Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar Labs Website Revamp IRC Mtg 1-8-12 11:00amEST(16:00UTC)
Hi all We met today on IRC to discuss the website design and content, but not many were present. It is important that we get your feedback as the work on the website progresses. Therefor, I am looking to reschedule our meeting to another time that works for everyone. See John's original email below: We are looking for feedback on the design as well as volunteers to help us generate content for the new website. Does this coming Saturday 14th at 11:00am EST/16:00 UTC work for everyone? Or is a time during the week better? Suggestions welcome. Thank you, Christian On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 4:10 PM, John Tierney jtis4...@hotmail.com wrote: Hello All, Happy New Year! As the New Year starts we are making another effort to restart the Sugar Labs Website Revamp. Designer and community member Christian Marc Schmidt has put together a Design Template along with a Sugar Labs Website Refresh: Content Document. These two documents along with the work and content gathering done by RIT Co-op students Mike Devine and JT Mengel last year will hopefully give us solid basis to start from. Our Kick-off IRC meeting will take place this Sunday Jan. 8th on#sugar-meeting at 11:00amEST(16:00UTC), after the Design Meeting surrounding Write To Journal Anytime taking place at 10:00amEST. Please join us if you are available-our key shortcoming last year in our attempt was a lack of content to effectively create the new site. All help is Welcome and needed. Because this is in the Building and Design stage please email me at: jtis4...@hotmail.com to get links to the preview documents if you are interested in being part of the process. Our First Step is to give Christian the Thumbs Up/Make Enhancements to the Design. Our Second Step will look to get individual community members to take responsibility in Content Gathering Areas that flow out of the documents Christian has prepared. Our Third Step is to execute Content Gathering Upon receiving enough content Christian will then commence the build phase. We hope you can join us on Sunday and look forward to working with the community to do this important work. Please let us know of your interest in taking part in this important endeavor. Appreciate the Collaboration! John Tierney P.S. Please get into the hands of those who will be best able to assist-Thank You! -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.facebook.com/christianmarcschmidt http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ Skype: christianmarcschmidt ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Write to Journal Anytime
Hi Walter--yes, I have time to discuss this on the weekend (Sunday?). Let me know if we can use our original timeslot at 10am ET. Christian -- From: Walter Bender Sent: 1/3/2012 11:04 AM To: Walter Bender; Sugar-dev Devel Cc: Gonzalo Odiard; manuel quiñones; Simon Schampijer; Gary C Martin; Christian Marc Schmidt Subject: [DESIGN] Write to Journal Anytime Gary, Christian, et al., We are hopefully going to land some variant of the Write to Journal Anytime patch in Sugar 0.96 [1]. I'd like to discuss the details before jumping back into the code. The current plan of record is essentially to make a modal display of the Journal expanded entry (detail view) available on demand from a button on the activity toolbar (grabbing space freed up by the elimination of the Keep button). This is essentially what I mocked up about two years ago. While we may have had Design Team consensus on this plan in January 2011, I remain skeptical. The problems I see with this approach are: (1) the user cannot see their current work while the model window is displayed -- since presumably the goal is to write about what you are working on, this seems problematic; (2) most of the fields in the detail view are irrelevant to the task of taking notes; (3) some of the fields, e.g., title, already have mechanisms for change; (4) many of the fields are not human-editable, e.g., preview image, collabarators For these reasons and my general dislike of modal interfaces, I suggest a simple alternative: a text entry in the toolbar that lets you add notes to the description field directly from the toolbar. Simon (?) mocked this up a few years back and I think it meets the needs of the run-time access to note taking. Editing the notes can be done from the Journal expanded entry, which could be invoked from the currently unused Bulletin Board key (or, naturally, from the Journal itself). Would you have time to discuss this in more detail anytime in the coming week or two? regards. -walter [1] http://wiki.sugar labs.org/go/Features/Talk:Write_to_journal_anytime [2] see numerous links from ^^ -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] heads up re proposed View Source changes
Hi Walter--it may be best to discuss this during an IRC session since I'm having difficulty understanding the functionality... :) Maybe we could schedule a review for this Sunday? Christian On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 11:40 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: Please see: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Proposals/Toolbars/View-Source_Enhancements There are a series of patches I sent today to sugar-devel you could apply if you are interested in trying it. My outstanding questions (above and beyond the ones you may have): * The graphical overlay I use for indicating that an activity is a copy is not as clear as I'd like; * I don't include a mechanism for copying Sugar source since I am not sure how best to deal with error recovery (I could copy site_packages to ~ and set the Python sys.path to look in ~ before looking in /usr/lib/python, but if the user makes a mess of their Sugar environment, how should they recover? In the case of Activities, they have the original and the copy.) * I didn't include /usr/share/sugar in the Sugar view source but should probably include at least some of the subdirectories there. regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.facebook.com/christianmarcschmidt http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ Skype: christianmarcschmidt ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] meeting next Sunday, 29 May?
How about we try for Sunday at 16:00 UTC (9am PT/12pm ET)? Christian On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 11:46 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: We are overdue for another design meeting. Does next Sunday work? Gary and Christian, since you two are at the extremes of timezones, do you want to propose a meeting time? Sascha would like to discuss some UI changes to the Neighborhood View to address some issues concerning access points (The current model (1:1 AP-network mapping) isn't powerful enough for real-life scenarios (hidden SSIDs etc.).) -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.facebook.com/christianmarcschmidt http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ Skype: christianmarcschmidt ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Contact sheet for all sugar-artwork icons
On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:22 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 7:28 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: This is great Gary, thanks so much! Most of the icons are already very good and quite consistent. And there are a few we could definitely improve. I see we already have both a wrench and a cog. But the more I think about it, it seems that preferences could be a form with checkboxes, or even a pencil making a checkmark. Seems that the message we want to communicate is having a choice, more than the inner workings implied by the cog/gear. What do you think? In my applications at least, there is more than just choosing involved. Users make their own versions of things, with parameters and graphics of their own making; and in the case of Turtle Art, they can reprogram the blocks. I am leaning towards the spanner (wrench). That makes sense. I can get behind the wrench. :) How is it being used currently (if at all)? Christian -walter Christian On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 6:20 AM, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org wrote: On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 12:40 AM, Gary C Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi Folks, For some time I've been meaning to create a contact sheet for all sugar-artwork svg icons to help as a quick reference, and for general icon polishing/standardisation. Finally – having been fiddling with svg xml for my SOM generation code – I got around to the task: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Sugar-artwork.png Christian: Given the Design Meeting conversation on Sunday, you might be interested in 5 along, 7 down (view-source AKA the cog), and 2 along, 8 down (preferences-system AKA the spanner). Gonzalo: You might like to check out 12 along, 9 down (camera-external) for re: your Record toolbar work as I think it gives a stronger, more sugar standard version of a camera icon than currently shown in your mockups (would need to update your video and microphone icon styles to match): http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Godiard/Record/NewToolbar Thanks! Do you have more comments about the mockups? A comment and a question about the icons: The loupe (6 along, 5 down) looks bigger than the other icons (in WIkibrowse is very visible). The question: The arrows up and down with the media icon inside, are supposed to be used to transfer media or to save/load from journal? I think are better to transfer, but i saw these used to save to/load from the journal Regards, Gonzalo Regards, --Gary -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ skype: christianmarcschmidt ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ skype: christianmarcschmidt ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Contact sheet for all sugar-artwork icons
This is great Gary, thanks so much! Most of the icons are already very good and quite consistent. And there are a few we could definitely improve. I see we already have both a wrench and a cog. But the more I think about it, it seems that preferences could be a form with checkboxes, or even a pencil making a checkmark. Seems that the message we want to communicate is having a choice, more than the inner workings implied by the cog/gear. What do you think? Christian On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 6:20 AM, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org wrote: On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 12:40 AM, Gary C Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi Folks, For some time I've been meaning to create a contact sheet for all sugar-artwork svg icons to help as a quick reference, and for general icon polishing/standardisation. Finally – having been fiddling with svg xml for my SOM generation code – I got around to the task: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Sugar-artwork.png Christian: Given the Design Meeting conversation on Sunday, you might be interested in 5 along, 7 down (view-source AKA the cog), and 2 along, 8 down (preferences-system AKA the spanner). Gonzalo: You might like to check out 12 along, 9 down (camera-external) for re: your Record toolbar work as I think it gives a stronger, more sugar standard version of a camera icon than currently shown in your mockups (would need to update your video and microphone icon styles to match): http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Godiard/Record/NewToolbar Thanks! Do you have more comments about the mockups? A comment and a question about the icons: The loupe (6 along, 5 down) looks bigger than the other icons (in WIkibrowse is very visible). The question: The arrows up and down with the media icon inside, are supposed to be used to transfer media or to save/load from journal? I think are better to transfer, but i saw these used to save to/load from the journal Regards, Gonzalo Regards, --Gary -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ skype: christianmarcschmidt ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] time for a design meeting?
Absolutely--Sunday should work for me. Let me know what time you'd like to meet... Christian On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: There are a few design roadblocks in the race to 0.92 that could use some input from the design team. Any chance we could have a meeting some time soon? I could probably get on line from Lima on Sunday some time if that works. regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] time for a design meeting?
I think I can make that work, but is any earlier a possibility? Say around 11 EST? Christian On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 2:08 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: How about 12 EST (17UTC) in #sugar-meeting? -walter On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi Walter, On 9 Feb 2011, at 16:20, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: There are a few design roadblocks in the race to 0.92 that could use some input from the design team. Any chance we could have a meeting some time soon? I could probably get on line from Lima on Sunday some time if that works. Yes I think I can make Sunday as well, let me know a good time for you. --Gary regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] time for a design meeting?
