[IAEP] [Marketing] [support-gang] Fwd: 33 kids tried Sugar on Saturday! My own usability focus group :-)

[Sean DALY]

Back when I was a tech journalist I specialized in covering usability,
GUIs and "multimedia" as CD-ROM sound & video was called back then. I
tested a great many software packages. One of my personal heroes is
Raymond Loewy (http://www.raymondloewy.com/exhibit/photos.html and
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/11/dayintech_1105),
who integrated industrial, ergonomics, usability and branding
considerations in his designs. Regretfully, he passed away before GUIs
became commonplace, I have often thought he would have designed the
best GUI ever.

Later, as an IT director, I met resistance from an order processing
dept (10 data keyers) when we proposed to move their text-screen
interface to a GUI; they were particularly worried about their
keyboard shortcuts (which we kept). We had a fabulous gain in
productivity by designing the interface to precisely match the printed
and faxed order forms, including page breaks (they could be
interrupted and restart more easily). The importance of an easy to use
interface really cannot be underestimated.

thanks

Sean


On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Tomeu Vizoso<tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 10:07, Sean DALY<sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Martin
>>
>> A permalink to this mail can be found here in the Sugar Labs Marketing
>> list archives:
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2009-June/001625.html
>>
>> I haven't wanted to start a blog yet because I have so much on my
>> plate.
>
> Just in case your plate gets empty any time soon, please consider
> giving more feedback about the user experience. Most developers don't
> have kids nor inclination for these kind of issues and I'm sure you
> will give fantastic ideas.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tomeu
>
>> I consider it often (I'd want to do a good job of it) but I am
>> very occupied: briefing journalists about the Sugar on a Stick
>> Strawberry launch, updating our contact list, editing the press
>> release and coordinating translations, doing competitive landscape
>> analysis such as the new Archos Classmate launch
>> (http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2009-June/001452.html),
>> working on branding the boot screen, sugarlabs.org navigation issues,
>> organizing booth banners / balloons / photo shoots / posters / flyers,
>> the weekly marketing meetings, etc.
>>
>> For me, Sugar (and the XO) is best told as a visual story, so I have
>> just opened a Flickr photostream and I hope to add lots of videos to
>> the Sugar Labs Dailymotion channel soon too.
>>
>> I would like to encourage the community to do such outreach to local
>> schools and provide feedback. Such an event with learners touching
>> Sugar for the first time can be incredibly efficient for usabilty
>> feedback; witness the universal quit-Activity difficulties which
>> clearly shows us what needs to be done. Teachers in particular are
>> keenly aware of the rise of gadget culture and many I have spoken with
>> want their classes to learn with technology, but have legitimate
>> concerns about the tools and methods; they immediately understand the
>> child-centric approach of Sugar and the XO and when they see it. This
>> event worked as an information vector because it was low-key, not a
>> formal meeting or test; my next step will be to organize such an event
>> at a class assembly or lunch hour. Of course, this was made easy by
>> the availability of half a dozen XOs and as many netbooks, which has
>> been expensive for me. We are getting to the point where Sugar on a
>> Stick will boot up all the PCs in a school's computer lab, hopefully
>> that will help.
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> Sean
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 11:53 PM, Martin
>> Dengler<martin at martindengler.com> wrote:
>>> Indeed - great result that's magnified by the sharing.  Is there a
>>> blog post from this report to which we can link, email to IAEP, put on
>>> planets?
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 05:27:30PM -0400, Adam Holt wrote:
>>>> DO try this at home :-)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Subject:      [Marketing] 33 kids tried Sugar on Saturday! My own usability
>>>> focus group :-)
>>>> Date:         Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:13:24 +0200
>>>> From:         Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com>
>>>> To:   Sugar Labs Marketing <marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/39656470@N02/sets/72157620140999988/
>>>>
>>>> Saturday was the end-of-year festival at my kids' school and I hosted
>>>> a Sugar booth!
>>>>
>>>> I had asked if I could set up my XOs and netbooks on a table for kids
>>>> to interact with Sugar; one of the parents' association moms talked me
>>>> into donating one for the raffle (a pink Asus EeePC which Philippe my
>>>> photgrapher friend took a photo of yesterday with a USB stick :-)
>>>>
>>>> Kids at this school are fairly well-to-do; all the parents I know have
>>>> at least one computer in the house, many have two, some kids have
>>>> their own computers already. However, the computer lab at the school
>>>> has suffered from old equipment and disappearance/breakage of new
>>>> equipment. Last year I had to write to my daughter's technology
>>>> teacher (computers + electronics) when he sent her home with a Word
