(Reposted from an offlist response to Pauric. I accidentally left off the IxDA email.)
A purely academic approach > focusing on the content layer will not address the needs of the do-ers > among us who understand through taking tools apart to see how they > work; I'm just not so convinced that learning to hack around a unique UNIX implementation will help those kids once they graduate from OLPC to something else. Sure, they could learn concepts they can apply in a myriad of other ways, but operating under the *assumption* that the kids will learn to hack the system in the first place is perhaps misguided. I installed Sugar on my mac and [...] > I think you're not understanding the full context of the design. To really see how Sugar works, you should check it out on an actual XO laptop. There are keys on the keyboard I still can't explain. Buttons on the monitor that have no explanation whatsoever. They all apparently correspond to some action in Sugar, but I have yet to discover their connection after several hours of usage. You also have to see for yourself how difficult it is to use the trackpad because the mouse is so jumpy and it's so easy to accidentally move it to the edge of the screen (which produces an overlay of the desktop navigation). Scrolling windows with it, hitting the right area to click, etc., are tricky actions at best. Granted, these things are designed for people with smaller hands than my own, but the lack of smooth interaction means you start getting very careful about what you click. You start calculating your moves more. As I started doing this, the first thing I wished for was better instructive design so I knew what I was doing and could stop guessing and making mistakes. [...] based on that I decided to put only $200 down for 1 laptop to be sent > off. I think its very unsuitable for western goals and would bet yours will > sit collecting dust in 6 months if not sooner. It's totally unsuitable for Western goals, and I'm definitely not trying to say it is suitable. What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter who you are - things are easier to learn if they're designed to be easily learnable. And Sugar, at the moment, has a low level of learnability. I dont think Nielsen gets 'social', he's very goal-quantitate result > driven and maybe not the best yardstick for the mushy-human-chaos > stuff. I'm not usually a big fan myself, but isn't his work focused entirely around research on how humans interact with computers? I don't want to invite the guy to a dinner party, but he sounds like a pretty good yardstick to me. As I interpret Nielsen's "Location is Irrelevant for Usability > Studies" I conclude that its true as long as there's a baseline in > collective understanding of technology. Remove any preceding exposure > and the methodology falls apart. Two quotes from that article: 1) "[...] people usually interpret the screen elements the same, no matter where they live. What's easy in one city is just as easy in another city." 2) "First, if a parking meter is intended for a region that had never before charged for parking, it might be a good idea to test with users who were completely new to the parking meter concept. Novices would doubtlessly encounter more usability problems than more experienced users." Your inference that a baseline understanding of the technology in question is required for the testing to be meaningful is in no way stated in that article, and I wholly disagree that it's a requirement. OLPC will be introducing computers into cultures that may have never even seen one up close. Just like a parking metter would be more difficult in a country that previously had none, a computer that lacks any instructive design whatsoever is going to be really difficult to digest when you've never even used a computer. This logic is exactly why so many people get their first PC home and barely ever learn to do anything but check email or browse the web. Without instructive and self-evident interfaces, Help, video training, or something else in place, there's simply no way to become an intermediate or advanced user without a ton of guessing, which has a decent chance at failure every single time you do it. Following this logic, it's like saying that furniture that requires assembly should come without instructions. But, I also think that Sugar fails in preparing kids for practical > applications... however, spreadsheets dont engage kid's imaginations. Agreed. But this is exactly why I think Sugar needs better instructive design. The intent is not to teach kids about UNIX, it's to give them access to a wealth of knowledge so they can do almost anything. It's to change their whole way of life, and to use education as a pathway out of poverty. But Sugar commits the cardinal sin of software design: it constantly gets in the way of its own purpose. Sure, Sugar developers are giving them computers, but interface-wise, they're giving them the UNIX equivalent of "Fisher Price meets Windows 3.1". It's both way too basic and way too complicated. Try using it on an XO and tell me if your opinions change. -r- ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
