Re: [IAEP] 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 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Update on the Sugar Labs website refresh
Hi everyone, John and I wanted to give you a brief update on the status of the website. For the last few months we had the benefit of working with two RIT students, JT and Mike, who helped us take initial steps in launching a new and improved public-facing website. With their help, we identified the shortcomings of the current site and the opportunities for (a) better articulating the Sugar value proposition and (b) keeping the site current with events and progress made by the developer community. There were a few learnings along the way: While JT and Mike were able to gather and produce a fair number of assets, it was far more difficult to get all the content we had hoped for and which we know does exist. This means that we will be reaching out to the community again in a short while to help us fill in the missing pieces. In the meantime, thank you to all of you who helped to provide content in the first round! Next steps are to make further traction on the UI design in order to give us a scaffold to populate with content as it comes in. This will be happening over the next few weeks, and we'll keep all of you updated when there are opportunities for feedback. Thanks, and more to come, Christian -- 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 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] Sugar Dextrose trademark license request
This sounds good, although again I wouldn't encourage a standalone Dextrose mark. It should instead feel like a sub-brand to Sugar, the primary brand, since that will drive recognition. Christian On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 4:12 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Do the marketing and design teams have an opinion on this already? Thanks, Tomeu On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 05:38, Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org wrote: I would like to request a trademark license for the following software product: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Dextrose/ The following information is intended to fulfill the requirements of the Trademark License administrative transaction: * a list of which marks are desired to be licensed, along with a full description of how they will be used; Dextrose will be identified by one of the attached Sugar Dextrose logotypes. Such logos adopt the same font and color pairs of the Sugar Labs trademark to create a visual association between the two. We might also desire to use a shorter form of the logotype which includes the word Dextrose alone, rendered in the same typographical style of the word Sugar in the attached examples. The version of the Sugar Learning Platform distributed with Dextrose contains substantial modifications relative to the source code distributed by Sugar Labs, therefore it is not covered by the usage exceptions for using the Sugar Labs marks without written permission. * a description of the current use of any Sugar Labs marks; The product currently displays the Sugar Labs logo in its unmodified form during boot. In the final release, we might wish to retain this logo, or replace it with the Sugar Dextrose logo. * a list of any individuals or corporations that will be participating in the proposed use of the mark; Activity Central - http://activitycentral.org Paraguay Educa - http://paraguayeduca.org Plan Ceibal - http://www.ceibal.edu.uy/ Dextrose is intended to be customized and redistributed by other OLPC deployments. Therefore, the trademark license needs to be implicitly transferrable to third parties at the same conditions. * a list of any Sugar Labs community members with whom you are currently working; Dextrose is currently hosted within the Sugar Labs infrastructure and incorporates substantial contributions from several Sugar Labs and OLPC community members, as highlighted in the features list. * information for a primary contact person, including email address and phone number. Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org Cell phone (Paraguay): +595-(0)-972-960704 Cell phone (USA): +1-781-244-3485 Thanks, -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ SLOBs mailing list sl...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/slobs -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] email account hacked
Apologies if you received spam messages from my email address--it appears that my Gmail account was hacked last night... Sorry, and hope all is well, Christian -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmarcschmidt http://twitter.com/cms_ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Dear friend!