Great, talk to you Sunday at 11 EST! Christian On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 9:55 PM, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.comwrote: On 9 Feb 2011, at 19:55, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 2:32 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: I think I can make that work, but is any earlier a possibility? Say around 11 EST? Works for me. Any time after about 10am should be good for me as long as my travel connections work at all as scheduled. Sounds good, catch you Sunday. --Gary -walter Christian On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 2:08 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: How about 12 EST (17UTC) in #sugar-meeting? -walter On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi Walter, On 9 Feb 2011, at 16:20, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: There are a few design roadblocks in the race to 0.92 that could use some input from the design team. Any chance we could have a meeting some time soon? I could probably get on line from Lima on Sunday some time if that works. Yes I think I can make Sunday as well, let me know a good time for you. --Gary regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar UI Dictator
Whoever ends up as dictator: I'd still love to stay involved as an advisor. I'd volunteer to throw my name into the hat for election if not for lack of time. In any case, I agree that it would be great (and necessary) to have a dedicated UX person who could keep the design up-to-date and consistent with our experiential goals. Christian On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Michael Stone mich...@laptop.org wrote: On Tue, 9 Nov 2010 at 03:12:41 +, Martin Dengler wrote: On Mon, Nov 08, 2010 at 07:49:19PM -0500, Bernie Innocenti wrote: On Fri, 2010-10-29 at 10:02 +0100, Martin Dengler wrote: IMO a decent justification and a willingness to update the affected wiki pages - including the HIG - to a similar or better standard as what existed before should almost be enough for me. What I'm worried about is the HIG that exists - incomplete as it is - is being chipped away and we're left with UI that's justified by nothing but a patchwork of ad-hoc decisions made by very different people with very different users in mind. While I strongly believe in the power of loosely-managed volunteer-driven development, distributed authority doesn't seem to work equally well when it comes to human interface design. Good design implies one consistent vision, which is hard to obtain collaboratively. A case-by-case decision process results in either inconclusive discussions or UI inconsistency. It might work better if we agreed to delegate all design decisions to one clever dictator Great idea. Sebastian is calling for a HIG update as part of his SLOBs platform - perhaps the new HIG Dictator should commit to doing that in some fixed period of time? Failing one Dictator, erm, seizing power, perhaps we could just agree on some group of people who will be the dictators, and not revisit that for a while. Agreeing on small group of people seems easy to arrange. Here's a strawman proposal for how that might look: 1. Per [1], the Oversight Board creates an ad-hoc 3-person UI Committee. 2. The initial voting members will be mtd, garycmartin, and (a third person to be determined). 3. The initial term will be for six months. Next, there are details that we need to agree upon. For example, what does the committee do and at what rate does it do it? Another strawman: 4. The committee will meet as needed in order to address Queries received by any of its voting members. 5. The committee will meet within 2 weeks of receiving a Query. 6. Proposed Responses will be accepted by the committee by majority vote. 7. Minutes, received Queries, proposed Responses, and related discussion will be archived and organized by the Committee Secretary on the wiki. Finally, there some harder questions that I don't have easy answers for: a) Who do we expect to do the work of formulating responses to Queries? b) How will we make the committee successful and fun? In particular, how do we expect to organize the performance of the work that is necessary to prepare for and to follow through on the committee's decisions? (i.e., who's actually going to go out to collect experience reports, to perform user testing, or to develop prototypes when the Committee determines that these actions are necessary in order to properly respond to a Query?) c) What kinds of disputes and/or grievances do we anticipate and how do we expect to resolve them? Thoughts? Regards, Michael [1]: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Governance#Committees -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [Systems] [Marketing] A little change to www.sugarlabs.org
Sure--if it helps I can change that. I should be able to make that change, along with the new page, early this week, I'll keep everyone posted. Christian On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 7:23 AM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.dewrote: On 10/15/2010 04:00 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt wrote: Hi--I can add this information this weekend. Christian Christian - can you change the page to not open the links in a new window? That would be great, it really hurts us a lot! Regards, Simon -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [Systems] [Marketing] A little change to www.sugarlabs.org
Hi--I can add this information this weekend. Christian On Oct 15, 2010, at 6:36 AM, Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org wrote: On Wed, 2010-10-13 at 13:03 +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 12:57, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de wrote: On 10/13/2010 10:49 AM, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: [adding the IAEP, marketing and systems mailing lists] Can someone that has access please just make this change. I already asked for that 1 or 2 years ago. Maybe the feedback from the field helps to actually make it happen. Actually we already had feedback from the field more than a year ago: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2009-April/000910.html Christian Mark Schmidt is the current maintainer of www.sugarlabs.org . Christian, we should create a service page with the admin contacts for the web site: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Service/www You can copy-paste this template: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Service/zzz_template -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] modified Home View
Comments inline... On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Gary--thanks for the interesting mockup! My feedback: The spiral is interesting and worth exploring. But I would continue to focus the view on a single organizational system, whether ring, spiral, freeform, list, etc. This preserves the integrity and extensibility of the UI views metaphor, and doesn't overload the screen. Because the iconographic language is already very abstract and pared down, we need to make sure that the interaction paradigm is clear and focused. Based on your rendering I think that the spiral in itself is definitely worth exploring further, and I like Walter's idea that it could start as a ring and grow into a spiral when more activities are added. That seems like an elegant and scalable solution. Favoriting could happen in the Journal, or we could opt to always display all activities--either seems like a potentially workable solution... We should also come back to the resume/start new proposal and figure out if we want to adopt any of the proposals. Christian On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com wrote: On 8 Aug 2010, at 14:54, Gary Martin wrote: On 8 Aug 2010, at 13:42, Hilaire Fernandes hilaire.fernan...@gmail.com wrote: Le 08/08/2010 13:59, Walter Bender a écrit : See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Spiral_Home_View#Detailed_Description for the latest screen shots. I made some changes to the way I generate the Spiral -- I start from the outside rather than the inside to minimize the visual disruption between the Ring and the Spiral. I don't ever shrink the icon size in the Ring, but do so in the Spiral once the minimum radius is reached. Perhaps most controversial, I introduce an intermediate icon size between standard and small along the way. Gary: I'll post a new patch to the ticket momentarily. (http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/2143) Comments/suggestions? Don't you need a way to recreate a taxonomy when the numbers of activities grows? Search (ghost out non matches, as per neighbourhood view design) in the fav. view would seem an ideal next step here when dealing with many activities. Allowing drag and drop that would trigger a switch from a fixed layout pattern to random mode (with the layout initially intact), and/or reordering the sequence by drag'n'drop insertions would allow some flexibility. Ideally icons would be either snapped to the shape (dragging N units close to a snapped icon or the XO) or freeform positioned (by dragging N units away from their/a set position). With different icons in either state for a single view (I.e. a spiral with a few frequent icons dragged out into empty space). The current random view could then go away (as each view could be as random or not as desired). Just as a follow up to my above comment, attached is a quick home view vector mockup. It assumes the list view is gone, with Journal stars being used to indicate (arbitrary entry) home favourites. It shows a 'snap to spiral' pattern, with several random clusters of activities/objects previously dragged out of the pattern by the user. Coloured icons would resume specific activity id objects, grey icons would be used to launch new instances (with the usual resume drop down palette of N most recent activities of that type). The spiral would re-flow once an icon is dragged out and dropped (in empty space), or dragged in and dropped (on an already snapped icon). If all icons were dragged out you would have what would look like the random layout, dragging an icon back onto the central XO would start reflowing a snapped pattern design again, as would adding new activity favourites. Again, just a future possible approach. Definitely no need to try and land something like this all in one go. --Gary But Walters spirals, without any of the above type extras, is still a huge improvement for those that want to fav many activities. I'm already hard-pressed to find new activities to fill up the view for testing, really scrapping the barrel. For those of you involved in deployments — roughly how many activities do you think kids/teachers currently commonly have? For example grouping related activities in spiral segments and reinforcing this with common icon color scheme in these segments. -1 No to a color scheme here. Colour is already used for identity. It's bad enough that the GC activities, and a few others, break the colour metaphor by not bothering with the fill_color and stroke_color variables — adding even more colour metaphors would not help! ;) --Gary -- anyth
Re: [Sugar-devel] modified Home View
Comments below: On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 11:42 AM, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.comwrote: On 9 Aug 2010, at 15:37, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: (1) Can we reach consensus re spiraling in from the MAXIMUM radius once the Ring is full or spiraling out from the MINIMUM radius once the Ring is full? I would say spiraling in from max radius. That way we can maximize the efficiency of the ring, before transitioning to the spiral. Oh well I guess I just got out voted (think max inwards looks ugly, backwards, unexpected for a spiral) ;) Sorry, maybe I'm not fully clear on the behavior. I DO think that the spiral should start from within and spiral out. In my last comment, I was more thinking along the lines of first having the ring expand to max size, THEN switching to spiral when more activities are added. Gary, I thought your mockup looked great, where the spiral begins above the XO and spirals out with enough padding between segments to not make it feel too dense. I think we should do whatever we can to achieve this look. Walter, looking at your mockups I'd try to come up with an algorithm that gives us a looser spiral with more space between each segment of the spiral, more along the lines of what Gary mocked up. The screenshots on the wiki look very dense. Gary's mockup really proved to me that this can work! Yes, maybe that will help remove all the dead inner white space when using the max inward spiral. (2) Is is OK to add an INTERMEDIATE icon size between STANDARD and SMALL? I'd even go further and suggest that we could have icons scale dynamically within the ring/spiral, to achieve maximum balance between the available space and icon legibility. FWIW I was testing Walters latest patch today and noted that the existing original ring code did much more with icon scaling than the current patch. In the low icon number count, icons start large and then gradually reduce in size before filling the minimum radius. Roughly the first 13 icons form the min radius ring are at their largest size, then up to about 19 icons the they slowly reduce in size down to the next preset standard, at which point the ring starts growing in radius. Once the radius hits max, I believe that's when the icons start to scale down further (not sure if this is a sudden size change to another small default or some gradual reduction). Walter, your latest patch does show a big visual jump once the large icons reach the maximum radius, as that point it triggers a large icon size step down and the ring goes from full height to about half height with on extra icon. Am I correct in assuming that the style.STANDARD_ICON_SIZE, MEDIUM, and SMALL are there to improve icon rendering/cache efficiency? I vaguely remember some pre-rendering to set sizes discussion/work some time back. Not sure if we mess that up by using arbitrary values? My only concern here is that we'd need to find the right balance so as not to interrupt the general zoom metaphor, going from large to small icons (home to neighborhood). This means we probably need to put a cap on the bottom end of the scale, not allowing icons to become too small so that they could reach the size of icons in the groups view... All this will take lots of exploration I think before getting it right. I can work on mockups if that would help... I'd say apply the patch and/or tinker with the current code (it's a single file, and just one short method* that pretty much fits in one page of source), I found trying to layout icons accurately in a spiral for a mockup quite an art in itself ;) * _calculate_radius_and_icon_size is the method, and it's in /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/jarabe/desktop/favoriteslayout.py (3) In regard to Q1, I could trigger the spiral before the Ring hits the MAXIMUM radius, perhaps at MAXIMUM-icon_size? (I've not illustrated this yet.) Yes, I think that probably makes sense. We should play through all the possibilities and then make a decision based on what works best... I was looking into growing the ring up from the min radius (large icons) up to the half way point between max and min radius. Icons would then smoothly reduce to the next standard size down. The spiral would then trigger, and grow both outwards and inwards. Once max/min are reached, icons are then gradually down sized again to fit. Might just be easier/close enough to use the old ring code and trigger something close to Walter's v1 spiral code at the halfway between max and min radius. --Gary -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.orghttp://www.sugarlabs.org -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.comanyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_
