[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Journal share activity

[Simon Schampijer]

Hi,

Manuel and myself have been looking at the work-flow for the Journal 
share activity these days: 
http://activities.sugarlabs.org//en-US/sugar/addon/4656

We discussed the design completely independent of possible technical 
constraints we will see what we can do, and what we can not but we 
wanted to first look at the work flow itself. Here is the state of 
things so far:


===Use cases===

(a) a teacher is handing out a pdf to the class

(b) a teacher wants to collect a picture (Paint) or an assignment from 
each pupil

(c) a group of pupils want to share files between each other (e.g. a 
project work)


===Questions===

* What can you share?
You can share Journal items.

* To whom can you share?
People in your current network (see other activities you share)

* Can everyone share who is a member of that session?
The case where a teacher wants to collect data from the pupils (b), does 
impose privacy concerns. There should be the possibility to send a file 
to one person only without making it public to all of the members.

* Is it a push or a pull model?
(a) and (b) should be based on a push model. The receiver should be 
asked for confirmation of this transfer (see the current file transfers 
in the Sugar shell). Both sides need to know about the status of the 
transfer.

(c) would be handled best with a pull model (see a download).


===Designs===
We basically started off with a UI based on tabs [1]. Each member of the 
session has a tab, the label contains the colored XO icon and the nick 
name of the learner. The first tab represents yourself. The header of 
each tab has information about the learner and if it is yours a button 
to share items with all the members. The body has the items you shared 
and each item a button to un-share an item. The other tabs list the 
items the learner shared and a button to download an item.

This UI shows the pull model and handles case (c) well. It does not work 
for the case (b) that well, as a shared item is public to all of the 
members. Furthermore, a teacher would need to go to each tab in order to 
collect the data it needs.

Based on the downsides of the first UI [1] we came up with the second UI 
[2]: On the left you see all the members that are present in the shared 
session (similar to the UI in Memorize). There is a button for each 
member to send him a file directly (handles case b). This list is 
scrollable. There could be as well a row at the bottom of the list for a 
'sent to all' option to handle case (a).

On the right side at the top is the list of items you shared publically. 
There is a button to add new items. The list is scrollable. There is a 
button to un-share your items and a button to download items shared by 
others. This is case (c), case (a) could be handled with this model as well.

Below is a widget that shows the incoming items. You can accept those 
incoming files individually or have a button for accept all. There 
should be a way to select the storage target (Journal/USB/...) either 
with a Palette or a dialog. This is case (b).

In the second sketch in [2] you can see a feedback widget for the items 
you sent (one-to-one transfers). It shows if an item has been received 
and you can cancel a transfer (see the file transfers protocol in the 
Sugar shell for this).


Regards,
    Simon

[1] http://dev.laptop.org/~erikos/share/tabs.JPG

[2] http://dev.laptop.org/~erikos/share/one.jpg