[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Feedback about the changes in Memorize

[Gary Martin]

On 28 Sep 2011, at 16:59, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:

> Dsd used Memorize and provided feedback about it.
> I think can be useful, because he was not involved in the design processs.

+1 Thanks for re-posting here so it's on record. I'd love to see many more folks try to gather such material, particularly from folks in deployments, working with our target users! Where do they get stuck, where are they making mistakes?

> There are bugs too, and I am working on them, but here I copy the references to the UI:

;)

> *  The first little bit of confusion is what the 'play game' button is for
> <dsd_> i played the default game, and finished it
>  now i want to play again, so i first went to click 'play game'
>  maybe that was the wrong guess, but still, it is confusing that that button doesnt do anything that i can see at this point

Yes I worried about this also (until we had eliminated other UI options for the required Memorize mode/canvas change). Sugar design seems to have a particularly unconvincing way of displaying a set of related radio buttons, there is no joining of button shapes, and the only visible feedback that you are using a set of radio buttons is that the surrounding highlight toggles to the icon you click on.

Perhaps we can improve things visually by reworking the play and cog icons so they are clearly an icon pair, and/or more clearly radio buttons?

Perhaps the hint wording could be changed to 'Play game mode' and 'Edit game mode'?

Perhaps the 'Restart game' icon should move so that it is just after the first separator, nearer the 'Play game' radio button?

More scary option... What if we overloaded the 'Play game' radio button to reset the game if clicked on while already playing a game? We could remove the 'Restart game' button.

> * <dsd_> playing a bit more, it seems odd that the choice of 4x4 / 5x5 is a combo,
>  but the choice of demo game is a palette
>  thats just a minor thing, but i cant (yet) see the reason for having those ui elements different

The demo game widget used to be a text combo, just like the 4x4, 5x5 etc widget, but the text "Load demo games" needs to be localised and triggers a toolbar overflow (Spanish) loosing the Stop icon and one other.

>  * ok, it wasnt obvious to me that play and edit are a combo, especially with them 
> right next to the activity icon which is not part of the combo
> 
> * <dsd_> on the edit mode, it is a bit confusing that the add and update buttons dont look like buttons
>  also, 'update' feels a bit like 'save' which sugar doesnt really have
>  feels like instant-update would be more appropriate

+1 for an instant update when editing a card, though that is another patch for another time (goal was to land the new toolbars – Memorize had previous workflow issues that have made it a non-trivial case).

> <gonzalo_> dsd_, this part has not changed
>  and really i want try to keep the needed changes at minimum
>  we already changed a lot
> 
> * <dsd_> took me a little while to understand 'Set equal pairs' but i get it now
>  but i'm wondering if something related to "identical" or "matched" would be better terminology than "equal"

Hmm, so something like 'Set identical pairs' vs. 'Set different pairs' wording?

> * <dsd_> also, i cant quite get my head around if that button and the "grouped game" icon at its right is done consistently with other parts of the sugar UI
>  as a button that not only can be on or off, but also changing its icon at the same time
>  so i'm left a bit uneasy as to whether i need to click on the icon to get the graphical representation it is showing, or if that is the one i already have
>  it may be simpler if the icon did not change
>  for example the grouped button could always show 1 1 2 2
>  but you'd know if you're grouped or not based on the surrounding highlight (toggle)
>  or that might be worse. not sure

FWIW with both these two game type options I've always needed to discover or remind myself of them by trial and error to see just what difference they make to a game.

>  *  after editing the demo game and making my own
>  the other collaborator's game doesnt update
>  yet it shows that we are still collaborating together
>  ah, it is very confused
>  the collaborator has the old game (with 16 tiles) and the other laptop has the modified game (with 4 tiles)
>  if i click the tile in row 1, column 2, the equivalent row 1 column 2 tile turns over on the other laptop as well
>  but the tile contents are totally different (since the games are different)

Ouch, a bug for you Gonzalo ;)

Regards,
--Gary

> Regards
> 
> Gonzalo
> 
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