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

[Gerald Ardito]

Christian,

I would be happy to help put together the questionnaire.

Gerald

On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 6:04 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt <
christianmarc at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>
>
>
>
> --
> 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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