<div><span style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14.5833px;line-height:30px"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal; font-size: small;">Hello,</span></font></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14.5833px;line-height:30px"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal; font-size: small;"><br>I am Mohan, a Computer Science Masters student in UBC, Canada interested in GSoC. My area of study is Human Computer Interaction. My thesis is in the area of learnability issues (in content creation software). I believe that developing better interfaces to bring out the creativity of children is of paramount importance. I would like to hence work on the Sugar UI for the next 1.5 years, making it an integral part of my thesis (hoping everything goes well. fingers crossed). I would like to start my work with GSoC.<br>
<br></span></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14.5833px;line-height:30px"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal; font-size: small;">I went through the project ideas and several of them interested me. I need some clarifications on few ideas. I appreciate any help in this.</span></font></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14.5833px;line-height:30px"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal; font-size: small;"><br></span></font><div>
<span style="font-size:14.5833px"><a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Development_Team/Project_Ideas" target="_blank">http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Development_Team/Project_Ideas</a>:</span> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204, 204, 204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
EduKT</blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204, 204, 204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
Simple content - history creation tool that needs:<span style="font-size:14.5833px"> </span></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204, 204, 204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<span style="font-size:14.5833px">Simplify the interface for little people</span></blockquote><div> </div></span></div><div>Is it talking about age or the physical attributes of the children? I assume it is age. If so, what range is being talked about? What age range qualifies as little? Do we have data about the age ranges of current users of OLPC/Sugar? According to the website, the system is targeted at "children from 5 to 12 years of age". But what is the split up in the real world. Any idea?</div>
<div><br></div><div><b>Questions that I am interested in finding an answer:</b></div><div>Do children belonging to different age groups need different UI?</div><div>Can we design UI targeted at different age groups of children such that it improves their experience (usability) with the system?</div>
<div>Can such UI designed specifically for different age groups also facilitate learnability of the UI (the system features that it abstracts) as they move from one age group to another? (culminating in a desktop, for e.g from ubuntu-sugar-remix to ubuntu)</div>
<div><br></div><div><b>What we need to do:</b></div><div>We would need to build a UI abstraction layer that would enable users of different age groups to experience the system differently. This should be achieved requiring minimal change on part of the developers, especially activity devs.</div>
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<div><br></div><div><b>What I could do:</b></div><div>A UI abstraction framework is too much work: for something that we aren't even sure we need. And I couldn't do it myself in 3 months. So I could start paving way for what could eventually grow into a framework, but still manage to do something useful for the community in these 3 months.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Lets take the feature of discoverability of keyboard shortcuts and context menus. I could start work on bringing this feature into Sugar. But do younger children need keyboard shortcuts ? Can the clues for enhancing discoverability of such features lead to confusion for those who dont need it ? So depending upon the age of the child using the system (obtained from user profile), the system could choose to expose certain clues or not. I think this can be done in 3 months.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Please have a look at my project page (rough first cut) and kindly share your thoughts, ideas. </div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2010/Adaptive_UI_Framework_for_Different_Age_Groups">http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2010/Adaptive_UI_Framework_for_Different_Age_Groups</a><br>
<div><br></div><div>Please let me know if you interested in mentoring me or working with (advising) me on this? </div><div><br></div><div>Thank you for your time,</div><div>Mohan</div></div>