Re: [Sugar-devel] modified Home View
Hi Gary--thanks for the interesting mockup! My feedback: The spiral is interesting and worth exploring. But I would continue to focus the view on a single organizational system, whether ring, spiral, freeform, list, etc. This preserves the integrity and extensibility of the UI views metaphor, and doesn't overload the screen. Because the iconographic language is already very abstract and pared down, we need to make sure that the interaction paradigm is clear and focused. Based on your rendering I think that the spiral in itself is definitely worth exploring further, and I like Walter's idea that it could start as a ring and grow into a spiral when more activities are added. That seems like an elegant and scalable solution. Favoriting could happen in the Journal, or we could opt to always display all activities--either seems like a potentially workable solution... We should also come back to the resume/start new proposal and figure out if we want to adopt any of the proposals. Christian On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.comwrote: On 8 Aug 2010, at 14:54, Gary Martin wrote: On 8 Aug 2010, at 13:42, Hilaire Fernandes hilaire.fernan...@gmail.com wrote: Le 08/08/2010 13:59, Walter Bender a écrit : See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Spiral_Home_View#Detailed_Description for the latest screen shots. I made some changes to the way I generate the Spiral -- I start from the outside rather than the inside to minimize the visual disruption between the Ring and the Spiral. I don't ever shrink the icon size in the Ring, but do so in the Spiral once the minimum radius is reached. Perhaps most controversial, I introduce an intermediate icon size between standard and small along the way. Gary: I'll post a new patch to the ticket momentarily. (http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/2143) Comments/suggestions? Don't you need a way to recreate a taxonomy when the numbers of activities grows? Search (ghost out non matches, as per neighbourhood view design) in the fav. view would seem an ideal next step here when dealing with many activities. Allowing drag and drop that would trigger a switch from a fixed layout pattern to random mode (with the layout initially intact), and/or reordering the sequence by drag'n'drop insertions would allow some flexibility. Ideally icons would be either snapped to the shape (dragging N units close to a snapped icon or the XO) or freeform positioned (by dragging N units away from their/a set position). With different icons in either state for a single view (I.e. a spiral with a few frequent icons dragged out into empty space). The current random view could then go away (as each view could be as random or not as desired). Just as a follow up to my above comment, attached is a quick home view vector mockup. It assumes the list view is gone, with Journal stars being used to indicate (arbitrary entry) home favourites. It shows a 'snap to spiral' pattern, with several random clusters of activities/objects previously dragged out of the pattern by the user. Coloured icons would resume specific activity id objects, grey icons would be used to launch new instances (with the usual resume drop down palette of N most recent activities of that type). The spiral would re-flow once an icon is dragged out and dropped (in empty space), or dragged in and dropped (on an already snapped icon). If all icons were dragged out you would have what would look like the random layout, dragging an icon back onto the central XO would start reflowing a snapped pattern design again, as would adding new activity favourites. Again, just a future possible approach. Definitely no need to try and land something like this all in one go. --Gary But Walters spirals, without any of the above type extras, is still a huge improvement for those that want to fav many activities. I'm already hard-pressed to find new activities to fill up the view for testing, really scrapping the barrel. For those of you involved in deployments — roughly how many activities do you think kids/teachers currently commonly have? For example grouping related activities in spiral segments and reinforcing this with common icon color scheme in these segments. -1 No to a color scheme here. Colour is already used for identity. It's bad enough that the GC activities, and a few others, break the colour metaphor by not bothering with the fill_color and stroke_color variables — adding even more colour metaphors would not help! ;) --Gary -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Home view activities layout
Starring activites in the journal to appear in Home makes sense. And the spiral as overflow for the ring, if executed well, seems like a good idea in order to preserve the general UI metaphor. We should test a range of different variations to end up with a design that is both efficient and visually elegant. I think we should also investigate a scalable grid view with thumbnails--I still believe this would make for a great counterpart to the ring/spiral. I'll look for the original mockups and start exploring this idea further... Christian On Aug 3, 2010, at 8:10 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 7:58 AM, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi Walter, On 3 Aug 2010, at 11:39, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 5:45 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 11:39, Martin Dengler mar...@martindengler.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 11:32:34PM -0400, Walter Bender wrote: On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 8:25 PM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: Hi Christian, Hi Chris--to address scalability we have a list view from which you can select favorite activities to go in the ring. This is a similar technique to the OSX dock or Windows taskbar. I don't think this is working out. For OLPC (and perhaps SoaS as well?) we're shipping with every activity other than Log and Terminal favorited by default, after receiving reports that kids didn't understand how to launch activities otherwise. Here is a tighter spiral of 74 icons for the home view (running in the Sugar emulator at 800x600). http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/images/f/f0/Spiral-home-view.png +1 Sorry if this has already been considered, but maybe the favorites view should only contain the few most used activities and the rest can be launched from the list view? If this is not viable for some reason, maybe we need to fix or remove the list view? Well, I think we are bumping up against three orthogonal issues here: (1) how to make the Home View support more icons (without needing to scroll or pan -- we saw problems with that in the original donut view and still see it with the control panel -- this is the goal of the spiral. (The suggestion to shrink icons down to a pixel is a nice one, but rapidly degrades into something unusable in IMHO and requires yet another UI affordance: magnify. I think we can avoid such complexity for quite some time yet.) One fallback I keep thinking about is an overflow/more... icon as the last available icon in a favourite layout. In much the same way as the toolbar overflow drop down menu, it would act as the final catch all for an excess of activity icons. Alternatively it could be an option for where the main list view functionality goes if we remove that view and decide Journal is not where the functionality should go — the drop down could hold all non favourites activities. (2) the list view is intended to organize which icons are available on the home view and to access infrequently used icons. It also gives the user info re which version of an activity is installed. The current design causes confusion with the Journal and has very limited capability relative to the cost of supporting an alternative view. I would vote to move this functionality to the Journal: starred activities (items) show up on the Home View. Yes I think this has lots of potential. It does raise the issue/ feature of being able to fav non-bundles and have them appear on your home view (i.e. some specific PDF books you are currently reading), this needs some thought as the home view would now contain some activity icons that changed to show most recent usage plus provide 'start new' functionality, and others that always just resumed a the same specific activity id. Perhaps in this case we would revert to the old grey icon / start new for activity bundles (with resume in their drop down menu) — oh Lordy... ;) But this is a seemingly wholly separate topic from #1. (3) even with the above resolved, we have arguably too little control over the home view, both in terns of what appears -- several requests have been made for the ability to have views of multiple collections: e.g., school view, home view, etc. and the ability to customize (as the Random View currently supports). (Also, there is often a request for a background image for the Home View.) All of these are features that could be added incrementally, preferably after we settle item #2. (My favorite solution for collections is to allow multiple stars, like in gmail.) Multiple stars, like gmail? Hmm can't see that gmail feature — did you mean multiple labels/tags? If we went with the Journal favs s howing up in home view, we could go the whole hog and use the Jour nal tags as well. That way you could view
Re: [Sugar-devel] Home view activities layout
Hi Gary--I think this looks quite nice. This actually seems like a nice evolution on the simple ring, though it would be good to see how it adapts from the basic layout and with different numbers of activities... Christian On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.comwrote: Hi Christian, On 3 Aug 2010, at 14:12, Christian Marc Schmidt wrote: Starring activites in the journal to appear in Home makes sense. And the spiral as overflow for the ring, if executed well, seems like a good idea in order to preserve the general UI metaphor. We should test a range of different variations to end up with a design that is both efficient and visually elegant. I think we should also investigate a scalable grid view with thumbnails--I still believe this would make for a great counterpart to the ring/spiral. I'll look for the original mockups and start exploring this idea further... Here's a quick vector mockup: - list view toolbar icon gone - spiral icon default view* - grey activity icons are Journal starred .xo bundles, provide the 'Start new' functionality and existing resume of last N recent entries access** - coloured activity icons are starred Journal entries created by user or others (resumes that entry, shows past versions?)*** *note the duplicate activity icons, I wanted to see what home would look like once multiple activities of the same time could be favoured. ** note the 'Start shared with --' option, and idea/request that's been bouncing around for a while, example use case would be to start a new Chat directly with the local neighbourhood, or a specific friend (rather than faffing around with the activity toolbar after a new activity instance has been created). *** we need to be very sure users are clear on the new vs resume distinction, otherwise we're just back to users resuming, say, a nice painting they starred and then possibly messing it up or manually wiping it because they want to make something new. Versions would obviously help recover from such actions. --Gary Christian On Aug 3, 2010, at 8:10 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 7:58 AM, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi Walter, On 3 Aug 2010, at 11:39, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 5:45 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 11:39, Martin Dengler mar...@martindengler.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 11:32:34PM -0400, Walter Bender wrote: On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 8:25 PM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: Hi Christian, Hi Chris--to address scalability we have a list view from which you can select favorite activities to go in the ring. This is a similar technique to the OSX dock or Windows taskbar. I don't think this is working out. For OLPC (and perhaps SoaS as well?) we're shipping with every activity other than Log and Terminal favorited by default, after receiving reports that kids didn't understand how to launch activities otherwise. Here is a tighter spiral of 74 icons for the home view (running in the Sugar emulator at 800x600). http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/images/f/f0/Spiral-home-view.png +1 Sorry if this has already been considered, but maybe the favorites view should only contain the few most used activities and the rest can be launched from the list view? If this is not viable for some reason, maybe we need to fix or remove the list view? Well, I think we are bumping up against three orthogonal issues here: (1) how to make the Home View support more icons (without needing to scroll or pan -- we saw problems with that in the original donut view and still see it with the control panel -- this is the goal of the spiral. (The suggestion to shrink icons down to a pixel is a nice one, but rapidly degrades into something unusable in IMHO and requires yet another UI affordance: magnify. I think we can avoid such complexity for quite some time yet.) One fallback I keep thinking about is an overflow/more... icon as the last available icon in a favourite layout. In much the same way as the toolbar overflow drop down menu, it would act as the final catch all for an excess of activity icons. Alternatively it could be an option for where the main list view functionality goes if we remove that view and decide Journal is not where the functionality should go — the drop down could hold all non favourites activities. (2) the list view is intended to organize which icons are available on the home view and to access infrequently used icons. It also gives the user info re which version of an activity is installed. The current design causes confusion with the Journal and has very limited capability relative to the cost of supporting an alternative view. I would vote to move this functionality to the Journal: starred activities (items
