[Sugar-devel] modified Home View

[Walter Bender]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 10:48 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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_
>>> >
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > Sugar-devel mailing list
>>> > 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.
>

See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Spiral_Home_View#Detailed_Description

>>>
>>> (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.

See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Spiral_Home_View#Detailed_Description

>>
>>>
>>> (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...

I tried it and it was problematic in that starting the spiral at
MAXIMUM will result in a gap in the spiral.

>
> 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
>

Gary: I'm posting the new patch (with a looser spiral and more
intermediaries) to the Ticket.

-walter

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