[Sugar-devel] Initial implementation of toolbars design

[Walter Bender]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 6:36 AM, Tomeu Vizoso<tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:08, Simon Schampijer<simon at schampijer.de> wrote:
>> On 07/31/2009 12:02 AM, Eben Eliason wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>>>>
>>>> Personally, I see more the issue of naming an activity, since as said in
>>>> another post I am not really convinced about the naming alert.
>>>
>>> I'll have to think about this idea more, but: we could also have the
>>> naming "alert" appear as a palette attached to the stop button,
>>> instead. It doesn't change the behavior too much (it requires 2 clicks
>>> to stop an activity for the first time if it hasn't been named), but
>>> the use of the palette might feel more consistent with Sugar in
>>> general. On the other hand, it could be strange to change the behavior
>>> of the stop button between the first and other cases.
>>
>> The main problem I guess is, that the kids don't know what the naming dialog
>> is for. The new Sugar users I had in class start by opening and closing
>> activities and work away in them. Even though you explained them the concept
>> of the Journal before, the relation with the naming dialog was not obvious
>> for them. I think the naming and tagging of an activity instance is a more
>> advanced feature, the kids will discover later.
>>
>> Once they experienced the power of it, they can use the Journal itself, or
>> the facilities in the activity to name and tag (has to be added to the
>> toolbar) to fulfill that task. No need to have this extra dialog appearing,
>> imho. I postulate that the 'enforcing' of naming an activity was a nice idea
>> to pay attention to the concept, but I think in practice it does not work
>> out well.
>
> Well, AFAIK the reports I have heard are from children using Sugar for
> a few hours per week with somewhat close supervision from adults.
>
> The journal makes most sense in the OLPC model, where the laptop is a
> bigger part of the child's life and the journal contains all those
> interactions.
>
> It's hard to balance discoverability and usability, and if we only
> focus on these light-usage scenarios, we are going to hurt usability.
>
> Note that I'm not arguing against removing the naming alert, just
> saying that we may not be taking into account the needs of people
> using Sugar more intensively.
>

It is true that in the classes we taught this summer, the kids did not
routinely take advantage of the naming alert--they just dismissed it
without understanding it. But in my experience as a long-time Sugar
user, it is really much more convenient than switching tabs to name an
activity session and the possibility to add a few notes of description
at the time of creation is very important.

Had we not been so overwhelmed with logistical issues at the start of
the summer, I would have insisted on a work flow with the kids where
the last 5 minutes of every class would be adding to the description
field of the activity they were engaged in that day. Initiating that
process from the naming alert would have been easy for them to
discover and a nice transition into the Journal itself.

>>> 4. But these are nitpicks. Fantastic work!!
>>
>> Thanks to Aleksey and review master (even nitpickier then marco) Tomeu!
>
> You are clearly in need of a big code review from Marco, so you don't
> forget any more his pickiness awe. I'm CC'ing him so you learn.
>
> More seriously, I'm very happy how this feature has advanced. Gary,
> Eben, Aleksey and several other people have worked together to put
> this forward that I think will be a great feature in 0.86.
>
> Congratulations!
>
> Tomeu
>
>> Cheers,
>>   Simon
>>
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-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org