[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Record UI

[Art Hunkins]

Comments/suggestions regarding the Record UI:

1) I think Tom's ideas (http://www.flatlandfarm.de/blog/?p=283) are right on 
target in re: audio recording. +1.

2) I'm unclear as to whether the oscilloscope ("measure-type") display is a 
preview only, or is active during the entire record process. If the latter, 
I fear for audio glitches (and if Record ends up audio-glitching, you are 
likely to hear from me about it indefinitely!) Probably safer would be to 
display oscilloscope only in preview mode, for setting appropriate record 
level, and demoing (or otherwise exploring) other aspects of sound. (By 
"preview" here, I refer to testing the record level.)

3) Let's keep in mind that Audacity is available as a Suger activity - at 
least from the command line. It's full-featured, can edit soundfiles and be 
used for all kinds of sound demos and displays. In my view, we should not 
worry that Record doesn't include these features.

4) I dislike the lips icon intensely. Besides otherwise being misleading, it 
suggests *voice* recording only (and probably only speech). The "ear" seems 
much more appropriate, or (for that matter) a stylized waveform or 
oscilloscope display. I see the primary application as the recording of 
environmental (often nature) sounds, i.e., exploring the *world* of sound.

Art Hunkins

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gary Martin" <garycmartin at googlemail.com>
To: "Gonzalo Odiard" <gonzalo at laptop.org>
Cc: "Sugar-dev Devel" <sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 8:56 AM
Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Record UI


Hi Gonzalo,

On 18 Mar 2011, at 15:15, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:

> I have prepared mockups about the changes I want to do in the Record UI. 
> [1]
> The changes were discussed with Simon Schampijer and we take ideas from
> Tom Staubitz.

Just following up from Sunday's design meeting:

http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2011-03-27T15:04:42

See the above log for details, but here's a quick summary:

- place the chronometer combo in the secondary toolbars, as opposed to the 
main toolbar

- write each object to Journal upon its creation rather than trying to write 
all of them at once on an Activity switch or Stop (which can feel like a 
crash/hang if you have recorded more than a few new objects)

- remove the (i) info icon from the toolbar and instead badge each media 
thumbnail on the bottom right corner with an info widget (icon still to be 
decided)

- use the Journal detail view API explicitly for editing individual object 
metadata information, rather than the custom info/take notes side bar, see 
Browse and its download complete alert for example code. We standardise on 
an edit details UI for all Activities that want to edit their metadata at 
any time, an existing proposal already being worked on [1].

- camera icon should be the one as seen in sugar-artwork for 
camera-external, need a similar styled icon for video (Walter has also 
recently started using camera-external in Turtle Art/Blocks)




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- I suggested the sugar-artwork microphone icon (lips) would be good for the 
audio recording icon (I believe it was originally designed for use as the 
device icon for a proposed microphone input gain control palette). We didn't 
formally +1 in the meeting, but worth considering if you don't find it 
controversial




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There is still some concern over the user interaction for a primary tool, 
with sub-toolbar, triggering a full screen canvas change (e.g. as mocked up 
in your Record camera vs video vs audio, and my Memorize play vs create UI 
modes), as it might be confusing to get back out of a mode (especially when 
triggered unexpectedly by hover delay). I'll make a test activity with this 
interaction for next Sunday's design meeting and see how it feels.

Regards,
--Gary

[1] Option 1. from Christian's 'detail view anywhere' mockups 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Detailview_20110313.pdf

> Regards
> Gonzalo
>
> [1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Godiard/Record/NewToolbar
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar-devel mailing list
> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel




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