Re: [Sugar-devel] Home view activities layout
Again, I think that there is likely a better solution to the question of scalability. An extensible (scrolling or panning) grid or freeform view showing activity previews would not only convey more information about the last activity, it would also make the home view feel more personalized. For scalability we could try something akin to OSX spaces or iOS, adding additional screens that kids can pan between as the collection of activities grows. I don't disagree with the premise--I just think that there is a better solution than the spiral (it, too, will eventually run out of space). My suggestion is to explore an extensible grid/freeform view--there are already existing comps from a year or two ago that we can leverage and bring up-to-date. Christian On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.dewrote: On 30.07.2010, at 20:25, Chris Ball wrote: Hi Christian, Hi Chris--to address scalability we have a list view from which you can select favorite activities to go in the ring. This is a similar technique to the OSX dock or Windows taskbar. I don't think this is working out. Yep. The frame menu is hardly discoverable. And even though it's there I tend to forget about it. And when I used it I press F3 and wonder why the home view doesn't show up (because the list view feels so unlike home). To solve at least this, F3 should toggle between home and list view. But +1 to spiral from here ... - Bert - -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Home view activities layout
Thanks for forwarding this Gary. My feeling is that the views in home should be motivated by functional differences, for example ring vs. freeform (one allows positioning, the other positions elements linearly). To me, triangle, square, and spiral seem a little to obscure to be in the core build--while they are great experiments, I'm not sure I see a clear use case for them other than experimentation. I do think that there are opportunities for different views, but would love to first figure out collectively what the functional differences/affordances are that we are designing for... Does that make sense? Christian On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 10:20 PM, Gary Martin garycmar...@googlemail.comwrote: On 30 Jul 2010, at 02:00, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: Hi, On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 03:57:35PM -0400, Walter Bender wrote: See http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/ModifyingSugar (towards the bottom of the page). +1 on the spiral. I like it too. I'm worried that it would scale badly, but Walter suggested just tightening the spiral, and that sounds good to me. Is anyone on the Design Team reading? +1, have cc'ed Eben and Christian incase they miss this thread. What would it take to move forward with (a) including spiral, and (b) making it default? Should we ask for input from deployments, too? Also, how would people feel about a patch that: * allows drag and drop when in a non-freeform view * if an icon is moved while in a non-freeform view, the current layout switches to freeform, and the position of all the activities is saved as the base for the new freeform configuration. That sounds reasonable as well. The auto-mode change to freeform layout when dragging could be easily triggered accidentally when clicking, so that might want to only fire once an icon is dragged over a certain number of pixels. The visual change of the layout toolbar icon, as the switch happens, will provide help some additional visual feedback. FWIW: Eben's original proposal (if I remember correctly) for dragging in the home view was to snap the icon to the nearest point on the fixed layout path and reflow the others to make space. Allowing organisation within the confines of the current layout. Regards, --Gary (So, going to spiral, dragging one icon out of place would enable freeform -- overwriting any previous freeform configuration -- then going back to spiral using the layout menu would put all icons in their spiral place, then manually going back to freeform using the menu would restore you to spiral with the one activity you moved back in the place you moved it to. Hope that made sense.) Thanks! - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org One Laptop Per Child ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Home view activities layout
Hi Chris--to address scalability we have a list view from which you can select favorite activities to go in the ring. This is a similar technique to the OSX dock or Windows taskbar. But you raise a good point. I've always thought that there may be an opportunity for a scalable grid view, not unlike the iPhone, that could also show you thumbnail previews. We could adopt a paginating metaphor similar to the iPhone or even OSX spaces to make the view infinitely scalable (the freeform view could, for that matter, also utilize thumbnail previews). Then we are not only addressing scalability, but also offering an additional functional benefit. Perhaps this would be worth exploring? Christian On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 7:24 PM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: Hi Christian, I do think that there are opportunities for different views, but would love to first figure out collectively what the functional differences/affordances are that we are designing for... The functional difference I'm interested in is supporting more activities; the ring view was designed when we shipped half as many activities as we do now, and I think it's reached its scalability limit. Thanks, - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org One Laptop Per Child -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [Design] Resume/New pie menu menu mockup
Hi Gary I think this is very interesting. The visual design isn't quite there yet, but I think that the interaction is a good one to consider. There is something quite intuitive about maintaining the selected item at the center. I think we could try a few alternate visual explorations, such as what would happen if the second ring wasn't as articulated. For instance, what about having a gray background overlay covering the entire view, and removing the gray hairlines around the elements in the pie menu, but otherwise leaving the information where it is? I also wonder about showing both text and icon, and whether we should treat this more as an additional layer on the home UI, with hover states for each icon in the menu as you would expect from the main view. If it's OK, I will try a few variations since I think this does have potential! Christian On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Gary C Martin garycmar...@googlemail.com wrote: Here's a mockup for Walter's previous pie menu suggestion (starting a new thread as Sascha though the last one was getting too long). Pie menus have some nice UI properties, but can also be difficult to get working right for all cases (I've tried not to cheat in the mockup). I'd consider this a more touch friendly layout than current palettes/hover-menus (something the fullscreen dialogue approach was also trying to take into account). The inner two choices appear instantly on click. The outer segments appear on delay hover, with a 90% alpha to help keep the user in context (though given our ongoing lack of compositing, solid fill might have to do). Rolling over a segment lights up its fill, the whole of each segment needs to accept hits. --Gary -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Using providers database for 3G modem configuration
This is just a small aesthetic side-note, but it would look better if the country/provider/plan text was right-aligned like the labels below, and if the description above (You will need to provide ...) spanned the entire width of the window. Otherwise this looks great! Christian On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 7:07 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@tomeuvizoso.net wrote: Hi, anybody has input on this proposed feature? http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1630 http://people.collabora.co.uk/~tomeu/providers_database.png Thanks, Tomeu -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Schoolserver icon
I can try to find the original icon we designed back in 2006. It was similar to the designs Gary sent over, but simplified... Christian On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 4:14 AM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de wrote: On 29.06.2010, at 03:49, Gary Martin wrote: On 28 Jun 2010, at 23:57, Bernie Innocenti wrote: FWIW There are some simple school house type icons that could sugarise well, pretty much something like this very quick shape, perhaps making sure it's not too church like. There's other variations that can be flat top based, and/or place a round clock face in the top section and a couple of windows in the lower section. I could generate a few versions around this theme and see what works for folks? I'm ok with the one you posted, but I'm not a designer so I'll simply step back and enjoy the fight :-) Here's a few more misc. plays around school building shape. Maybe I'm being too literal here and should stray more down the server/resource aspect, rather than a school aspect? Shout if you think one works better than others (or some specific feature): Schoolserver icon ideas.pdf /me likes the lower right one. - Bert - -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Keyboard navigability of the Sugar UI
Hi Bernie The proposed keyboard shortcuts sound good. Maybe we can chat about the TBD items? Christian Sent from my iPhone On Apr 27, 2010, at 7:25 AM, Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org wrote: Today I filed a bug to keep track of an issue that has been bothering me for a long time: http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1969 Being an important UI issue, we'd need a good discussion with the design team. Unfortunately, we cannot always follow existing Gnome conventions for keyboard shortcuts. For example, rename cannot be done with F2 because it's already used for the buddy view. -8--8--8--8--8- The Sugar UI should be 100% navigable without using a mouse. Besides being an accessibility issue, it's important for quick navigation, especially for users stuck with a broken XO touchpads. Some proposed changes: * Favorites view * Search should be enabled in the shell view * A caret should appear when the user starts to type * Non-matching activities should be grayed out * TAB should cycle through possible completions * Cursor keys should cycle through the icons * Journal * Cursor up/down should scroll a caret on the list * ENTER should open the selected item (Linux/Windows style) * Rename item: TBD (just type something?) * Go to proprieties: TBD (cursor right?) * Change volume: TBD * Unmount all hot pluggable devices: TBD * Activities list view * Should behave like the journal * Network Neighborhood * Similar to favorites view * Toolbars * There should be a key to move the focus to the toolbars (alt-space?) -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] Test recap: start new vs. resume
Hi all Yesterday, Simon and Gerald filled the group in on the results of the tests conducted recently to understand the merits of a home view with start new as the default behavior for activity icons in the ring. The interesting conclusion in both cases was that children don't necessarily have an idea of whether they want to resume a previous activity or start a new one *before* clicking the activity icon. Rather, they start by simply wanting to engage with a particular activity, and the decision whether to resume or start new follows. In other words, the two functions are equal, without one taking precedence over the other. Children appear to want the choice. We have seen this expressed in the desire to want to start new or resume directly from inside the activity, though there will be other possible solutions. Also noteworthy is that children don't discover the hover palette at first, so it is questionable whether we can rely on the menu it's current implementation to accomplish our goals for start new/resume. I suggested that we reconvene on Saturday at 10:30 EST / 3:30 UTC to brainstorm design solutions. Thanks, Christian ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [FIELDBACK] Naming Alert
