[IAEP] Yet more feedback from Boston! - Chat and Speak

[Eben Eliason]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 8:28 PM, Caroline
Meeks<caroline at solutiongrove.com> wrote:
> Neither wind nor rain nor flaming emails will deter me from telling you
> about what happened with kids and Sugar today in Boston! You however are
> free to use your delete key at any time.
> Today, working with 6th grade students at the Museum of Science Computer
> Clubhouse I learned not to start a Sugar intro session with chat.  It was
> hard for us to believe but the kids spent 3 hours really wanting to do
> nothing but use chat to talk to other kids in the same room!!  We did get
> them to use other things but
> next time I will end with Chat, not start with it :)
> We used both Chat and Speak.  Chat was more robust.
> I suggest that Speak be limited to about 4 participants. It seemed die a lot and if someone typed a lot of garbdy gook it would try to say it all and get behind.  What do other people think of this idea? Should I ticket it?
> I started the lesson by creating a chat, sharing it and showing the students
> how to join from their neighborhood. That worked fairly well.
> However, some of the students wanted to create a private chat.  It could be
> done but it was very challenging workflow.  The problem is if two kids
> decide they want to chat the natural thing for them to do is both goto Home
> and click on Chat and share that with the neighborhood.  This results in two
> chats and much confusion.  I don't know how to solve this, as I'm not gifted
> at UI design, but its clearly a problem.  Perhaps when you start chat you
> have a UI inside of chat that lets you join other existing chats directly.

I think there are a few first-steps to simplify this process that have
already been designed. First and foremost, it should be possible to
select a sharing scope when starting a new activity. In past mockups,
we offered this functionality via a "Start with >" option, which
revealed a submenu containing both a list of friends, and a list of
groups. We could build the first part of this today.

Likewise, the redesign of the sharing controls within the activity
itself provide us the chance to do the same when sharing an ongoing
activity. In addition to listing "private" and "my neighborhood", we
could also introduce "my friends", as well as individuals.

Eben


> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>
> 617-500-3488 - Office
> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>
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