[Sugar-devel] RFC: Kill the delayed menus for good

[Avi]

Tomeu wrote:

> I'm more concerned about developers proposing big user experience
> changes because they feel it's better. Before I look at the patch I
> would like to know if there's agreement from people close to our users
> that this behavior change is desired. How can we get that?

How about users (me) proposing big user experience changes by asking a
developer (Michael) "why the fuck does this UI take so goddamned long to
react?" Also, define "our users". Is it people using Sugar? Is it people
using XOs? Is it people other than you? I'll gladly put myself into any of
these categories if it makes you happy.

Eben wrote:

> The initial design intent was to develop a system which worked in a
> sufficiently complete manner without needing palettes at all.

1) For whom? What about people who know how to recognize English letters and
words better than they remember what an obscure picture means? Because
you've failed on that front.
2) Good luck. Sincerely. I hope that if that's still your goal that it's
actually possible. I'm personally not convinced, but only because I haven't
yet seen a demonstration that shows progress on that front.

> Finding that many kids were actually waiting for the palette to appear
> always, instead of, for instance, simply clicking on an activity icon
> to join it, encouraged us to INcrease the delay on the palettes to
> help emphasize this as a secondary mechanism for interaction.

Jesus, why? Think about what you just said for a moment. Why might someone
wait for the palette to appear before clicking? Probably because they want
to see what's on the palette! The situation of the palette is that all it
takes is one accident to discover that hovering shows useful information.
And with the knowledge that the palette shows useful information, and that
hovering shows the palette, it is reasonable that one might just engage in
the described behavior. Either make the useful information available without
the contextual menu or make the current expected behavior more responsive.

> Removing the delay pushes us, I fear, even farther away from an
> interface in which nice friendly large clickable icons can be directly
> manipulated and encourages every action to be done through a
> contextual menu with a bunch of text in it. Is that really what we
> want kids to face?

So what you're saying is that you want to force children to use the system
in a way that you just said is contrary to what THEY actually want to do.

> Perhaps. What would you define as the ailment, yourself? The primary
> intent was to encourage use of a direct interaction model, in which
> palettes we're supposed to play a big role. When it turned out that
> young kids, who didn't read, and who didn't have motor skills for
> selecting form the palettes, we aimed to reduce accidental invocation
> of them without entirely eliminating discovery by increasing the
> delay.

Many kids have motor skills, and the ones that don't initially are
remarkably good (being kids) at developing motor skills that they don't yet
have. Many kids also read. In fact, let's cut into some real deep philosophy
stuff here...

The idea that the XO laptop is mainly for kids who can't read is completely
bogus. Now, maybe you're thinking of other children when you say this, but I
prefer to first consider the main existing userbase. Laptops which have
Sugar installed on them are primarily located in schools and are used for
education. It is kind of ridiculous to say "Well, you don't actually need to
know how to read to use the laptops, so we should make the interface not
require reading." when the truth is that, for most activities that have any
educational merit, you DO need to read and you need to read things
significantly more complicated than activity names. Most of the people who
use Sugar for most of the time WILL know how to read.

Daniel Drake wrote:

> It makes all menus that currently have a delay appear instantly?

Not even close. On the XO sitting next to me it still feels like over a
second. There appears to actually be ANOTHER delay somewhere that was not
modified at all, because the UI takes the same amount of time to respond
with the change on both an XO and on a significantly more powerful laptop.
What is noticable, however, is that it just doesn't feel like things are
craaaaaaaaaaw-awwwwww-aawwwwwww----aaaaaaawwwwwww-ling (ling) after the
change, because before the user was met with a multi-stage, phased delay,
whereas now the delay is brief and only up front.

If you haven't yet, you really need to at least try it. All of this "I don't
like it, but I haven't actually tried it" stuff is just unhelpful.

Sincerely,
Avi Kelman
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