[IAEP] [SLOBS] Sugar Labs 2010 Goals Review

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 8:05 PM, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org> wrote:
> El Mon, 12-07-2010 a las 22:13 -0400, C. Scott Ananian escribió:

Bernie, thanks for responding.  I hope you understand that my message
wasn't meant as a flame on SugarLabs or y'all's work, just as
"constructive criticism".  My hope is that I drew attention to some of
the goal points where you could either further document your progress
towards the goal, or perhaps goals on which to focus additional effort
in the second half of the year.

So, in that spirit:

>> Are iPad-class devices (such as the XO-3) or touchscreen devices (such
>> as the XO-1.75) counted as "mobile devices"?
>> There will shortly be a large number of iPad-style devices on the
> My sense is that iPad-like devices with no physical keyboard may be good
> for reading books and watching videos, not so good for creating content.

Opinions may vary.  Obviously, as Christoph mentioned, OLPC is
currently committed to this form factor.  I suggest that other
hardware manufacturers are investing in the form factor as well.  Thus
this may be a case study for "incorporating outside ideas" even if you
don't really believe these will be successful or widespread
educational devices.

I think an honest assessment would indicate that OLPC has done some
initial work on supporting touchscreen devices, but that SugarLabs has
not (so far).  Maybe some subset of the touchscreen problem can be a
modest SugarLabs goal for the second half of the year -- just
reworking the toolbar and/or frame to be touch-friendly, say.

It's not going to be done in one fell swoop, but it would be nice to
see small progress here, even if you don't believe it's worth a major
investment of time.  (Again, accommodating outside ideas, even if
modestly, rather than punting them.)

(See http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/22/flash-touch for some
discussion of the interaction of mouse-based and touch-based UI
design, and http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2010/05/25/gestures/ for a
"grad level course" on gesture design.)

>> Are developers using Sugar as their day-to-day development
>> environment yet?
>
> Certainly not me... I'm not even sure it will ever happen. Even
[...]
> However, I've seen many teachers using Sugar. Not just Browse. They also
> use Write and Record.
[...]
> Given a choice, many teachers started using Gnome. Some of them messed
> up their systems, just like children.

So consider this a mild suggestion that the "dogfooding" goal has some
way yet to go.  Major developers can't use Sugar for day-to-day work,
and even teachers who try this have difficulty.  Since Gnome is (in
your admission) not a good alternative either, it seems like there's
something left to be done here, if only for the teachers' use case.
(Perhaps the task is just to refine the Gnome image distributed with
Sugar to be more appropriate for naive users.)

>> > In the past, we've been criticized for insufficient transparency. Does
>> > anyone still have a problem with this?
>> "Open to critique" isn't quite the same as "responsive to critique".
[...]
>> For an end-of-year report, I'd like to see instances enumerated where
>> SugarLabs actually internalized some outside critique and responded in
>> a positive way -- some concrete change made to the UI, or Sugar, or to
[...]
> I think you're mostly correct, but this is endemic to how a community
> works. One can't expect Sugar Labs to react to criticism like a business
> would (would it?).
[...]
> The most effective way to influence a community is becoming part of it
[...]
> Sadly, it doesn't seem to work so well for non-technical folks. I can't

Again, this isn't meant as a criticism against Sugar Labs, just as an
effort towards a more accurate assessment of your goals.  Instead of
just saying, "we've fixed the problem, we're open to critique now", it
might be better to explore ways in which Sugar Labs (as a community)
is not as open to critique as (say) a business.  Perhaps these can be
addressed via existing or additional business partners, like Activity
Central.  I'm not the expert here =) I'm just suggesting that further
exploration might make your goal assessment more valuable.  (This
point already seems to have spawned profitable discussion on this
thread on ways to engage teachers better.)
  --scott

-- 
                         ( http://cscott.net/ )