Does 10:30AM EST on Sunday work? Christian On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 3:14 AM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote: Christian, What time would that be? Gerald On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 12:34 AM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Gerald and Simon It would be great to debrief in detail on your findings from the tests. Could we try to meet this Sunday (instead of Saturday), same time? Thanks, Christian On Mar 2, 2010, at 2:36 PM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote: Simon, I conducted the test we discussed with my 5th graders today. There were six students involved in the focus group. First of all, they concurred with your results. They loved the feature of being able to either Start New or Resume right from the Home View. As did your students, mine remarked that it was way easier than going to the Journal. They also mentioned that more often than not they are continuing past work, as opposed to starting something new, so they found this feature very valuable. The Naming alert (present in this build) was something they found in their way. They are used to naming their work right from the activity, so this seemed like an extra step to them. They are not used to making notes in the Journal, so this feature didn't add much for them, although I certainly see how it could be really useful. I hope this is helpful. Best, Gerald On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 3:05 AM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de wrote: Hi, I did a little survey in the Planetarium pilot last week [1]. The subject was Start new vs Restart in the home view. Christian did provide a test case and I made a Soas version of Sugar that let's you change the behavior with a button in the Home View [2]. While of course there were interesting observations to make about starting activities one other user feedback caught my eye, too. There was a question in the survey: The naming alert. A little background: When I started the pilot, stopping the activity was a hard task for the learners. First you need to find the stop button, then you had to dismiss the naming alert. I use the wording dismiss because for new learners it does not make much sense, since they don't understand the concept of the Journal etc yet. What I did was, I removed the naming alert which improved temporarily somehow the situation. Since I wanted the kids to take notes I introduced an workflow introduced by the teacher. After each lesson (normally the kids work in one activity in a lesson), I let them take notes in the Journal entry. This works quite well and the kids like it a lot to do this. I tell them: Describe in your words what you did today. You can write there as well if you did like it or not, or if it was hard task. And sometimes I give them a few words that should be contained. Like coordinating system when i did a lesson in Etoys on that. When doing the test the Naming Alert was present in the build. And the testers said: Oh, that is nice, so I do not have to search for the Journal entry to take my notes. I asked them what does it look like and they said: A bit like the Journal. What I concluded is: For the workflow it is important to have a way to directly take notes related to that activity you are doing at the moment. I still think, that it would be better to have that option in the activity toolbar, like discussed in the Design meetings. And I will strike for getting this into 0.90 :) But I think, if the kids use the Journal and take notes, the naming alert is not such a bad thing for 0.84. Thanks, Simon [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Deployments/Planetarium [2] http://shell.sugarlabs.org/~erikos/soas-design-test-DE.iso, http://shell.sugarlabs.org/~erikos/soas-design-test-EN.iso ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [FIELDBACK] Naming Alert
Hi Gerald and Simon It would be great to debrief in detail on your findings from the tests. Could we try to meet this Sunday (instead of Saturday), same time? Thanks, Christian On Mar 2, 2010, at 2:36 PM, Gerald Ardito gma...@gmail.com wrote: Simon, I conducted the test we discussed with my 5th graders today. There were six students involved in the focus group. First of all, they concurred with your results. They loved the feature of being able to either Start New or Resume right from the Home View. As did your students, mine remarked that it was way easier than going to the Journal. They also mentioned that more often than not they are continuing past work, as opposed to starting something new, so they found this feature very valuable. The Naming alert (present in this build) was something they found in their way. They are used to naming their work right from the activity, so this seemed like an extra step to them. They are not used to making notes in the Journal, so this feature didn't add much for them, although I certainly see how it could be really useful. I hope this is helpful. Best, Gerald On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 3:05 AM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de wrote: Hi, I did a little survey in the Planetarium pilot last week [1]. The subject was Start new vs Restart in the home view. Christian did provide a test case and I made a Soas version of Sugar that let's you change the behavior with a button in the Home View [2]. While of course there were interesting observations to make about starting activities one other user feedback caught my eye, too. There was a question in the survey: The naming alert. A little background: When I started the pilot, stopping the activity was a hard task for the learners. First you need to find the stop button, then you had to dismiss the naming alert. I use the wording dismiss because for new learners it does not make much sense, since they don't understand the concept of the Journal etc yet. What I did was, I removed the naming alert which improved temporarily somehow the situation. Since I wanted the kids to take notes I introduced an workflow introduced by the teacher. After each lesson (normally the kids work in one activity in a lesson), I let them take notes in the Journal entry. This works quite well and the kids like it a lot to do this. I tell them: Describe in your words what you did today. You can write there as well if you did like it or not, or if it was hard task. And sometimes I give them a few words that should be contained. Like coordinating system when i did a lesson in Etoys on that. When doing the test the Naming Alert was present in the build. And the testers said: Oh, that is nice, so I do not have to search for the Journal entry to take my notes. I asked them what does it look like and they said: A bit like the Journal. What I concluded is: For the workflow it is important to have a way to directly take notes related to that activity you are doing at the moment. I still think, that it would be better to have that option in the activity toolbar, like discussed in the Design meetings. And I will strike for getting this into 0.90 :) But I think, if the kids use the Journal and take notes, the naming alert is not such a bad thing for 0.84. Thanks, Simon [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Deployments/Planetarium [2] http://shell.sugarlabs.org/~erikos/soas-design-test-DE.iso, http://shell.sugarlabs.org/~erikos/soas-design-test-EN.iso ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] 0.88 Meeting --- 20. Feb 2010 (15:30 UTC)
Hi Simon--unfortunately I won't be able to make it this Saturday, but I really would like to hear the outcome of the tests. Could we move the meeting to later that day, say around 2pm EST? Christian On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 3:12 AM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.dewrote: Sorry, of course the meeting is the 20th of February. Regards, Simon On 02/18/2010 09:11 AM, Simon Schampijer wrote: Hi, this Saturday we will have our bi-weekly design meeting. We will chat about the outcome of the testing of the Start new vs Resume behavior. As a second item I would like to discuss the questions raised regarding the 3G Feature by Daniel [1]. Daniel, if you have time on Saturday, it would be great if you could attend. Thanks, Simon Channel: #sugar-meeting (irc.frenode) Time: 15:30 UTC [1] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2010-February/022541.html -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Test protocol for Resume vs. Start new
Thanks Gary, I'll have a look at this. I'm worried that conducting tests with novice users might be inconclusive, given that we are testing schoolchildren. But I am also not an educator. I'd be happy to work with someone with an educational background to put something together that might be suitable as a test for new users. For now, though, I'd suggest we stick to our plan to see where it gets us. Christian On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.comwrote: Hi Christian, On 23 Jan 2010, at 15:01, Christian Marc Schmidt wrote: Hi all: For our meeting at 10:30pm EST today, I put together a draft of a test protocol (in email body below). Please look it over and feel free to edit or add to. Thanks, Christian -- Sugar Home View Concept Testing Draft 01/23/10 Goal: Evaluate the Home view for Resume activity and Start new activity functionality. Protocol: Alternate between two builds, one per student: The current build [Build A], which makes Resume the default action, and a test build [Build B] making Start new the default action. Duration: 5 mins per student Student Profile: Should be a current user (not a first-time user). Age and grade should be recorded, along with duration of overall Sugar experience. 1. Begin at Home screen after boot up 2. Test cognitive model • Describe what you see in this view. • What are the symbols in the ring? • Describe what each symbol in the ring is. • Do you know why the symbols are different colors? • What activity did you last work on? 3. Test pathways [Alternate between two pathways, one per student] Pathway 1: • Show how you would go back to the activity you last worked on. Describe what you are doing. [Student shows pathway to resume activity.] • Now, show what you would do if you wanted to start a new [Write/Draw/Browse, etc.; should be of the same kind] activity. Describe what you are doing. [Student shows pathway to start a new activity of the same kind.] • Now, show what you would do if you wanted to start a new [Write/Draw/Browse, etc.; should be a different activity than the current one] activity. [Student shows pathway to start a new activity different from the current activity.] Pathway 2: • Show how you would start a new activity. Describe what you are doing. [Student opens a new activity.] • Now, show what you would do if you wanted to go back to the activity you last worked on. Describe what you are doing. [Student shows pathway to resume a previous activity.] • Now, show what you would do if you wanted to start a new [Write/Draw/Browse, etc.; should be of the same kind] activity. Describe what you are doing.[Student shows pathway to start a new activity of the same kind.] 4. General questions If you could change anything about Sugar, what would make it easier for you to go back to a previous activity? What would make it easier for you to start a new activity? Is there anything else about Sugar that you would change? I know we've drifted from a usability study model, to a focus group model for practical classroom reasons – but I though Jakob Nielson's latest article was a timely piece worth a quick read through given we are going to be getting feedback from existing Sugar users. Summary: It's more difficult to conduct usability studies with experienced users than with novices, and the improvements are usually smaller. Still, improving expert performance is often worth the effort. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/experienced-users.html Regards, --Gary -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] Test protocol for Resume vs. Start new
Hi all: For our meeting at 10:30pm EST today, I put together a draft of a test protocol (in email body below). Please look it over and feel free to edit or add to. Thanks, Christian -- * Sugar Home View Concept Testing* Draft 01/23/10 *Goal*: Evaluate the Home view for Resume activity and Start new activity functionality. *Protocol*: Alternate between two builds, one per student: The current build [Build A], which makes Resume the default action, and a test build [Build B] making Start new the default action. *Duration*: 5 mins per student *Student Profile*: Should be a current user (not a first-time user). Age and grade should be recorded, along with duration of overall Sugar experience. 1. Begin at Home screen after boot up 2. Test cognitive model 1. Describe what you see in this view. 2. What are the symbols in the ring? 3. Describe what each symbol in the ring is. 4. Do you know why the symbols are different colors? 5. What activity did you last work on? 3. Test pathways [Alternate between two pathways, one per student] Pathway 1: 1. Show how you would go back to the activity you last worked on. Describe what you are doing. [Student shows pathway to resume activity.] 2. Now, show what you would do if you wanted to start a new [Write/Draw/Browse, etc.; should be of the same kind] activity. Describe what you are doing. [Student shows pathway to start a new activity of the same kind.] 3. Now, show what you would do if you wanted to start a new [Write/Draw/Browse, etc.; should be a different activity than the current one] activity. [Student shows pathway to start a new activity different from the current activity.] Pathway 2: 1. Show how you would start a new activity. Describe what you are doing. [Student opens a new activity.] 2. Now, show what you would do if you wanted to go back to the activity you last worked on. Describe what you are doing. [Student shows pathway to resume a previous activity.] 3. Now, show what you would do if you wanted to start a new [Write/Draw/Browse, etc.; should be of the same kind] activity. Describe what you are doing.[Student shows pathway to start a new activity of the same kind.] 4. General questions If you could change anything about Sugar, what would make it easier for you to go back to a previous activity? What would make it easier for you to start a new activity? Is there anything else about Sugar that you would change? ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Call for testing
On Jan 17, 2010, at 6:14 PM, Wade Brainerd wad...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 6:01 PM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de wrote: Great, I will think about the test protocol, too. And, i will work on a patch that helps us to easily switch between the two scenarios for testing. Thanks for all those thoughts - I think we are on the right track, IMO, automated evaluation would also be useful. For example, logging how often various menu items are clicked. Just adding a log print to each UI control would be sufficient; we can harvest and analyze the logs later. For example, it might be useful to know how many new activities are started before/after the change. If it goes up by a little, we're probably okay. But if it goes up drastically, it might be a problem. I don't think we need to get into deep statistical analysis, but it might be useful to have the data available. -Wade That is a very good idea. How long would it take to implement? Christian ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Mockups of Home view showing Start new ring and separate row of icons for resume
