[Sugar-devel] [GSOC] Project: Journal Rethink discussion

[sam at sam.today]

Hi All,

This is a very interesting project, and is a *very large change* to how 
we'll interact with the journal.  *Please join the design discourse*

I think that the idea of providing a way of sorting learning into 
"mini-journals" is very helpful.  Users can make a mini-journal for a 
unit of work in school, an assignment/project or a group activity that 
a teacher is running.

I think it is also quite natural.  Currently the journal is like one 
big box; you put everything in and search for it later.  Abhijit's 
proposal makes the journal into a collection of boxes - one box for 
each project.  I swear that you physically do this in real life at 
times.

Another element of the proposal is forcing people to put every activity 
in a mini-journal/"box".  I think this is a nice way to address journal 
clutter; you have a box of random stuff for each project rather than a 
huge box with too much random stuff.

The 2nd element of Abhijit's feature is the collaboration.  You can 
share your box with other people; useful for doing group projects.  
Your friends can add photos, type more on the "Report" write document, 
or whatever.  I think that this makes the collab system very 
conceptually simple for us as users.

Technically, the collab will be quite challenging.  While Sugar has a 
collab system when users are in activities ("online" sync), there is 
not yet a system to sync when the users are not active in the activity 
("offline" sync).  We can probably get a system that works in good 
times (when every user is online and connected), but I think that we 
will focus on adding conflict resolution UI for when things get out of 
sync.

Thanks,
Sam

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 10:47 AM, Abhijit Patel 
<abhisandhyasp.ap at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I will be working on the Journal-Rethink project during GSoC'16. I 
> would like to discuss with the community regarding the designs and 
> your expectations from this project.
> 
> A brief description of project:
> 
> Focus -> enhance Journal such that students could use it as a 
> platform to do their project-work.
> 
> Major features that will be added are:
> 
> 1. Shared mini-journal:
> 
> Present-> Sugar Journal shares only single instance of an activity 
> with a group of participants.
> 
> Idea-> creating one single instance (a mini-journal) which has 
> instances of all the activities to be shared.
> 
> UI -> Journal contains list of projects (mini-­journals) in Projects 
> List View [1]. Project [2] contains a list of activities that are 
> shared with the same participants under the same project in the mini 
> ­journal.
> 
> Flow chart to explain the feature [3].
> [1] Project List View
> [2] Mini-Journal (project) View
> [3] Flow-Chart
> 
> 2. File Syncer System for mini-journal:
> 
> Use -> sync the files ​when the user does not have the activity 
> running.
> Further use to alert the user for the changes that occur in the state 
> of shared activity by implementing the alert tool.
> 
> UI -> A alert tool box with a palette box which could be used as an 
> indication of new notifications or alerts that will be prompted when 
> the state of shared activity changes.
> 
> Other features are like
>  -> Icon View for Journal,
>  -> "Add new entry" tool,
>  -> Integrating chat activity in mini-journal.
> 
> More details about the project are in my proposal [4].
> Any suggestions or advice regarding the design or any other aspects 
> of the project are welcomed :)
> 
> [4] Journal-Rethink-Proposal
> 
> Best Regards,
> Abhijit.
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