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

[Johnson Chetty]

On 22 August 2012 09:34, David Brown <djhbrown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>(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
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This is a timely and very interesting endeavour.

Do we have a starting point of workflow formed?
Or will it evolve from the wiki discussions?

We have been using XO's for quite a while now.
We have seen sucessful implementations of the XO-laptops and have held
and hold classes with children in rural areas on a weekly basis.

I believe iterative development of the interface, should and must
involve a feedback mechanism from the end-user. Isn't this quite the
norm in standard software development?

What one could set out do, is to create prototypes and have feedback
from the children themselves,  with a proper sample set of
participants (rural, urban, having english as a second/first
language).

If this becomes part of the development workflow, I'm sure it would
yield some unexpected  and good results.

We have recently been evaluating on providing educational content on tablets.
The $35 tablet (http://blog.laptop.org/2010/07/29/welcoming-indias-tablet/)
that was supposed to have been released is still going through a bunch
of hiccups and it has been almost around a year since things have
materialized.

We have been looking at other configurations that offer a bit more
bang for the buck. An inexpensive device, not a cheap one.

We have a 80-90 USD priced ARM tablet which considerably has some good
points. Although nowhere near as rugged as the XO tablet, the price
point at which it can be offered increases the reach to a much larger
base.
As a reference, we did an install of debian with sugar (desktop)  on
the tablet and the interface is what jumped out at us as being
extremely tied to the keyboard and mouse paradigm.

Hello, I'm Johnson Chetty, I work at the Gnowledge Lab, Homi Bhabha
Centre for Science Education, TIFR, with Dr. G. Nagarjuna at Mumbai,
India.

I believe we would be able to do something for this. We speak a bit of
python, we love linux, and we have direct access to rural children
learning on the XOs.


Thanks,
-- 
Regards,
Johnson Chetty,