Thanks, Gary. Before settling on the current design for Home, we actually had a very similar mockup to the first one you sent. While it addresses the issue Simon is mentioning on a structural level, it isn't intuitive. The problem is the duplication of activity icons, which leads to confusion. The distinction of gray and color icons isn't enough to alleviate the confusion arising from having duplicate sets of icons. We'll talk more in a few minutes, but I think there may be a solution to our problem in the activity view. More soon... Christian On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.comwrote: On 16 Jan 2010, at 15:26, Simon Schampijer wrote: On 01/16/2010 04:14 PM, Gary C Martin wrote: Hi folks, Some quick mockups of a Home view idea mentioned in previous discussions. Just intended as extra material for todays irc design meeting. 1) Ring of activity icons reverts to the Start new behaviour; Journal icon is always shown for easier access, with recent activities shown below for quick resuming. Journal icon and recent activities are shown horizontally for better screen balance (at cost of not matching the real Journal list display orientation). http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Home_mockup_with_horizontal_journal_and_start_new_defaults.png 2) Same as above except that the Journal icon is top left and a top to bottom resume icon order is used so that recent activities are shown in the same order and direction as is experienced in the Journal list view: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Home_mockup_with_journal_and_start_new_defaults.png Regards, --Gary Hi Gary, thanks, I think that helps to better visualize this proposal. The problem I see with this design is, that the title of the activities does lack. I guess you would see it in a palette when hovering over it. But that would be as quick as going to the Journal directly. One could imagine displaying the title in the vertical layout, but that would make the home view crowded. Just a few thoughts, so I do not forget my first impressions ;p :-) Here's a 3rd for the mentioned double ring of activity icons; inside non-colour icons for Start new behaviour, outside ring of coloured icons for Resume behaviour. Journal icon shown at top of ring for easy access (note that its coloured icon in the Start now ring is now out of place): http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Home_mockup_with_double_ring_of_start_new_and_resume.png Regards, --Gary -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Accelerators: make Journal 'F5'
Hi Simon--that seems to make sense. Any feedback on the comps I sent? Let me know if there are any questions... I'll be traveling these next few days, but will be checking email occasionally. Thanks, Christian On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 5:58 AM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.dewrote: Hi, finally I pushed today the accelerators for the views. This means that the palettes of the zoom options in the frame show now: Neighbrhood F1 etc (see screenshot below). As most of the keyboards does not have a search key, should we make the Journal 'F5' ? This would be logic from the F(N) we have in the frame. Regards, Simon -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Accelerators: make Journal 'F5'
On Aug 21, 2009, at 9:41 AM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Simon, On 21 Aug 2009, at 10:58, Simon Schampijer wrote: finally I pushed today the accelerators for the views. This means that the palettes of the zoom options in the frame show now: Neighbrhood F1 etc (see screenshot below). Fab! :-) As most of the keyboards does not have a search key, should we make the Journal 'F5' ? This would be logic from the F(N) we have in the frame. I would love Journal to be on F5, but might be controversial: It would not be ideal for XO HW keyboard layout; HoboPrimate will likely bite you several times; it would clash with a key used by Develop Activity (not that I use it); maybe clash with another Activity (but none that I'm aware of)? But FWIW, a selfish +1 from me at least ;-) Regards, --Gary P.S. Oh if only Journal wasn't treated by the UI as an activity, but part of the shell. You could then just tap F4 and F5 to toggle back and forth between your current activity view, and the Journal. Oh the bliss. ;-b That should be possible, even in the current configuration, no? Hitting F5 would switch immediately to the journal, while F4 toggles through all activities (including journal). Seems like a good solution to me... Christian ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Activity toolbar redesign: What to do with 'simple' activities?
Yes, I agree. Unless everyone is on the same page, it may make sense to schedule a meeting this weekend, also to go over proposals for list view in Neighborhood and to discuss groups. What does everyone think? Christian On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Eben Eliason eben.elia...@gmail.comwrote: Last we discussed this, I think we decided that activities which don't modify the toolbars in any way should have a single toolbar containing all of the activity toolbar controls: title entry, sharing, keep, etc. Only if the activity wanted to modify the toolbars would the activity specific stuff be moved under a toolbar button. I recall coming to the same conclusion with Christian as well. Eben On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 7:19 AM, Lucian Branesculucian.brane...@gmail.com wrote: Would it be possible to offer a more compact design, with a single bar, but with the new API? 2009/8/12 Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de: Hi, I just ported the hello world example to the new toolbar design [1]. I remember that once Gary pointed out, that simple activities will look 'empty' when we move them to the new design (screenshot attached), Chat would be a famous case. Most of the activities does have options, though. How do we go forward with that? Live with that compromise? Other ideas? Thanks, Simon [1] http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/hello-world/repos/mainline/blobs/master/activity.py#line36 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Activity toolbar redesign: What to do with 'simple' activities?
Great--should we plan on holding a design meeting this Sunday? I can be available after 10am EST (2pm UTC). Christian On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 11:50 AM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.dewrote: On 08/12/2009 03:24 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt wrote: Yes, I agree. Unless everyone is on the same page, it may make sense to schedule a meeting this weekend, also to go over proposals for list view in Neighborhood and to discuss groups. What does everyone think? Christian We need quite some design team feedback for the upcoming 0.86 release. Next thursday is feature freeze ( http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.86/Roadmap#Schedule) - so design changes are hard to make after that date. This is the current feature list: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.86/Feature_List I am sure we have a lot of smaller and bigger things the developers would need design people involved. If we could focus in this weekend on those items - that would be awesome. I am not available on Saturday - but have time on Sunday. I would be willing to get a list of items together as well, for those features, where we have questions. Thanks, Simon -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Design help needed for web applications within Sugar
Hi Lucian Can you explain to me what SSB means? Sorry for my naivete, it's probably perfectly clear to everyone else. Generally these look fine, but I think we could probably clarify the interaction a bit after you give me a few pointers on what you are trying to do. Thanks! Christian On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 6:21 PM, Lucian Branescu lucian.brane...@gmail.comwrote: Sorry, I should have pointed that out more clearly. In this image (http://files.getdropbox.com/u/317039/userscript%20hello%20world.png), the button in the top right, next to the bookmark button, is the button used for creating SSBs. Here (http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/317039/create%20ssb.png) is an even better screenshot. 2009/8/10 Benjamin M. Schwartz bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu: Lucian Branescu wrote: How should these features be presented to the user? The screenshots on my blog show the current situation. They do? I don't see anything there that shows the current SSB creation or site-zip-saving UI. --Ben -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Design review plea.. OLPC desktop switcher
Hi Sean, picking up on one of your comments below: After debating lots of ideas with lots of mockups for Sugar on a Stick we went with a Sugar logo during the first three dots and the Xo avatar for the remaining ones. We chose variant #06 because SoaS v1 will be called Strawberry and we will change the boot color and name for each SoaS iteration, the idea being to aid unsophisticated users who can communicate version info just from the boot logo color. For simplicity, I would suggest having the logo on a separate screen for a few secs *before* the XO and the ring with dots appear. I think they should both be kept separate, for clarity both visually/aesthetically, but also semantically (the XO at the center of the screen is a fundamental principle in the Sugar UI, and having it trade places with the logo in the middle of the ring is mixing metaphors). Let me know if you agree... Christian On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 4:59 PM, Daniel Draked...@laptop.org wrote: Hi Eben/other interested victims, I've designed (it's usually bad news when I've designed things) some interfaces that allow for switching between Sugar and GNOME for the XO-1.5 builds. I'm looking for feedback on the design and any suggestions/contributions. By default, laptops boot straight up into Sugar. But you might notice a new icon in the control panel named Switch desktop http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090619/sugar-controlpanel.pnghttp://dev.laptop.org/%7Edsd/20090619/sugar-controlpanel.png If we click on that, under normal circumstances you will see: http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090619/sugar-active-sugar.pnghttp://dev.laptop.org/%7Edsd/20090619/sugar-active-sugar.png Then, when you click the Switch to GNOME button, it will look like this: http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090619/sugar-active-gnome.pnghttp://dev.laptop.org/%7Edsd/20090619/sugar-active-gnome.png And if everything works right, this one will never be seen, but allows for an escape route if something goes wrong: http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090619/sugar-active-unknown.pnghttp://dev.laptop.org/%7Edsd/20090619/sugar-active-unknown.png When you're in GNOME, there is an icon that says Switch to Sugar on the desktop. It's also on the Applications menu, under System. When you click on it, it brings up a dialog box that tells you to restart and then you'll be back in Sugar again. In this screenshot you can see the desktop item, the menu item, and the output dialog box: http://dev.laptop.org/~dsd/20090619/gnome-ui.pnghttp://dev.laptop.org/%7Edsd/20090619/gnome-ui.png Code for all of that is at git://dev.laptop.org/users/dsd/olpc-switch-desktop (latest updates to be pushed in a few minutes) The Logout menu item in sugar is disabled. It's still there in GNOME, but I'll look for a way to hide it. (when you logout, it just basically restarts the desktop environment, so it's kind of pointless. A reboot is acceptable for changing DE, and the logout concept is confusing when there wasn't any logging in to begin with.) Thoughts? Thanks, Daniel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] [Marketing] [SoaS] Request for Artwork: Boot Screen
Sorry, meant to reply-all! Comment below: On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Martin Dengler mar...@martindengler.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 01:24:26PM +0200, Sean DALY wrote: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo Christian - I myself prefer the rays to dots which I feel too closely resemble networks in the Neighborhood view, confusion is possible (networks being connected to at startup?) The rays are too dominant, IMHO. The circles suffer from the confusion you mention, and the dots (gray) are just right. I agree--the rays don't feel like they are part of the same visual language as the rest of the UI, since they break the square grid that other icons succumb to. I'm not sure about the confusion regarding the color circles and access points; maybe we should ask around and see what other people think? Maybe we could also just choose a single color (the colors you have set for your XO) to avoid any confusion. Otherwise, I'm also perfectly happy sticking to gray dots, and coloring the XO as I mentioned earlier. Re splash page with logo: in my next mockup I'll leave off the example school logo.and move that frame to the end. It might be better to reserve a frame for customizable logo or message, before or after the Sugar spash page I think that information is great to work in, but it won't be too visible (thus useful) in just one frame, will it? Version info: In fact I feel strongly about showing version information...or its corollary, making it easy to find. +1 I agree that it's unpleasant to see numbers at boot time (especially a datestamped snapshot number). In grey it's not, IMHO. Nota: my idea would be for each version to change the Sugar logo color too... Much less obtrusive, perhaps, and still effective. I guess we'll run out of easily-differentiable fill colours in a few years, but that's a different bridge... thanks Sean Martin -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] [Marketing] [SoaS] Request for Artwork: Boot Screen
