[Sugar-devel] python-speaking unix-guru user interface prototype implementer(s) and design critics/contributors solicited

[David Brown]

>(re Peru): The current UI implementation is expected to evolve quickly and our
goal is to have a 1.0 release by December 2012 with main functionality.

"kidie" http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Talk:Design_Team/Proposals would
require many design/implementation/benchtest iterations before it
could be ready for a field test and i doubt it could be ready by Dec
(and may never get off the ground...).

> attempt to create entire desktop environment should not be dominant effort on Sugar Labs level

agree that the desktop metaphor, for all its excellence for desk
jockeys, is not the best metaphor for learning.  and yes, sugar labs
seems to be only about sugar implementation development, not about
rethinking its look and feel.  there doesnt appear to be a maillist or
forum for xo ui design or development methodology so i created a wiki
talkpage:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Talk:Design_Team/Proposals

> As regard the activity icons on the home page (as several people have responded already) we haven't observed this as being a major problem with Sugar in the field.

i don't have the benefit of having seen an xo in the hands of a child,
just my own quick look at soas, and just my first impressions at that.
 maybe kids can learn the icons quickly and so can just skip from it
to the apps so in practice it's not a hurdle from them.  but i am
still left with the feeling that it could be more task-oriented than
feature-oriented.  perhaps it's just me.....

> It has been oft observed that children will push buttons in order to find out what they do, as oppose to adults, who like to know what buttons do before they push them.

just as a baby will try to taste anything within reach:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0iQFKYSCj0 and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mef5XN_TXfU
that could be an argument in favour of having fewer buttons so that
useful learning (through app-activities) can begin and just playing
around with sugar itself doesnt become the main consumer of time.  i
havent yet found out where online, if anywhere (other than promo
videos), xo users themselves talk about their experiences but would
like to hear what they have to say.  the proof of the pudding is in
the user's eating of it.  eg, how long (statistically) before the
novelty wears off?

> In a recent study in Ethiopia, it was reported that kids explored thousands of activities per month. This was all done through clicking on icons (Android in this case) to see what they do.

a thousand activities per kid per month is 50 activities per day for a
20-day month.  counting logs of activity starts are as meaningful as
counting page hits - it only tells you whether your advertising to get
them to that activity (page) worked - it doesnt tell you whether they
bought anything.  just like i had to resort to pushing every button in
sight on soas - it's the only way one can find out what the
hieroglyphic icons mean, then i have to remember which one is which -
it's like exploring a maze which is at first a fun thing to do in and
of itself, but it's not what i would call, using Heidegger's phrase,
"readiness to hand" of a useful tool.  by the way, it was only by
pushing buttons all over the maze of documentation in olpc wikis and
sites that i finally stumbled upon where the sugar look and feel came
from in the first place:
http://new.pentagram.com/2006/12/new-work-one-laptop-per-child/  i
agree with (Gericke's?) intention of making community a theme but his
choice of abstract icons rather than semiotic images/words are rather
too abstract art style for me; i prefer an impressionistic art style
that gives you the feel of what it's about rather than making you
guess what the painter intended.  Picasso's famous retort to an
incurious observer was: "it means whatever you want it to mean!".
Facebook and Ipad are examples of impressionistic interfaces which
help you see straight away what you can do; as such, they are useful
artworks.  Abstract art, is, by definition, not intended to have a
specific utility.  That's why roadsigns in Malaysia that mean danger
say !AWAS! and not some abstract icon that could be misinterpreted....
beware of low-flying English motorcycles
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Beware_of_low_flying_motorcycles.jpg

>  one of our goals is to instill a discipline of reflection.... Suggestions as to how to make it more compelling most welcome.

in one of your videos, you mentioned a school in a disadvantaged
neighbourhood that got good results and used diarising as one of its
practices and you were impressed by that.  personally, i guess that
diarising was incidental to their success, which i would put down more
to the constructive and supportive attitudes of their teachers than
anything else (not that i have any knowledge of what went on in that
particular school - it's just a general correlation).

as a general principle, i am not in favour of discipline of any kind
as an educational methodology.  I perceive
repetition/reiteration/ritual to inhibit mental reflection (which is
why soldiers are drilled - precisely to stop them thinking).  people
engage in self-reflection naturally, especially when they are asleep
(seriously! experiments have shown that the brain is more active when
one is asleep than when awake, probably because the rest of the body
is at rest and it doesnt have to burn energy on muscles etc).  but the
idea of the machine keeping a journal (ie states of activities) for
its user is great - a button to pull up such a journal should be
prominently on the start page so it's one of the first things you see
when you turn the machine on again (this assumes activities are
frequently ongoing from one session to another - kind of like the
exercise books i wrote in at school 100 years ago).

>  What are the tangible things we should doing?

i believe human interface developments should follow a spiral
development methodology,  revisiting, each cycle, the fundamental look
and feel of the interface (as well as its functionality) in the light
of marketplace developments and new ideas from outside as well as
inside the development team.  six years (since 2006) is maybe long
enough for a first such cycle, so here is a proposal for a rethink of
the basic look and feel:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Talk:Design_Team/Proposals

>making [learning/playing groups] easier to discover/configure... Friend of a friend is a nice suggestion.

if a kid could see what other people in her neighbourhood are doing it
would be interesting to her.  eg suppose you want to make a toy
sailing boat... unless you were the kind of person that insists on
reinventing the wheel, you might like to look around to see who has
done that or is doing it too.  you would want to:
                       Searchfor <freetext statement of interest>
the search engine would match that against neighbourhood-wide
activities and their cloud documents (if there were a cloud)

< We have need for more ideas on how to make learning *more* visible.

speaking as a child, i already know when i am learning something - i
get a feeling of accomplishment when i understand something.
and i know when i am not learning - i get bored/confused/etc - i don't
need a teacher to tell me how many marks out of 10 i got.
and i dont need to know whether i got more marks than my friend.
people are competitive enough without systematising competition as a
carrot (or stick!) to encourage (or force!) children to learn.
Brazilian streetkids learn mental arithmetic much better than
middle-class US schoolkids of the same age.  Australian aboriginal
kids brought up in the outback learn how to navigate in novel
environments better than high-performing schoolkids from the city.  in
both cases, no teachers were giving them marks.

the most compelling reinforcement is success - personal self-judged
success, not success as judged by a teacher - nor even by a parent!!.
the most influential judges on one's subjective self-esteem other than
oneself are peers, not superiors, which is why authorities resort to
policing to have their way.  society may need policing, but not the
inside of a kid's head.  do unto others....

david