Dash hints/tips for feature discoverability

[Reviver-Noon]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I see people state that they don't know how to do simple things or if a setting/feature exists and when they are told/find them, they say that it has poor discoverability, that they would not have known until they dug or until someone else told them.

Describe the solution you'd like

On the world loading bar, I think it may be good to have (toggleable!) tips and hints, e.g. "Did you know you can disable online notifications in [insert settings path here]?" Some worlds may load too quickly, so having it linger a bit longer after loading as long as the tip option is enabled may help. There may be a better place for it. Perhaps somewhere in the dash as a facet that cycles thru tips that can be removed or added at a whim? It doesn't have to be too terribly in depth... Just about the game's basic functions.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I dunno. There isn't much except leaving users to dig around for themselves or going by word of mouth/pushing tutorial videos back to back that may be more info than what someone was looking for.

Additional Context

No response

Requesters

Discord handle: @reviver.noon

[Stellanora64]

539 would probably be a more direct way to mitigate this.

But this is still a pretty neat idea, and I could see it helping discoverability of some features that aren't super well known.

[shiftyscales]

Resonite currently doesn't have the concept of a loading screen as a native feature- but as indicated- there are existing issues centred around the idea of promoting/exposing users to existing resources more easily, e.g. the help screen on the dashboard #1123.

[Frooxius]

I think having hints/tips might be a good idea on itself.

I don't think placing it on the loading indicator would be good place, but there can be other places to put it.

The main concern though would be placing it somewhere where it doesn't nag or overwhelm the users.

[shiftyscales]

How do you feel on the concept of a 'loading world', @Frooxius - it should be pretty easy to implement with our existing systems.

E.g. in order of events:

• User clicks to join a new session in the world browser/contacts UI
• Transition visual like the one in the cloud home/tutorial fills the user's screen is triggered/stored in userspace
• User instantly unfocuses the current world, and focuses a low-resource transitory space similar to local home where loading tips, etc. are presented
• User refocuses into new, fully loaded world

There could be a couple of settings added to configure this behaviour, e.g.:

• Disabling the loading transition entirely (preserve the existing behaviour)
• Disable auto-focusing the newly loaded world after its finished loading- this would let the user explicitly choose when they're ready to load in, e.g. if they started loading a session/world, took off their headset moment to get a drink, then came back

I figure by default this behaviour would only be triggered by the world browser- possibly firing off a ProtoFlux dynamic impulse in userspace- this would prevent conflict with experiences that have explicitly defined their own world transition behaviours, e.g. The MetaMovie.

Implementing it would come with a few perks:

• It prevents the 'ack- hold on- I just clicked to join a world' panic when someone tries to talk to you by instead instantly unfocusing the current world
• It helps mask the loading judder associated- giving the user a much more stable space to exist in while the rendering is occurring
• It ensures the session they are joining has time to fully load, which improves the overall look and polish of the world/session joining experience

[Frooxius]

I think this is the wrong place for discussing that and we're getting way too deep and involved, for what's essentially off topic for this issue.

Whether change how loading visuals work is it's own separate topic, so I don't think it should be discussed in depth in context of adding hints/tips for feature discoverability.

But in general, it's not approach I want to take with loading.

I feel for the purposes of this topic we should focus on where we could put such feature in general terms.

[shiftyscales]

I was going off of the title "Loading screen or dash hints/tips for feature discoverability" my suggestion was in regard to the "loading screen" portion of it so I don't believe it to be off-topic, but have marked it such nevertheless so this issue can focus on the other half of it.

[Frooxius]

The initial issue itself seems to be heavily about adding the hints/tips, with the loading screen as an example.

Generally I'd prefer not to mix two separate, but related feature changes like this together and just focus on one main one to keep things clean.

[EmergencyTemporalShift]

It takes me a little bit to load, so I would prefer to stay in the world I was in until necessary.

[Frooxius]

Let's keep this on topic please.

[Reviver-Noon]

I admit I kinda jumped tracks in the middle of writing this, and yeah, having it as a dash facet still seems to be the better way instead of part of the world loader thingybob. ^^; I should've went and edited that out of the OP, I probably will if that's okay? Will leave it if that's preferred.

That's one thing I'm not sure of- how to keep the user informed without nagging them? Balancing that and it also not being basically invisible... There's plenty of empty space at the top right of the dash by default, I can't imagine much complaining over it being there.