I agree with Eben's points below... Maybe it would help if one of us mocked up the alternative he is describing? Christian On Jun 4, 2009, at 10:35 AM, Eben Eliason eben.elia...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 10:31 AM, Eben Eliason eben.elia...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 7:24 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo Christian - I myself prefer the rays to dots which I feel too closely resemble networks in the Neighborhood view, confusion is possible (networks being connected to at startup?) Fred - I'm willing to try that sunrise metaphor, tonight if I can (travelling today) Re splash page with logo: in my next mockup I'll leave off the example school logo.and move that frame to the end. It might be better to reserve a frame for customizable logo or message, before or after the Sugar spash page Yes, in that mockup the first screen is kind of overwhelming with several logos and a few pieces of textual information. At the same time, we tried very hard to eliminate the slideshow effect that feels (well, is) like a bunch of marketing material that detracts from the UI. I think the Sugar logo should stand alone, so it reads powerfully, and then be replaced in short order by the XO. Perhaps we could entertain a text only solution to identifying the school, in gray beneath the sugar logo. Thoughts? Version info: In fact I feel strongly about showing version information... or its corollary, making it easy to find. Teachers, I think it's more important that we make it easy to find in the UI. Kids won't reboot that often, and it would be silly to reboot just to find that info. parents, admins, G1G1 donors unfamiliar with Sugar will not have the foggiest idea how to hunt down version information (Learners might not have trouble finding it - they will explore their machines ad infinitum - but they can't be expected to know about versioning). We are about to embark on hundreds of thousands of XO-1.5s running v0..84 which will coexist with a huge installed base of v0.82 (and many earlier); SoaS with its simplified numbering scheme will (we hope) sow the seeds for preinstalled Sugar in distributions for education projects. We may be deploying v0.86 at the end of the year... aside from how we manage the Activity compatibility matrix, we need to make such info *extremely* easy to track down for someone interested in checking if Sugar + Activities are up-to-date. Our strategy for teacher buy-in is star marketing on Activities (see press releases); making Activity installation/upgrade simple this summer is part of what we need to do to make SoaS possible in the classroom. Helping users understand what version they have (of Sugar, of each Activity) is a key aspect of that. I agree that it's unpleasant to see numbers at boot time (especially a datestamped snapshot number). Why don't we borrow an idea from Apple? We basically have this already. We ust happen to have an XO in the center of the screen, instead of an apple icon in the upper left. The info is actually in the About my XO section of the settings, which might be one step too far. We could go back to an earlier design for the XO menu and have a direct About my XO menu item which jumps directly to the correct settings panel. We could also separate the About my XO panel from settings, removing it from the settings panel completely and showing it as it's own modal dialog accessible via an About my XO menu item. I would be fine with either approach. They have a tiny apple icon in the upper-left corner of the screen; clicking on it opens a window with the processor, RAM and OSX version number. In addition to the About my computer section in the Control Panel, perhaps we could show the version in the Frame? The bottom bar has room I think. There's no need to expose this information directly. It will only be needed on occasion, and the Frame is designed for the information you want to carry with you all the time. When we start to get consolidated feedback, we will know if difficult-to-find version info is a problem for Sugar / Activity updaters or not. I feel sure it is and showing the version in the Frame (the one-glance status communicator) seems to me a good approach which would let us skip info in the splash screen. Nota: my idea would be for each version to change the Sugar logo color too... potentially allowing troubleshooters to ask what color is the Sugar logo? and match that to the version number. I would much rather see the logo change colors with each boot, but I meant to take this back before sending, and forgot to. I actually think changing the colors with each release is a pretty awesome idea. Eben changing with each release is a pretty cool idea. I would support that. I think there are enough of combinations to make wrapping around
Re: [Sugar-devel] [SoaS] Request for Artwork: Boot Screen
Hi Sean--these look great! Of the mockups, I think this one works the best: Variant of XO Avatar Sugar Boot, Grey to Colour Dot Transition It really is very effective, and the color helps a lot! Christian On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 9:33 PM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: Here's the second mockup: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo#Eleven_Color_Ray_Variant.2C_Growing_XO_Avatar.2C_Starts_With_Logo_Splash_Page This version includes a logo/copyright splash page and a growing or approaching XO avatar. Comments welcome please. thanks Sean On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 1:20 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo#Eleven_Color_Ray_Variant_of_XO_Avatar_Sugar_Boot.2C_Grey_to_Color_Transition I've finally updated the wiki with my first mockup! Sorry about the delay, I lack graphics editing skills I'm afraid. I have attached comment to the mockup. I keep the XO avatar size stable in this first one, I want to try another one with growing size as expressed yesterday. Note: the idea is this follows a previous page with Sugar logo, version info, copyright notice, and distro logo (+ possibility of school logo). I will try to work those into my next mockup. The spectrum colors were cheerfully eyedropped from an image of Ellsworth Kelly's painting Spectrum IV (1967), with the particularity that I thought it interesting to cycle from XO green (mockup green darker than should be, sorry) thanks Sean On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 2:07 AM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks Sean--a visual would be good to fully understand the proposal. I guess my feeling on all of this is that less is more--as Eben said earlier, the boot sequence is really just the set-up for the UI. I'd be happy if we simply did away with the split-XO, but I'm also on-board with adding a bit of color, though I would caution not to overthink it. The reason the Mac OS boot sequence you mention works so well is due to its simplicity. Instead of a face, we have the XO as our emblem--and the circle, while making a reference to connectedness and community, transitions into a core feature of the UI in Home... Either way, looking forward to seeing your mockups! Christian On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 5:54 PM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: I like Gary's most recent one with the dots filling in color I got halfway through a mockup with XO avatars appearing, then Activity icons, but I feel using either will just be too confusing... one could think network discovery was happening, or Activity loading. After much reflection, I think the friendliest greeting we could offer to Learners is a face, a Speakish one with eyes rolling around the ring (and a growing smile) while the colors come on. There are still many people who fell in love with their little Macs because of the smiley face. But... that's outside the Sugar HIG and I would think twice before stepping outside of that. So I reread them and came up with this idea (which I hope to mock up tomorrow): instead of dots, I want to do oblong ovals like a big version of the Activity spinner graphic. I searched high and low on sl.o and laptop.org for an SVG but only found a lo-res PNG :-( so I'll just improvise ovals. What I like about presenting the spinner is: immediate identification of a waiting period, no confusion with other elements (the filled in dots are too similar to networks in the Neighborhood view). Also I like that the spinner has 11, not 12 dividers; that asymmetry is interesting and remains clocklike. I like Gary's proposal of empty ones filled with color which I'd like to keep. And... I'd like to start the middle XO icon small (e.g. neighborhood view size) and step it up in size with each spinner step; grow in importance as the system builds, until at the end normal size. As for the colors, I'm not sure I like the color pairs... I'd like to try solid colors, moving through the spectrum rainbowlike. Less Sugarish perhaps, but visually stronger might be. Not sure if the initial logo flash is enough, but concerned that keeping it around might fight the spinner ring. Will have a visual tomorrow to show (holiday so I will have some time) thanks Sean On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 10:50 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: Re: grey vs. colors in progress: Actually, I have an issue with all-grey... users could worry that colors are not working in the Sugar UI. If we treated the XO in the center in the selected color combination, we would not only address Sean's point, but also act as a signifier of identity. But I take it this is a technical challenge? I do also agree with the point that gray means in progress. A simplified version of the current boot sequence, without the spinning/split XO, would work well I think. I wouldn't
Re: [Sugar-devel] [Bugs] #645 UNSP: make sugarlabs.org the default page
Hi Gary--this looks great! One small suggestion: could we bring the logo down in scale to ca. 75%? That would look better... Christian On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: On 1 Apr 2009, at 05:52, Simon Schampijer wrote: Gary C Martin wrote: On 31 Mar 2009, at 22:40, Gary C Martin wrote: On 30 Mar 2009, at 14:59, Sean DALY wrote: I really like this idea, baseline so first-time visitors won't get lost between site sections Christian, would it be possible for you to put together that 1 page linking to the different sections + Google? FWIW: Assuming it's not being worked on yet, I just picked this ticket up. Will post a screen grab to the list tomorrow for quick review/ feedback cycle. Here's a quick first pass at a simple static page, please do fire off some feedback - FWIW, I'm not too keen on how the Google treatment clashes with SL logo, but it is a useful feature to have on a home page: http://dev.sugarlabs.org/attachment/ticket/645/simple_static_page_v1.png Regards, --Gary --Gary Do we need the google logo for trademark reasons? Otherwise I would just leave it out. It says 'Google' on the button already. Should I just drop it all together for now? I know we are used to seeing it on the default OLPC XO home page, but it's not like we thought it necessary to put Google search on www.sugarlabes.org Would be nice to have a link to our bug tracker as well - maybe just named 'Bugs'. Sure, here it is with the extra link and dropping the Google logo (but keeping the Google search inputs): http://dev.sugarlabs.org/attachment/ticket/645/simple_static_page_v2.png Of course - ideally this page would be translated :/ We can do that for 0.86 then I guess :) :-) Regards, --Gary Thanks, Simon -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [Marketing] Do not open a new window for menu link on sugarlabs.org
Hi Sean Thanks for initiating this. I generally agree with the goals to unify the site through a single navbar, but am also concerned about visual complexity. The more we can consolidate navigation items, the better. I'll start exploring visual treatments with the goal to find something that would work across all sites. That said, it may still be sensible to keep the intro separate from the other sites, to direct people in a more focused way towards only a few sections that we determine (as is currently the case). Christian On 3/26/09 5:41 PM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: Here are some ideas for a harmonized navbar across our domains, for discussion and input please. By way of an anology, I would like that a visitor navigating between our welcoming reception area, our meeting room, our factory floor, our mailroom etc. always know where s/he is and how to get to another section and in particular the homepage: www.sugarlabs.org. I know that Christian wants to keep the navbar short in the intro section so it is unobtrusive... that Josh wants a friendly home for Activities not unlike Mozilla's addons... that our wiki mavens want their usual workspace without fuss and bother, that teachers need a super easy to use section, and so on. That said, I think we all want teachers, parents, funders, journalists, bug reporters, developers, and... , kids :-) to be able to visit and explore the richness of our site without getting lost. Because for them, there is the Sugar Labs site and not 9 separate sites. It is a measure of the labyrinthine nature of our site/sites that I discovered some sections today I hadn't suspected even existed, and these sections had no link to the main page or to each other. Linking our sections will raise the visibility of our site and its richness will show any visitor (as if there were a doubt) that our community is vibrant. So, here goes... let's start with the union of all the linked sections I can find for sugarlabs.org: Home Wiki Blog (or Planet) Lists Bugs Git Schools Activities Download People Donate API Buildbot Trees Indices Index Lounge (or Forums or Discussions) FAQ Press (or Contact) Register Help About Sitemap Login Search plus a missing one: Support/Feedback 26 candidates for a navbar! ...More complicated than I suspected. Some of these, in particular Search, are never identified as local to the section, sure to be confusing to the nontechnical visitor who just want to search the Sugar Labs site. Not everyone knows the Google site:sugarlabs.org syntax :-) Others are on the same subject, but point to different places; for example, the Activities section of the intro is not yet well integrated with activities.sugarlabs.org and even points offsite, to the corresponding OLPC pages. I think we can agree that 25, or 20, or even 15 choices are too many. The traditional solution to this problem is two tiers: mouseover on the navbar reveals subchoices. The idea being to standardize a navbar like this at the top of every section, giving random access to any other section. For example, how about 9 main sections: *** Home Download Activities Schools Contributors Wiki / Bugs / Git / API / Buildbot / Translate / People / Planet Resources Documentation / FAQ / Mailing Lists / Community News / Index / Sitemap Search Wiki search / Bugs search / Schools search Contact Press / Forums / IRC / Support / Feedback Donate *** What do you think? thanks Sean Marketing Coordinator On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 7:13 PM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de wrote: Walter Bender wrote: If it is not already, I think we need to add tabbed browsing as an important 0.86 feature. We can certainly change the behavior of www.sugarlabs.org, but we cannot change the behavior of the web. We can't? Doh - it is for the kids! :) Yes - we need it only for 0.84. Please file a 0.86 enhancement bug about the tabbed browsing. Thanks, Simon ___ Marketing mailing list market...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing -- Christian Marc Schmidt schm...@pentagram.com Pentagram Design, Inc. 204 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 212/ 802 0248 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] yet another corrected screenshot image!
