[IAEP] First competitor?

Albert Cahalan acahalan at gmail.com
Sat Feb 28 15:04:59 EST 2009


Christian Marc Schmidt writes:
> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Caroline Meeks <solutiongrove at gmail.com>wrote:
>> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Christian Marc Schmidt <christianmarc at gmail.com> wrote:

>>> I think we'd need to know the specific points of contention.
>>> I can't imagine which design decisions might work less well
>>> on PCs. Sugar remains significantly easier to use than
>>> standard PC operating systems...
>>
>> Put Sugar in front of the average adult sitting alone, without
>> any instruction, for 20 minutes.  I doubt many of them would
>> agree with you.
>
> Caroline, I agree this is a challenge.
>
> Of course I would argue that this is due to our familiarity with
> current desktop-based operating systems and the difficulty of
> breaking old habits. Sugar was designed from the ground up, and
> hence does require a bit of a learning curve for those of us who
> use other systems (but for new users should prove much easier to
> learn). So our marketing needs to continuously address that Sugar
> is not designed for adults, but for children!

Never mind the adults. Think of the children!

"should prove much easier" is a hope, not a fact.

Children struggle HORRIBLY with Sugar, especially if they don't
have a real mouse to use. They do like playing with it, sure, at
least until the frustration sets in.

I have never seen a child successfully use the journal. That's not
surprising; it is a black hole for data as far as I can tell.

I have never seen a child successfully use the hover palettes.
They also totally kill user efficiency and are incompatible
with the long-awaited touchscreen.

I have never seen a child successfully use the frame. It's always
there when you don't want it, and usually not there when you do.
Regular computers have an interaction device that is essentially
always there but leaving at least two sides of the screen free of
trouble. (original MacOS menu, OS/2 Presentation Manager thing,
Windows taskbar, fvwm GoodStuff, etc.)

I guess the thing to learn is that getting rid of time-tested GUI
design is unlikely to produce good results.

Uh, now what?


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