[IAEP] is this useful feedback?

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Bill Kerr <billkerr at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://xo-whs.wikispaces.com/Sugar+UI
>
> is this useful feedback?

I think it's useful in itself, but there needs to happen quite a bit
of work before it can be consumed by developers. I guess someone that
knows the context in which those comments are made could translate
them to more universally understandable statements, and then someone
else could aggregate those with other feedback and produce some
summary from all of that.

> flux, year 10 student australia, has been slack in recording his criticisms
> (tends to mouth off with a negative but informed tone) but I sat with him
> and wrote them down myself, insisting on a bit more detail - he's one of two
> students in the class who knows some linux (more than me) - he felt the xo
> was lacking compared with other linux distributions
>
> XO DISLIKES
>
> Slow to load initially
> Loading (splash) screen for each activity is sad, dull, not worth it
> Games done cheaply compared with GNOME and KDE games
> mouse pointer is too big
> wants ability to replace XO icon with different icons
> wants ability to create a new background
> want fluxbox, a better GUI
>
> btw I have asked the class to try to put themselves, at least some of the
> time, into the shoes of a 6-10 yo child from the developing world when
> providing feedback - but have also said that I want to hear  negatives as
> well as positives

I'm not sure that's the best POV for useful feedback. I cannot think
myself of any features of Sugar that are specially targeted to people
in developing countries and I for one would like to see Sugar evolve
in an useful platform for all people independently of their age.

If kids are complaining so much about the Sugar Shell means that they
are "seeing" it too much. Most of the important stuff should happen
inside activities, not in the Shell. My reaction to that feedback is
that Sugar should dissolve itself better into the set of installed
activities (by improving performance, for example) and that activities
should address better the kids' interests (so they don't need to
change the shell icons to get some fun).

> (note the final para from death-god, he's not able to think outside the MS
> paradigm at this point - I plan to do some more talking about these issues
> next term)
>
> one memory that this triggered in me was mark shuttleworths ubuntu
> manifesto:
> http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/06/mark-shuttleworths-ubuntu-manifesto.html
> #13 "pretty" as a feature

My suspect is that conventional desktops have a big dissonance with
non-office usage, so people spend more time that they would like to in
the "OS". Because of that, the desktop GUI is important for them and
they want it to be pretty. If we reduced the components that the user
needs to interact with, those eliminated components don't need to be
pretty any more. If we reduce the time that the user needs to spend on
the rest of the desktop, the importance of their "beauty" is also
reduced.

Not saying that Mark is wrong nor that Sugar should be ugly, just that
when we hear that some part of the Sugar shell needs to look nicer or
be more like traditional desktops, we may want to reflect why is the
shell taking so much of the user attention and if this isn't an
opportunity to streamline the experience and take ourselves out of the
way.

Regards,

Tomeu