[Sugar-devel] modified Home View

[Walter Bender]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Christian Marc Schmidt
<christianmarc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Comments inline...
>
> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt
>> <christianmarc at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi Gary--thanks for the interesting mockup! My feedback:
>> > The spiral is interesting and worth exploring. But I would continue to
>> > focus
>> > the view on a single organizational system, whether ring, spiral,
>> > freeform,
>> > list, etc. This preserves the integrity and extensibility of the UI
>> > views
>> > metaphor, and doesn't overload the screen. Because the iconographic
>> > language
>> > is already very abstract and pared down, we need to make sure that the
>> > interaction paradigm is clear and focused.
>> > Based on your rendering I think that the spiral in itself is definitely
>> > worth exploring further, and I like Walter's idea that it could start as
>> > a
>> > ring and grow into a spiral when more activities are added. That seems
>> > like
>> > an elegant and scalable solution. Favoriting could happen in the
>> > Journal, or
>> > we could opt to always display all activities--either seems like a
>> > potentially workable solution...
>> > We should also come back to the resume/start new proposal and figure out
>> > if
>> > we want to adopt any of the proposals.
>> >
>> > Christian
>> > On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Gary Martin <garycmartin at googlemail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On 8 Aug 2010, at 14:54, Gary Martin wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > On 8 Aug 2010, at 13:42, Hilaire Fernandes
>> >> > <hilaire.fernandes at gmail.com>
>> >> > wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >> Le 08/08/2010 13:59, Walter Bender a écrit :
>> >> >>> See
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Spiral_Home_View#Detailed_Description
>> >> >>> for the latest screen shots. I made some changes to the way I
>> >> >>> generate
>> >> >>> the Spiral -- I start from the outside rather than the inside to
>> >> >>> minimize the visual disruption between the Ring and the Spiral. I
>> >> >>> don't ever shrink the icon size in the Ring, but do so in the
>> >> >>> Spiral
>> >> >>> once the minimum radius is reached. Perhaps most controversial, I
>> >> >>> introduce an intermediate icon size between standard and small
>> >> >>> along
>> >> >>> the way.
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> Gary: I'll post a new patch to the ticket momentarily.
>> >> >>> (http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/2143)
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> Comments/suggestions?
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Don't you need a way to recreate a taxonomy when the numbers of
>> >> >> activities grows?
>> >> >
>> >> > Search (ghost out non matches, as per neighbourhood view design) in
>> >> > the
>> >> > fav. view would seem an ideal next step here when dealing with many
>> >> > activities. Allowing drag and drop that would trigger a switch from a
>> >> > fixed
>> >> > layout pattern to random mode (with the layout initially intact),
>> >> > and/or
>> >> > reordering the sequence by drag'n'drop insertions would allow some
>> >> > flexibility.
>> >> >
>> >> > Ideally icons would be either snapped to the shape (dragging N units
>> >> > close to a snapped icon or the XO) or freeform positioned (by
>> >> > dragging N
>> >> > units away from their/a set position). With different icons in either
>> >> > state
>> >> > for a single view (I.e. a spiral with a few frequent icons dragged
>> >> > out into
>> >> > empty space). The current random view could then go away (as each
>> >> > view could
>> >> > be as random or not as desired).
>> >>
>> >> Just as a follow up to my above comment, attached is a quick home view
>> >> vector mockup. It assumes the list view is gone, with Journal stars
>> >> being
>> >> used to indicate (arbitrary entry) home favourites. It shows a 'snap to
>> >> spiral' pattern, with several random clusters of activities/objects
>> >> previously dragged out of the pattern by the user. Coloured icons would
>> >> resume specific activity id objects, grey icons would be used to launch
>> >> new
>> >> instances (with the usual resume drop down palette of N most recent
>> >> activities of that type).
>> >>
>> >> The spiral would re-flow once an icon is dragged out and dropped (in
>> >> empty
>> >> space), or dragged in and dropped (on an already snapped icon). If all
>> >> icons
>> >> were dragged out you would have what would look like the random layout,
>> >> dragging an icon back onto the central XO would start reflowing a
>> >> snapped
>> >> pattern design again, as would adding new activity favourites.
>> >>
>> >> Again, just a future possible approach. Definitely no need to try and
>> >> land
>> >> something like this all in one go.
>> >>
>> >> --Gary
>> >>
>> >> > But Walters spirals, without any of the above type extras, is still a
>> >> > huge improvement for those that want to fav many activities. I'm
>> >> > already
>> >> > hard-pressed to find new activities to fill up the view for testing,
>> >> > really
>> >> > scrapping the barrel.
>> >> >
>> >> > For those of you involved in deployments — roughly how many
>> >> > activities
>> >> > do you think kids/teachers currently commonly have?
>> >> >
>> >> >> For example grouping related activities in spiral
>> >> >> segments and reinforcing this with common icon color scheme in these
>> >> >> segments.
>> >> >
>> >> > -1 No to a color scheme here. Colour is already used for identity.
>> >> > It's
>> >> > bad enough that the GC activities, and a few others, break the colour
>> >> > metaphor by not bothering with the &fill_color and &stroke_color
>> >> > variables —
>> >> > adding even more colour metaphors would not help! ;)
>> >> >
>> >> > --Gary
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > anything at christianmarcschmidt.com
>> > 917/ 575 0013
>> >
>> > http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com
>> > http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt
>> > http://twitter.com/cms_
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> >
>> >
>>
>> I've added back in the MEDIUM_ICON_SIZE to the Ring when there are
>> only a few icons. (See
>>
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Spiral_Home_View#Detailed_Description).
>> Specific uestions for the design team:
>>
>> (1) Can we reach consensus re spiraling in from the MAXIMUM radius
>> once the Ring is full or spiraling out from the MINIMUM radius once
>> the Ring is full?
>
> I would say spiraling in from max radius. That way we can maximize the
> efficiency of the ring, before transitioning to the spiral.
> Walter, looking at your mockups I'd try to come up with an algorithm that
> gives us a looser spiral with more space between each segment of the spiral,
> more along the lines of what Gary mocked up. The screenshots on the wiki
> look very dense. Gary's mockup really proved to me that this can work!


