Ohn Lang]

Teeny comment. You have "Pose Stands" under Business Tools, but tons of people use pose stands for purely personal stuff, like while trying on clothes or taking pictures of themselves. I use them sometimes while creating stuff to be worn or when editing attachments that i am wearing (like sleeve prims, hats, shirt collars, etc.), or dump animations in to try out or for storage. I think they fall under Gadgets first. They are Gadgets that might be used for business.

"Guides and Tutorials" is under Business Tools. I'm guessing that the idea is that Guides and Tutorials listed here would be specifically guides for running a business (in Kitely, elsewhere?). I doubt you intend that all guides and tutorials should be considered business tools. I was thinking of non-business focused Guides and Tutorials that people might make: How to terraform 101, Beginning/Intermediate/Advanced Scripting, Roleplay Basics, Tortured Prims for Dummies. Then, unrelated to virtual worlds, there are educationally focused worlds here that focus on teaching people to do a variety of things, like socialization skills, language, etc. Then I got to thinking about all the poetry, story books, and other books that are produced, in Kitely, in SL.

Although you have "Books and Periodicals" listed, that is listed under Interior Design, which makes me assume that those books would be intended for looks not actual reading material. Would that be the correct assumption? If so, perhaps we could use a category for actual reading material with appropriate sub-categories.

[Graham Mills]

I was trying to make the more general point that two of your primary markets are under-served by the classification. You could include presentation tools, meeting rooms, auditoria, amphitheatres, chat recorders, brainstorming and quiz gadgets, etc in appropriate places or, as suggested previously, under a separate RL business and education heading so they don't get lost.

Thank you for your feedback Graham.

Whole world builds such as the ones you mentioned would appear in the Worlds > Complete Worlds category. This is where world templates that can be used to quickly instantiate new worlds for things such as immersive courseware will also be found.

Once this category is implemented you'll be able to choose products from there to create new worlds without having to download an OAR file and upload it into Kitely.

[Ohn Lang]

Although presentation tools, meeting rooms, amphitheators, chat recorders and brainstorming tools, as well as things like white boards, 'projectors', animations (like hand raising), object demo tools (rez/rotate/light up prims), NPCs, etc. are frequently used for educational purposes they are all things that are also very commonly used for business, as well as other focuses such as in the art and literary communities.

That being said, unless I am missing something, there really is no way (through attributes or categories) to identify an item as being primarily designed to meet educational or training needs.

I've no personal knowledge about the percentage of Kitely residents whose primary focus is educational or training, but it was my understanding that it was at least a somewhat significant portion of Kitely worlds.

Perhaps an attribute would help, though I don't know what you would call it, maybe "Focus" or something. That attribute could have options like: Business, Educational, Community, Personal, (maybe Other?).

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Graham,

First, thank you for providing a partial list of the things you wish to be able to find. Knowing what those things are can help us determine whether they are covered in the existing category tree or whether we need to modify it.

As most things can be used for more than one purpose, the category tree is designed to organize items based on what they are and not what they are used for. Attributes, on the other hand, can help provide additional info when searching for items that are designed with a particular use in mind. For example, the Occasion attribute can be used to help find Christmas tree ornaments.

For the examples you gave:

Meeting rooms, auditoria and amphitheaters can be stand alone structures that are added to existing worlds, in which case they will be found under some subcategory of Structures (see below). Alternatively they can be part of whole-world builds, such as the Universal Campus world template we currently provide, in which case they would be found under the Worlds > Complete Worlds category.

Chat recorders will be found under the Gadgets > Chat Enhancement category.

Presentation tools, brainstorming and quiz gadgets will be found under the Gadgets > Information Management or under the Gadgets > Multi-Use Gadgets categories if they also include additional non-information handling related functionality.

Looking at the subcategories inside the Structures category it seems that the various examples you've mentioned (which are very commonly used for multiple purposes) don't have a dedicated category at the moment. We'll need to find a good name that describes what those structures are and add a subcategory for them. If you have an idea what to call that common basis then please let us know.

If you have a particular attribute, or attribute value(s), you think we should consider adding then please let us know what they are (just please remember the design philosophy we mentioned in the blog post).

[Ohn Lang]

Presentation tools, brainstorming and quiz gadgets will be found under the Gadgets > Information Management or

That's what that is! I sort of glazed over that sub-category

[Graham Mills]

I have to say that I am pessimistic about the likely outcome of all this but if you want some additional examples I would add labs, lab equipment, lab safety equipment and apparel, simulated experiments, molecular and cellular structures. Will serious educational content be listed alongside the 'mad scientist' RP equivalent?

[Ohn Lang]

... the category tree is designed to organize items based on what they are and not what they are used for...

Ilan, I'm probably being obtuse, but if that is the case, why have a separate top-level category for Business Tools--tools that are used for business? I missed that before or would have asked in my previous post.