[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] 'Resume' vs 'Start a new' Activity

[Michael Stone]

Simon wrote:
> Michael wrote:
>> Would you care to try patches to show both "start new" and "resume"
>> icons on the home view (and maybe in the journal too)?
>
> First I hope to reach consensus here about the approach to take. Can you 
> elaborate a bit more about your approach?

The difficulty is that your kids are resuming activities when whey want to be
starting fresh ones. The cause of the difficulty is that the UI is not
correctly capturing their intentions. Their intentions are not being properly
captured because the affordances on the home screen are not properly
constructed. Therefore, to better capture the user's intention, we should
change the perceived affordances present on the home screen to invite both
possible actions ("resume" and "start new") on more even footing. 

Since the individual patterns of 

   "click an unsaturated activity icon to launch a fresh instance" and 
   "click a colored activity icon to resume the last instance" 

still seem to be individually sound, we should *first* try to improve the home
screen to invite both "start new" and "resume latest" actions by applying both
patterns simultaneously.

Michael

P.S. - Your request for elaboration was quite non-specific so, if I haven't yet
answered your original question, please restate it more precisely and I'll try
again.