Hmm. Since Gary's mockup was based on my patch, I wonder what would
have changed? I did make this spiral tighter than one I originally
made for the modifying Sugar example. I'll generate some variations to
look at.

>>
>> (2) Is is OK to add an INTERMEDIATE icon size between STANDARD and SMALL?
>
> I'd even go further and suggest that we could have icons scale dynamically
> within the ring/spiral, to achieve maximum balance between the available
> space and icon legibility.
> My only concern here is that we'd need to find the right balance so as not
> to interrupt the general zoom metaphor, going from large to small icons
> (home to neighborhood). This means we probably need to put a cap on the
> bottom end of the scale, not allowing icons to become too small so that they
> could reach the size of icons in the groups view...
> All this will take lots of exploration I think before getting it right. I
> can work on mockups if that would help...

I'm pretty convinced that smaller than SMALL is not very useful. I
could add a few more intermediaries, but it is already a reasonably
fine-grained transition. The question is, when to make the transition.
Right now I trigger it when the Spiral is full. As per Q3 below, I
could trigger it a bit sooner.

>
>>
>> (3) In regard to Q1, I could trigger the spiral before the Ring hits
>> the MAXIMUM radius, perhaps at MAXIMUM-icon_size? (I've not
>> illustrated this yet.)
>
> Yes, I think that probably makes sense. We should play through all the
> possibilities and then make a decision based on what works best...
>

I'll mock this up too...

thanks.

-walter
>>
>> -walter
>>
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>
>
>
> --
> anything at christianmarcschmidt.com
> 917/ 575 0013
>
> http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt
> http://twitter.com/cms_
>



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