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

[Christian Marc Schmidt]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 5:52 PM, Simon Schampijer <simon at schampijer.de>wrote:

> On 01/17/2010 11:35 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt wrote:
>
>> Hi Gary, these look really good! In particular, I think having the journal
>> in the ring is a huge improvement.
>>
>> Still on the fence about "resume" vs. "start new". Either solution seems
>> well solved for from a design standpoint--it is more a question of
>> usability
>> and cognitive model. I'm wondering if we should defer making "start new"
>> the
>> default until we have more test evidence.
>>
>> One interesting possibility that just came up is to work with Gerald's
>> deployment in Westchester, NY. I hope to have the chance to talk to him
>> about the possibility of running a few qualitative studies on the current
>> release. Until we have, I'd personally feel more comfortable to leave the
>> home view as is for the next build, adding only the journal to the ring,
>> until we have further insight into how kids use activities.
>>
>> How would everyone feel about that?
>>
>>
>> Christian
>>
>
> I can run studies in my school, too.
>
> Though, I am not so sure how exactly we would measure resume vs 'start
> new'. I guess you would need to test that with users that are not familiar
> with Sugar yet. And then let half use 'start new' as default and half resume
> and give them the same task to do. Of course you would need to do that over
> a period of time to not get 'false' results.
>

The best way to test these things is to have the subject talk through what
they are trying to do, and how they are attempting to do it facilitated by
the user interface. That alone should be quite insightful. For instance, if
you observe students deleting the content of a previous activity to start a
new activity, the culprit may not necessarily be the way the activity was
invoked, but rather a lack of functionality inside the activity itself. The
staging/timing of features relative to the experience as a whole is
particularly significant.

I don't think we necessarily need to test new users only, though as a subset
that would be interesting. But it can be equally, perhaps even more
insightful to observe the behavior patterns kids have developed while using
Sugar over a period of time, since that may reveal workarounds and shortcuts
that point out inefficiencies in the UI.

I think a task-based questionnaire should be enough to gather some useful
insights. Since you work with children, would you interested in helping me
develop a questionnaire? Your first-hand perspective would be invaluable.


Christian


> Regards,
>   Simon
>



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