[Sugar-devel] Fwd: sugar ui

[Anish Mangal]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 3:34 AM, David Brown <djhbrown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I've found that sometimes when people say "obvious" or "intuitive"
>> what they really mean is "familiar".
>
>
> yes, familiar things are obvious, once you know them.  the challenge for a
> ui designer is to make an interface that makes it obvious to people who are
> unfamiliar with its peculiarities.
>
> using a familiar motif (such as a thumbnail photo of a friend's face) to
> designate an interface object is one simple example of how obviousness can
> be built in to an interface (which is why Facebook uses them).  using a
> cryptic abstract icon is a simple counterexample; it is not obvious until
> you learn what it means.  icons, such as Egyptian hierogyphics or Chinese
> ideograms, are, once learned, convenient linguistic symbols, but they are
> not obvious to the untrained.  the 26 letters of the roman alphabet take
> time to learn too, as you can remind yourself by reading this upside-down in
> a mirror.
>>
>>
>> FWIW, I've found sugar to be very "obvious" ;-), so obvious infact,
>> that kids in the remote Indian village of Bhagmalpur were able to
>> operate their laptops (eg. record audio/video clips), even when some
>> of the machines had their language interface set to spanish, while
>> others were in english and the language the kids actually know well is
>> Hindi (a different script). Go figure!
>
>
> the phrase "go figure!" is an example of an obviously dismissive and
> aggressive communication by an American English speaker (British English
> speakers tend to use a different phrase for such purposes).
>

It was not my intention to be dismissive (or aggressive), but if you
felt I was so, I apologize (I am from India, so british-english).

I was merely saying from what I've observed, not just in Bhagmalpur
but elsewhere as well. Kids who have never used sugar tend to get
quite familiar with it very quickly. The "go figure" part was because
I'm not a UI designer or an expert and don't claim to be one as well.

> i figure that the app the kids used for recording did have an obvious
> interface - but i expect they needed a teacher or a friend to tell them how
> to find out where that app was on their machine's interface.
>

There are no teachers that use XO laptops in Bhagmalpur. It's just
kids learning by themselves and from one-another (mostly).

> it is far from obvious how to make an interface that is obvious to other
> people as well as oneself.

-- 
Anish | anish at sugarlabs.org