[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Yet more feedback from Boston! - Chat and Speak

[Gary C Martin]

On 14 Aug 2009, at 17:11, Eben Eliason wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 8:28 PM, Caroline
> Meeks<caroline at solutiongrove.com> wrote:
>> Neither wind nor rain nor flaming emails will deter me from telling  
>> you
>> about what happened with kids and Sugar today in Boston! You  
>> however are
>> free to use your delete key at any time.
>> Today, working with 6th grade students at the Museum of Science  
>> Computer
>> Clubhouse I learned not to start a Sugar intro session with chat.   
>> It was
>> hard for us to believe but the kids spent 3 hours really wanting to  
>> do
>> nothing but use chat to talk to other kids in the same room!!  We  
>> did get
>> them to use other things but
>> next time I will end with Chat, not start with it :)
>> We used both Chat and Speak.  Chat was more robust.
>> I suggest that Speak be limited to about 4 participants. It seemed  
>> die a lot and if someone typed a lot of garbdy gook it would try to  
>> say it all and get behind.  What do other people think of this  
>> idea? Should I ticket it?
>> I started the lesson by creating a chat, sharing it and showing the  
>> students
>> how to join from their neighborhood. That worked fairly well.
>> However, some of the students wanted to create a private chat.  It  
>> could be
>> done but it was very challenging workflow.  The problem is if two  
>> kids
>> decide they want to chat the natural thing for them to do is both  
>> goto Home
>> and click on Chat and share that with the neighborhood.  This  
>> results in two
>> chats and much confusion.  I don't know how to solve this, as I'm  
>> not gifted
>> at UI design, but its clearly a problem.  Perhaps when you start  
>> chat you
>> have a UI inside of chat that lets you join other existing chats  
>> directly.
>
> I think there are a few first-steps to simplify this process that have
> already been designed. First and foremost, it should be possible to
> select a sharing scope when starting a new activity. In past mockups,
> we offered this functionality via a "Start with >" option, which
> revealed a submenu containing both a list of friends, and a list of
> groups. We could build the first part of this today.
>
> Likewise, the redesign of the sharing controls within the activity
> itself provide us the chance to do the same when sharing an ongoing
> activity. In addition to listing "private" and "my neighborhood", we
> could also introduce "my friends", as well as individuals.

Ooohhh, nice one, +1, though I think the actual menu needs some  
thinking about so we don't conflate the Journal "Resume with ->  
<activity>" and this proposed home view "Start with -> <Friend>". Also  
think "Start with -> Neighbourhood" should be in that list. There is  
also the issue of shared activity titles... Currently you have to  
title your activity before sharing (though that even feature seems  
somewhat buggy, not sure if this is broken Sugar UI, or an issue with  
Telepathy), otherwise you just get default "Chat Activity" activities  
in the neighbourhood.

Tthere is at least one obvious string change to be made to the home  
activity palettes. "Start" should be "New", or given above possible  
feature perhaps "Start new" is better, so that "Start new with ->  
<Friend>" will read a little better:

	http://trac.sugarlabs.org/ticket/314

Regards,
--Gary