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

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Wade,

On 17 Jan 2010, at 21:40, Wade Brainerd wrote:

> Hey Gary,
> 
> Did you guys explicitly decide that the Journal should be *in* the ring?

Yes, I think that would be a fair observation. We did have a small tangent considering a Journal button in the home toolbar, but that was for other reasons (related using it as a possible place for a toggle 'resume vs new' home behaviour).

> I had been thinking it would appear between the ring and the XO, like
> the current activity is now but on the top side.  That would make it
> look less like a regular activity.

FWIW the Journal for me has never seemed like it should be presented as an activity, it is a core part of the Sugar shell, a meta zoom level above all others, perhaps the most significant shell view of all. I think one of the first mockups I ever made relating to an early version of Sugar suggested putting the Journal icon as the left most item in the top frame (using the spy glass icon as per the XO keyboard), though I'm not suggesting that solves any of our current reported issues (the frame has not been an explicitly discoverable enough design and is kind of what we keep trying to work around).

/me ducks and runs of cover

> (Actually I never click that "current activity" icon;

Me neither. It's now leftover detritus from an old design. It made very obvious sense for the old home view, where instantiated activities were shown in the ring and launching new activities was done via the lower frame, but that metaphor is long gone.

> I could envision
> leaving the Journal icon there all the time, instead of tracking the
> current activity)

Yes, I think that may be a good call; better than having it as the first item in the ring (or whatever layout is enabled) given its special case status. Perhaps something we can raise in the next design meeting?

Regards,
--Gary

> -Wade
> 
> On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
>> Hi Simon,
>> 
>> On 17 Jan 2010, at 10:30, Simon Schampijer wrote:
>> 
>>> In yesterday's design meeting [1] we discussed this issue. The outcome
>>> was the following (full logs can be found at [2]):
>>> 
>>> The design team tried to find a solution to keep the distinction between
>>> the Home View and the Journal clear: The Journal is the place to resume
>>> previous work. The Home View is the place to start new work. It is still
>>> possible for, maybe more advanced, users to resume previous work
>>> (filtered by activity type) in the home view as a secondary option using
>>> the activity icon palette. The Journal is more prominent in the home
>>> view. This means:
>>> 
>>> 1) Go back to the "start new" behavior when you left click on the
>>> activity icon, the activity icons are all gray to visualize that
>>> 
>>> 2) Keep the options to resume recent activities in the secondary options
>>> of the palette
>>> 
>>> 3) Keep the palette behavior as they are (right click on the activity
>>> icon to bring the full palette up immediately, delayed build up on
>>> hovering over the icon)
>>> 
>>> 4) Keep the alt-click shortcut to toggle the view (holding the alt-key
>>> down will change the behavior to resume by default)
>>> 
>>> 5) Add the Journal to the activity ring (at the top) in the Home view,
>>> colored to make it accessible in the home view all the time
>>> 
>>> 6) Add a list of the n most recent activities to the Journal's secondary
>>> palette to be able to resume from
>> 
>> Just uploaded a couple of new mockup images showing some of the above cases. Nothing too exciting, but might help others follow the discussions:
>> 
>>    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Home_mockup_with_journal_icon_and_start_new_default_1.png
>>    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Home_mockup_with_journal_icon_and_start_new_default_2.png
>> 
>> Regards,
>> --Gary
>> 
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