I certainly got the wide open feel and the experimenting bit, so good job on that. I think it may have just been too many concepts at once. I managed to figure out how the lever and button works, but never managed to figure out the gap.
*Five minutes later*
Right, so seems like you can stand on your former selfs (which I tried before and thought I fell through it). That's a lot to figure out for the very first puzzle. As an alternative, I think it'd be nice to have a section where it teaches the "you can stand on yourself" mechanic. Like a long shallow spike pit at the start of the level, where there doesn't seem like any other alternatives. After failing my first attempt at standing on myself (I believe I even tried it twice), I started wondering if maybe I needed to make a platform appear or just something else that I was missing.