I think it would be a good idea to call a design meeting to hash out the pros and cons of both views, freeform and ring (ring working only in conjunction with favorites, which we know is it's current limitation). We could also discuss a possible third view, but then I believe it is important that it feels related to the UI design as a whole (both freeform and ring do, bearing similarity to the organization in neighborhood and groups). Maybe there are solutions to make ring more scalable, as Sean was suggesting? Unfortunately Eben is traveling this weekend, so let's shoot for the following. Are all interested parties able to convene on #sugar-meeting at 10am EST/13.00 UTC on Saturday March 21 for an initial discussion where we discuss the benefits of either view and will attempt to make a decision? Please come prepared with your thoughts, and as much research as you are able to obtain from actual observations with children! Christian On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: I haven't studied it in any scientific way, but I have never seen anyone use freeform in the field. I can also make a strong case for its inappropriateness in the classroom and the additional support overhead. For simplicity-sake, if for no other reason, we should drop it. That said, I cannot argue with your observation that an overloaded ring is problematic as well. For 0.86, we should consider some of spiral options, such as the sunflower, which are much more space efficient. At the same time, I think the real answer lies in better use the idea that groups of activities can be selected for the ring: a teacher might say to the child, this week, I want everyone to put Browse, Write, and Turrtle Art on their desktops. At home, a different collection might be available. So maybe we can explore the notion of collections rather than layouts? -walter On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:54 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: I fully understand your confusion, this issue has been going back and forth for too long. We should probably talk this over more thoroughly before deciding either way. Nicholas had (and I'm assuming still has) very strong reservations about the ring, which caused us to reconsider it, but at the time it was too late to change and it made it into the build. As you know I was initially in favor of the ring (which I think has a strong iconic presence), but when I began seeing screenshots of overloaded rings it seemed like the favorites model perhaps wasn't working as well as we had hoped. This is a case where it would really help to do observations and see how children are using the Home view, and which of the two views they prefer using... Or do we have any findings and observations we can already draw from? For now, the question remains which view (freeform/ring) we use to represent Sugar. Or perhaps at least in the interim it would make sense to avoid Home altogether and use the Neighborhood view as the signature shot? I agree that we would ideally keep either the ring or freeform, but not both, for simplicity... More discussion ahead, I sense. Christian On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:31 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:22 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Sean We are currently debating moving to freeform view as the default (maybe even the only) view in Home. To be on the safe side, should we use that view here instead, seeing as it already exists in the UI? CC'ing Walter for his thoughts as well... Boy am I ever confused. I thought (and hoped) that we were going to get rid of the freeform view, not the ring view. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] yet another corrected screenshot image!
Hi Wade--your proposal looks very interesting. Let's discuss on the call on March 21st, if you are able to join us then (at 10am EST). Christian On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Wade Brainerd wad...@gmail.com wrote: Hey all, I'd like to take the opportunity to (as usual) plug my alternate home view design. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Wade/Ideas/Activity_Management If people feel that it would be worth exploring I'd be happy to flesh the design out further. Unfortunately it's unlikely that I'll be able to make the Saturday chat, but I can try if there is real interest. Regards, Wade On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: I think it would be a good idea to call a design meeting to hash out the pros and cons of both views, freeform and ring (ring working only in conjunction with favorites, which we know is it's current limitation). We could also discuss a possible third view, but then I believe it is important that it feels related to the UI design as a whole (both freeform and ring do, bearing similarity to the organization in neighborhood and groups). Maybe there are solutions to make ring more scalable, as Sean was suggesting? Unfortunately Eben is traveling this weekend, so let's shoot for the following. Are all interested parties able to convene on #sugar-meeting at 10am EST/13.00 UTC on Saturday March 21 for an initial discussion where we discuss the benefits of either view and will attempt to make a decision? Please come prepared with your thoughts, and as much research as you are able to obtain from actual observations with children! Christian On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: I haven't studied it in any scientific way, but I have never seen anyone use freeform in the field. I can also make a strong case for its inappropriateness in the classroom and the additional support overhead. For simplicity-sake, if for no other reason, we should drop it. That said, I cannot argue with your observation that an overloaded ring is problematic as well. For 0.86, we should consider some of spiral options, such as the sunflower, which are much more space efficient. At the same time, I think the real answer lies in better use the idea that groups of activities can be selected for the ring: a teacher might say to the child, this week, I want everyone to put Browse, Write, and Turrtle Art on their desktops. At home, a different collection might be available. So maybe we can explore the notion of collections rather than layouts? -walter On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:54 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: I fully understand your confusion, this issue has been going back and forth for too long. We should probably talk this over more thoroughly before deciding either way. Nicholas had (and I'm assuming still has) very strong reservations about the ring, which caused us to reconsider it, but at the time it was too late to change and it made it into the build. As you know I was initially in favor of the ring (which I think has a strong iconic presence), but when I began seeing screenshots of overloaded rings it seemed like the favorites model perhaps wasn't working as well as we had hoped. This is a case where it would really help to do observations and see how children are using the Home view, and which of the two views they prefer using... Or do we have any findings and observations we can already draw from? For now, the question remains which view (freeform/ring) we use to represent Sugar. Or perhaps at least in the interim it would make sense to avoid Home altogether and use the Neighborhood view as the signature shot? I agree that we would ideally keep either the ring or freeform, but not both, for simplicity... More discussion ahead, I sense. Christian On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:31 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:22 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Sean We are currently debating moving to freeform view as the default (maybe even the only) view in Home. To be on the safe side, should we use that view here instead, seeing as it already exists in the UI? CC'ing Walter for his thoughts as well... Boy am I ever confused. I thought (and hoped) that we were going to get rid of the freeform view, not the ring view. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- anyth
[Sugar-devel] Design meeting moved to this Sunday, 13:00 UTC
Please join us at #sugar-meeting to discuss next steps for the Sugar user interface design. Christian -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] design team meeting (And finding a new regular time)
Done! Christian On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 1:17 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.orgwrote: Christian, Will you post the new meeting information on http://sugarlabs.org/go/DesignTeam/Meetings ? On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: Hi there Why don't we start by getting a day on the calendar for a regular design meeting. How is Saturday at 11am? Does that work for everyone? We may need to start next week, on the 27th, since Eben is traveling... Christian On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 4:05 AM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.de wrote: Tomeu Vizoso wrote: On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 22:18, Eben Eliason e...@laptop.org wrote: I wasn't available for a meeting today, so that's partially my fault. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, though, and actually had the chance to meet with Christian today regarding starting up regular design meetings again. As our work on Sugar will be voluntary, we both feel that selecting a time on the weekends (or perhaps late evening, though naturally timezone complicates this) may allow us to attend regularly as we'd like to. Would this work for others with interest? What days/times would be most suitable for everyone? Weekends are not as good for me, but I definitely will be able to attend some. Apart from Josh, Eduardo (HoboPrimate) is back giving us awesome usability feedback and Gary is stepping up his contributions even more by doing icons for Sugar. So we need to organize a bit all this new energy that is coming into the design area ;) See you soon, Tomeu +1, there is definitely a lot of energy. Weekend is currently not as optimal for me neither, but I am sure we can find ways to communicate the outcome from those meetings tomeu or I can not attend. Might be worth anyhow - since we are an in time and space distributed crowd. /me is so happy to see Sugar Labs progress on all fronts each day. Thanks! Simon -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] design team meeting (And finding a new regular time)
Hi there Why don't we start by getting a day on the calendar for a regular design meeting. How is Saturday at 11am? Does that work for everyone? We may need to start next week, on the 27th, since Eben is traveling... Christian On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 4:05 AM, Simon Schampijer si...@schampijer.dewrote: Tomeu Vizoso wrote: On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 22:18, Eben Eliason e...@laptop.org wrote: I wasn't available for a meeting today, so that's partially my fault. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, though, and actually had the chance to meet with Christian today regarding starting up regular design meetings again. As our work on Sugar will be voluntary, we both feel that selecting a time on the weekends (or perhaps late evening, though naturally timezone complicates this) may allow us to attend regularly as we'd like to. Would this work for others with interest? What days/times would be most suitable for everyone? Weekends are not as good for me, but I definitely will be able to attend some. Apart from Josh, Eduardo (HoboPrimate) is back giving us awesome usability feedback and Gary is stepping up his contributions even more by doing icons for Sugar. So we need to organize a bit all this new energy that is coming into the design area ;) See you soon, Tomeu +1, there is definitely a lot of energy. Weekend is currently not as optimal for me neither, but I am sure we can find ways to communicate the outcome from those meetings tomeu or I can not attend. Might be worth anyhow - since we are an in time and space distributed crowd. /me is so happy to see Sugar Labs progress on all fronts each day. Thanks! Simon -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
