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Inventory! (my post from AtA)


For everyone asking about inventory re-write -- yes! we are working on it!

Edy (one of the other devs on the project) started a thread in Site Feedback for your input, and we have also been reading the many other feedback and petition threads about inventory.

We are starting by addressing the issues of equipped items moving and the order changing randomly. Some of those changes are very close to being done, but it takes time to test and make it out to the site.

Beyond that, we are looking at how to scale the whole inventory page. Gaia has a lot more item types than we used to, with zOMG and aquarium, not to mention load times are already painful for some as it is. We are looking at ways to help you put your inventory into manageable pieces, and want your ideas and feedback. I will be putting major updates in my journal as the project moves along (we are just getting started...)

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What we have done so far is basically try to identify the main issues & brainstorm solutions. We use a bunch of ways to get ideas: reading user threads, doing a small focus group where we observe people dressing up their avatars, using the site alot ourselves.

As I see it, the main issues really boil down to two things:
1) finding stuff
2) trying stuff on and exploring the different options

We are dealing with issue 1 first because its painful right now for a lot of people. The long-time users we talked to don't have time to keep their inventories in order because it takes too long. The reason they want ordered inventories is partly aesthetic (cause it looks clean and nice) and partly so that they can find stuff when they are changing their outfit. Hence issue 2: improving dress-up. There are lots of improvements we can make to the whole dress-up/preview flow too, but 'finding stuff' is where we are starting.

There are a lot of different ways we could help people find stuff: having better categories, giving more ways to sort and search, providing better default ordering, being smarter about what we load up when so that performance improves, letting people trash items to get rid of clutter, etc.

We basically want to put control in the hands of the users, because, well, your inventory is YOUR stuff so it should be organized (or not organized) however YOU want it.

With that said, the top 3 new features as of now (these would start after bug fixes are done)

* a new view, that is more flexible in terms of allowing a greater number of tabs/categories. Also, this new view will merge the 'My inventory' and 'Inventory Arranger' features so that it is all on one page. Once we have mock-ups we will find a place to put them up for your feedback.

* let users define their own categories. Not sure yet if this will show up as 'tabs' or 'folders' or 'boxes' but basically let you group a bunch of items and give the group a name and order. There probably has to be a limit on the number of categories, but it would give you more flexibility if you wanted to group things by color or by style or something else. We would probably have it default to something very similar to what it is now for people who don't want to change. This feature also allows things like 'outfits' and a 'trashcan' (woot!)

* better search: search by tag, color, etc. within your inventory and be able to use/equip an item after you have searched for it. Marketplace search is also being improved right now, and ideally inventory and marketplace searches will work the same (they don't right now)

It might sound simple, but its going to be a lot of work. I am really excited because I think that not only could inventory "not suck" it could actually be a very cool part of the site, especially when it is integrated with an updated dress-up feature.


Comments plz! I am exited to hear your thoughts :O