>>>> file and instructions for editing Word. She brought him a USB stick
>>>> with OOo and an offer on my part to assist in setting up the lab with
>>>> free software; I didn't hear back, but I didn't hear about Word any
>>>> more, either.
>>>>
>>>> 33 kids paid a ticket to try Sugar on 7 XOs, a Classmate, and three
>>>> netbooks including the new Dell education netbook. Many children were
>>>> with their parents, many with a friend or brother or sister. A handful
>>>> of older kids turned down paying a ticket (most of the older ones
>>>> didn't ask permission to try them, either, they just pulled up and
>>>> started exploring). The XOs were all together in mesh (including the
>>>> two old build 65x machines), the netbooks in standalone (I had brought
>>>> an AP but had my hands full with 10 kids at a time).
>>>>
>>>> All of the kids needed help exiting Activities, except for the
>>>> GCompris Activities; I guess because of the persistent exit icon in
>>>> GCompris screens. We'll need to look at that.
>>>>
>>>> Several kids wondered how to get back to the Home View. On XOs, they
>>>> understood the dedicated keys right away; those who forgot just
>>>> punched the four dedicated navkeys until Home View came up. On the
>>>> netbooks, especially the Dell Mini 10 which has no dedicated function
>>>> keys (they are blue Fn alternates), kids needed help for each return
>>>> to Home View. I later managed to set the default on those keys to
>>>> Function instead of multimedia controls in the BIOS. The absence of a
>>>> bound Frame key on the netbooks is unfortunate.
>>>>
>>>> The smallest kids, without exception, got Maze going and progressed to
>>>> higher levels. One kid saw others playing it and brandished his ticket
>>>> specifically to play Maze. Oddly, kids seemed to understand the game
>>>> faster on the Classmate despite its small screen size (it's an Olidata
>>>> JumPc Gen-1 7" screen). I attribute this to the color coding of the
>>>> arrow keys on the Classmate's keyboard (the Classmate's keyboard is
>>>> generous to begin with).
>>>>
>>>> The small (grades K-2) and middle (grades 3-5) section principals each
>>>> came by with some teachers and expressed great interest and took
>>>> photos. They preferred the XOs to the netbooks with the exception of
>>>> the Dell Latitude 2100 education netbook, they really liked the
>>>> tattletale LED bar, the spine for putting a student's name in, the
>>>> anti-spill "legs", the large screen. They seemed reassured they could
>>>> be in Windows by just rebooting without SoaS on the SD Card, although
>>>> I mentioned to them that Dell had made a mistake and delivered the
>>>> wrong OS (Ubuntu is standard on that netbook). The principals were
>>>> interested in jabber collaboration which they had never heard of.
>>>>
>>>> One mom expressed frustration that dropdown menu choices found by
>>>> mouse rollover could not be validated with the Enter key. Do we have a
>>>> ticket for that?
>>>>
>>>> Several parents and a teacher asked about translation tools.
>>>>
>>>> Some parents who had already heard of OLPC asked where the crank was.
>>>> That such an attribute could still be top-of-mind years after the
>>>> crank prototype was superseded indicates to me that OLPC may be
>>>> missing a major marketing opportunity by not bundling the Freeplay
>>>> crank with G1G1.
>>>>
>>>> One parent asked about audio books, could the computer play back a
>>>> recording of a native speaker of another language. A teacher expressed
>>>> interest in the possibility of kids studying another language with
>>>> Sugar on a Stick, bringing the stick home to continue lessons.
>>>>
>>>> Smaller kids enjoyed the webcam.
>>>>
>>>> 8-10 year olds loved the Chat Activity although they were sitting
>>>> round the same big table; amusingly, as all my sticks and XOs are
>>>> named variants of my name e.g. "SeanSoaSDellLatitude2100", they
>>>> started calling each other by those handles and squealing with delight
>>>> when they figured out who was who.
>>>>
>>>> One kid wanted to change his XO color so we did that but in so doing
>>>> he couldn't collaborate any more, fixed with a reboot.
>>>>
>>>> One parent asked about DVD playback on the netbooks.
>>>>
>>>> Here's something interesting: I told each parent and teacher who spoke
>>>> to me that Sugar is free siftware ("logiciel libre"). Not one of them
>>>> asked me what logiciel libre meant.
>>>>
>>>> Finally, some lads started in with water guns after their turn at the
>>>> screens and managed to spray a couple of the XOs which showed the
>>>> monochrome hires screen right away. I dried the screens and keyboards
>>>> while powering down, dried them out 24 hours and both booted up fine.
>>>>
>>>> Some parents and teachers were wondering if I was there selling
>>>> laptops and when I explained that Sugar Labs is a nonprofit composed
>>>> of volunteers like myself, that Sugar is free software and can be
>>>> downloaded, that Sugar on a Stick can boot most PCs and run under
>>>> virtualization, etc., they were friendlier and asked more questions.
>>>>
>>>> Of course, a festival booth like this is completely unrelated to
>>>> classroom study, especially over a semester. However, every parent and
>>>> teacher who came by did leave the stand aware that netbooks are
>>>> candidates for kids' learning in schools and/or at home...
>>>>
>>>> thanks
>>>>
>>>> Sean
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>>>>
>>>
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