Finding New Test Pilots in Second Life

[Richard Milewski]

At last Thursday's Design Lunch Jono mentioned that the current base
of Test Pilot users is heavily biased toward male ubergeeks as
evidenced by the large percentage of Linux users in the pool.

That got me thinking a bit about how to expand the universe of Test
Pilot users. I had a good response to some virtual One Web Day
posters I created for the Second Life virtual reality environment, so
I thought it might be interesting to see if it's possible to use that
as a venue to attract future Test Pilots.

I've created some virtual Test Pilot T-shirts for Second Life avatars,
and placed them in a virtual Mozilla Store in Second Life. The T-
shirts are free to anyone, and come with a notecard with links to the
Test Pilot web site that encourages everyone to download Test Pilot
and participate in future tests.

You can visit the store in Second Life at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Czech%20Republic/42/229/26/

...or there's a picture of the Test Pilot Shirts at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardmilewski/3980728826

[Michael O'Hara]

While Second Life would be a good way to get the Test Pilot name out there, there are still inherent problems with getting non geeks involved with Labs add-ons.

Getting an add-on (in this case Test Pilot) is completely inaccessible for your non-web developer browser user.

First the user has to know what an Add-On is (which a fair amount of Firefox users don't).  Mozilla.com doesn't do a very good job of explaining it.  In the navigation bar on the home page, it dives into add-ons without having a "what is an add-on?" or "about add-ons" link.  The user has to use the "All add-ons" to answer those questions.  Not an easy task.

Second, (still as a non-web developer user), even if I had an idea as to what add-on's are, there is very little chance I would find Test Pilot.  It is hiding in Labs.  Not being a developer, the word "Labs" is not something i would want to mess with.  Labs sounds like some place where strange computer nerds hang out talking about computer code and D&D.  There is no way I'm getting involved with that.

Third, there is virtually no way anyone could stumble across Test Pilot without knowing it's name or knowing it's in Labs.

So that leaves you with simply getting the "good news about Test Pilot" out to the right people. 

Given the nature of Test Pilot, people who might take an active interest in this are the scholastic type; high school math and science teachers and their students.  College Profs and their students.  These are the type of people who actively use data collection and would love to see used in practice.  If it's presented to them clearly, they will certainly help you out.

In addition, these type of people are very social creatures.  If you do make a strong case for them to download and participate, they will almost assuredly tell others.

Not bad candidates for Test Pilot.

Mike

www.fireworksproject.com

[Patrick Dubroy]

I recently did a field study of how people use tabs in Firefox (some
details: http://dubroy.com/blog/category/research/). I had 21
participants, most of whom were definitely not typical geeks. Most of
them just said, "I love Firefox and I'd love to help in any way I
can."

I think if Test Pilot can just get in front of the eyes of these
people, there will be no problem getting enough non-technical people
to participate. A simple add on the download page, or a checkbox in
the installer, could go a long way.

Pat

[Michael O'Hara]

Richard,

Great blog post.  I reposted it here.

http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics/how-math-teachers-can-improve

Classroom 2.0 is fairly vibrant community of educators.  It will certainly be read.  I will do what I can to answer any questions that might come along.

Mike