[sugar] human factors when launching an activity
Mikus Grinbergs
mikus
Wed Oct 1 09:52:24 EDT 2008
Last night did a lot of activity launching (on 766). My overall
impression was that feedback by the system was way too slow. The
pulsing "launch screen" (which I like) was introduced to give
positive feedback to the person clicking on an activity's icon - but
the system was taking much too long to begin showing that screen.
When launching from Home View, I found the most reassuring way to
launch was to RIGHT-button click on the icon, wait for the palette,
then right-button click again on 'Start'. The disappearance of the
palette was a positive indication that my "launch request" had been
accepted. The problem was that I had "learned" to left-button click
- remembering to right-button click was difficult.
If I left-button clicked on the icon, all I could do was wait for
the "pulsing" screen to appear. Several times, looking later at
Frame, two instances of the activity had been launched (perhaps my
hands are more spastic than I thought). [There was ALWAYS a time
interval between my click and the showing of the "pulsing" screen.]
If I remember correctly, I even had instances where the "pulsing"
screen did not appear. [And there definitely were instances where
the activity showed *its* screen -- I worked with it and then closed
it -- and then the pulsing "launch screen" was shown again -- I had
to wait for the pulsing to time out and go away.] All in all, not
confidence-inspiring.
When launching from Journal view of a removable storage device, I
concluded afterwards that Journal was first installing the activity
in /home/olpc/Activities, and only then "launching" it (i.e.,
showing the "pulsing" screen). That could mean a wait of a minute
before seeing the "pulsing" screen. NOT good human factors.
mikus
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