[Sugar-devel] Sugar Journal activity

[Wade Brainerd]

I'll take the opportunity to plug my alternate Journal design, which
integrates the Journal and the Home view into one interface.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Wade/Ideas/Activity_Management

Tagging can be implicit, since you first navigate to a tag and *then* create
the activity instance.  Activities can also be re-tagged easily via a
context menu.  Resuming existing Journal entries is the natural action,
since* the Home view is actually a spatial view of the Journal itself* and
centers around the child's work, not the list of installed Activities.

Cheers,
Wade

On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 4:34 PM, Eben Eliason <eben.eliason at gmail.com> wrote:
> Gabriel -
>
> Thanks! These are great suggestions.
>
> On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 7:07 PM, Gabriel Hurley <gabriel.hurley at gmail.com>
wrote:
>> After having used the Journal for quite some time, I have some
>> recommendations that I think would improve its usefulness.
>>
>> Category view. I know that the idea of the Journal is to avoid the
>> file-folder metaphor, but the ability to organise activities into groups
>> would be very useful. For example, a child might be drawing pictures and
>> writing a report for a Science class. Instead of searching for these
things
>> individually, he/she can click on a drop-down menu and select "Science
>> Class" and all the activities that were added for this category are
>> immediately visible. Already, activities can be filtered by Text, Image,
>> Audio, etc. The ability to define and organise activities into categories
>> would make the Journal more useful.
>
> In a sense, this is another way to describe (a better implementation
> of) tagging.  By tagging the relevant objects with "science class",
> it's possible now to then search for that tag and locate matching
> objects.  The two primary improvements we need to make this work well,
> and which you allude to, are:
>
> 1. Make it easier to tag objects.  Right now, this functionality is
> rather hidden and underutilized.
> 2. Create the ability to browse popular or frequently used tags
> (instead of only searching) for them.
>
> Both of these are definitely on the radar, and Scott has been doing
> some interesting prototyping in this area.  It hasn't been run through
> design yet, but the ideas are here:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Journal_reloaded.
>
>> Selective automatic saving. Some activities, like the Moon Activity, do
not
>> involve the user creating anything worth keeping. Yet every time they are
>> launched, another instance of "Moon Activity" is added to the Journal.
This
>> could lead to increased clutter and (over time) less disk space. To fix
>> this, the Journal should have a control to select which activities and
>> objects are automatically saved and which are not.
>>
>> Finally, I think every open activity should have a "Throw-Out" icon next
to
>> the Stop Sign icon. Clicking this would close the activity and remove it
>> from the Journal.
>
> Something I hope will be added in the short term is a naming prompt.
> Right now, saving is automatic, and few take the time to tag or even
> name activities.  The thought now is to prompt upon stopping an
> activity that hasn't previously been stopped (or kept), to ask for a
> name and tags.  Then, the child could name/tag, ignore it and accept
> the default name, or opt to "not keep" the activity at all.  This
> wouldn't be a separate "throw out" button, but an option that could be
> chosen when stopping an activity that hasn't yet been committed to the
> Journal, which I think would solve the concerns you raise.
>
>> Thank you for considering my suggestions. If you have any questions about
>> them or see any issues, please contact me and I will try to clarify.
>
> Thank you for offering them!  We welcome all the feedback we can get.
>
> - Eben
>
>> Yours Sincerely,
>> Gabriel Hurley
>> _______________________________________________
>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar-devel mailing list
> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/attachments/20081207/599e0ce7/attachment-0001.htm