SECOND LIFE, August 12 (Reuters) - Doug Thompson loved Second Life from the start, but there was one aspect he hated — its notoriously clunky user interface.

“The Second Life interface sucks,” he wrote on his blog, recalling his first days. “Which will lead to the next sacred cow, which is that the newbie orientation experience sucks.”

But rather than gripe, Thompson, through his Second Life avatar Dusan Writer, came up with an idea: hold a contest throughout Second Life to see who could figure out how to make the interface better. And to sweeten the pot, he committed L$800,000 of his own money, almost three thousand American dollars, to the three avatars who could come up with the best design.

“I like to think about virtual worlds, what can make them better, how to attract and retain new users. It’s mind candy for me,” Thompson said. “I thought I’d love to see what people mean when they say a simpler interface is better.”

Thompson received six entries for his contest. He assembled a panel of judges, and on Tuesday named avatar Rheta Shan as the first prize winner and recipient of L$500,000 (about US$1,850).

Shan’s proposal was for a series of new layouts and improvements to all of Second Life’s menus. See the winning perspectus here (PDF document).

“The best way to make an interface noob [new user] friendly is to make it intuitive, and consistent,” Shan said. “So that [users] understand what happens when they click something, get an idea of the result, and must not be afraid of causing some kind of damage.”

First runner-up Jacek Antonelli won L$200,000 (about US$740) for her entry (google doc) on a redesign of the menus and a new system of inventory management — long a bane among veteran Second Life users.

But it wasn’t the prize money that brought Antonelli into the contest. “I’m strongly considering recirculating it back into the process — maybe funding another contest, or pay developers to actually implement some of these ideas,” she said.

Second runner-up Roy Cassini proposed integrating the new user experience and help system directly into the interface.

“It takes the first encounter with SL out of the horrors of help island, buggy huds, and overall a poor experience,” he said of his proposal (slideshare presentation).

With three vetted ideas for improving Second Life’s interface, it may be hard to extract the best ideas out of them.

“The thing is every single entry has a good idea or two or three or whatever,” Thompson said. He’s considering a follow-up contest, a “mash-up phase” to combine the best features of the different entries into an integrated software proposal. “Some of the contestants said we should develop a Frankenviewer.”

Original post by Eric Reuters