[Sugar-devel] Group view proposals (was: Assessment in Karma)

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Christopher,

On 30 Jul 2009, at 05:56, Christoph Derndorfer wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 1:18 AM, Gary C Martin  
> <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
>
> On 29 Jul 2009, at 06:40, Christoph Derndorfer wrote:
>
> As previously mentioned by Bryan in his "Automated Assessment is the  
> Killer App" blog post (http://karmaproject.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/assessment-is-the-killer-app/ 
> ) student assessment is an important component of Karma.
>
> While toying around with the lesson UI I realized that the  
> assessment area is still very much an empty space (which kinda  
> reminds me of the group view in Sugar;-)
>
> Gary, sorry for that but I couldn't help myself... ;-)

I was just teasing, but thanks for the feedback!

>  Feedback most welcome (or else you may get something you don't  
> like)! ;-b
>
>        http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Proposals/Groups
>
> Thanks a lot for the link, I certainly wasn't aware of the new  
> proposals / mockups for groups, I guess I must have missed the  
> announcement or something.

Sorry, lots of deep long threads that can get pretty impenetrable even  
to those contributing (let alone the casual observer)! To be honest I  
often browse a few pages of the wiki "Special:NewFiles" section to get  
a feeling what else has been going on:

	http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Special:NewFiles

> Quite frankly speaking it's hard for me to make educated comments on  
> these proposals as I know too little about how (if at all)  
> collaboration is being used in schools at the moment and what the  
> requirements really look like.

Main recent feedback has come in via Caroline relating to the GPA.  
Wanted a way a teacher could distribute something to the whole class  
(couldn't quickly find the original feedback email thread, Caroline:  
should this be listed on your GPA page?).

> Keeping the above in mind I'd say that in general the suggestions in  
> the latest mockups looks very reasonable. As far as the "former  
> design sketches" are concerned I'm not a big fan of the overlays  
> used for creating groups as these overlays somehow seem to break the  
> consistency in the Sugar UI (hence why I'm for example also not a  
> big fan of that "name this entry" dialogue box when stopping an  
> activity in 0.84).

Yea same here.

> What I really do like about those earlier mockups though is the  
> ability to add multiple people to a group very quickly whereas the  
> new mockups seem to necessitate selecting members to be added on an  
> individual basis (something we should strive to avoid IMHO).

Good point, I'll have a think if there's any way of speeding this up.

> Related to this I think that the feature that allows users (in most  
> cases probably teachers) to create closed groups makes a lot of sense.

My mockups avoid this distinction as the groups you create are local  
to you (think of this like conventional IM buddy lists) and are  
therefor in your control.

> The new mockups also don't include the icons to show what shared  
> activities the various members of a group are working on. I'm not  
> sure whether this is due to design or obmission in the mockups but I  
> do feel that showing the shared activities makes sense.

Just an omission when I was grabbing the content for the screen shots.  
Shared activities from members of the group would show in the group  
view.

> The ability to share Journal entries with a group and to invite a  
> group to a shared activity (as presented in both mockups) is  
> something I'd definitely consider a must-have.

+1

> A somewhat related question to me is whether the available  
> information about groups can also be used to make the neighborhood  
> view less random,

Slightly OT, there is an 0.86 roadmap item to try to position  
neighbourhood objects consistently (using unique ids to generate x,y  
placements, instead of random, repositioning in the case of collision).

Gadget is also floating about (and needing plenty of discussion, and  
mockups), but it may be that group/friend memberships  will provide us  
some useful hints to help auto filter the default neighbourhood  
display (when things are too crowded).

> e.g. by placing groups (not sure how they'd be represented though)  
> or members of groups I belong to closer to the XO-icon representing  
> myself.
>
> I hope this message compensates for yesterday's snappy comment:-)

You weren't snappy at all, but thanks again for the feedback! :-)

Regards,
--Gary