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Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] [Sugar-devel] [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 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] [Sugar-devel] [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: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] [SoaS] Request for Artwork: Boot Screen
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 overthink the gray dots--they are just status indicators and the more important aspect in this case (in my opinion) is the XO and the radial arrangement that references the ring in Home. Christian I think we should consider colors although I do appreciate the still loading context communicated by grey. I will post a mockup later expressing that approach; grey dots present right from the start (ring power!), filling in with color during progress... the ring approaching colors from grey I would not recommend customizing the splash/progress from within Sugar... boot time is often a tense moment fraught with impatience (especially after a freeze/crash) and predictability in how Sugar usually loads is I think desirable thanks Sean On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 6:22 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: On 30 May 2009, at 16:36, Christian Marc Schmidt wrote: I agree with your points--comments below: On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Christian, On 30 May 2009, at 10:17, Christian Marc Schmidt wrote: Hi Gary, this looks good, though I wonder about the loss of the XO in the center. The boot sequence was intended to establish the UI, and in many ways the XO does signify the Sugar brand as much (more?) as the logo. Suggestion: Could we not simply show the logo for a few seconds, before transitioning into the current boot sequence? I'd hate to lose the current sequence, I think it works very well, and Eben will attest that much time was spent arriving at where we are today... Yes, agreed, the original boot up
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] [SoaS] Request for Artwork: Boot Screen
I agree with your points--comments below: On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Christian, On 30 May 2009, at 10:17, Christian Marc Schmidt wrote: Hi Gary, this looks good, though I wonder about the loss of the XO in the center. The boot sequence was intended to establish the UI, and in many ways the XO does signify the Sugar brand as much (more?) as the logo. Suggestion: Could we not simply show the logo for a few seconds, before transitioning into the current boot sequence? I'd hate to lose the current sequence, I think it works very well, and Eben will attest that much time was spent arriving at where we are today... Yes, agreed, the original boot up is very hard to beat (showing a child as central). Just bouncing ideas about here. My only criticisms of the original would be: 1) not liking the kid icon breaking into a rotating arrow treatment (seems too forced/smart, the whole XO icon is a stronger identity, appearing dots show progress just fine) Yes, I fully agree! A stationary XO icon would be simpler, less forced. 2) seemed odd for the dots to appear from 6 o'clock to 6 o'clock (12 to 12 feels more natural to me) Agree with that, too. 3) lack of any colour (though this is tough to avoid breaking HIG iconography on colour use) Here, I think it would be best if the XO would have the colors set in the UI... Regards, --Gary Christian On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 10:59 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Folks, Just to get a basic, safe, default starting point in there, I've uploaded one simple treatment to: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Boot_Logo#Sugar_Boot_Logo_Animations Will try to upload a couple more tomorrow. Night, --Gary P.S. Should pull this back on list, your call Sean, but probably worth getting a couple more ideas up so that folks can input to some alternative treatments. On 30 May 2009, at 00:58, Sean DALY wrote: Christian, Eben I'm not sure if you are on sugar-devel but this is I think an outstanding opportunity for Sugar branding, celebrating Sugar interface.iconography and greeting children. I know nothing about the plymouth boot animator, but i deduce that consecutively named files will do the trick I'm willing to attack this but before I try scraping screenshots, do you guys have any interface assets i could grab? Input greatly appreciated thanks Sean On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 12:32 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: Maybe we could work on it together? here's my idea like my booth rollup banner mockup which Christian 7 Eben both liked, I want to stay as much as possible within the Sugar HIG and iconography. boot should start with our logo ... smaller than in the previous SoaS ... (not sure yet if should be with or without labs) The ring is iconic ... I want to keep a ring at boot... but instead of dots, I want XO avatars - kids! In the middle... each succeeding image with a colored Activity icon... matched to the corresponding XO avatar appearing in the ring. So kids understand that Activities are for them. And ending with... kids around the Journal! Alternate idea: cycling through the 12 logo color combos? Not mutually exclusive... logo could be on the bottom of ring What do you think? thanks Sean P.S. I've actually done something similar with a titling sequence for a short film. I started with the final image and wiped elements, backing down to the first image I use imagemagick a lot no problem to create a script which could inject arbitrary text into a ppm file On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 11:47 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Sean, FYI, this came in off list. Regards, --G Begin forwarded message: From: James Zaki james.z...@gmail.com Date: 29 May 2009 22:24:06 BST To: Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] [SoaS] Request for Artwork: Boot Screen I'm in touch with a design company who owes me a favour or two. I could get them to whip up some concept designs for inspiration? James 2009/5/29 Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com On 29 May 2009, at 21:37, Sean DALY wrote: Sebastian, Gary I'd like to take a stab at it, I've actually had an idea brewing for awhile Cool, shout if you need extra hands/review. --G What's the deadline please? thanks Sean On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 8:54 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: On 29 May 2009, at 18:41, Sebastian Dziallas wrote: Hi folks, sorry for the short notice, but this is rather urgent. I've been spending yesterday afternoon to update the packages in our SoaS Yum repo to reflect the changes for Fedora 11. As it turned out, the plymouth package has been partly rewritten, and I was wondering (also with regard to #709), how we wanted to deal with a new boot screen. For now, I've just implemented the old Sugar logo again, but we might also want to have
Re: [IAEP] translating the static site
Hi Tomeu--thanks for bringing this up, it's an important point. Suggestions from the community would be helpful, especially around technical solutions. From a design standpoint, my thought is that we would incorporate languages in a dropdown menu below the new global nav (which I'm in the process of coding at the moment)... Christian On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Hi, what's the plan regarding this? We have the spanish translation quite advanced. Talking in #sugar with people, this is what I understood: - the spanish translation is getting there, - our pootle still needs a bit of banging before it can accept the data, - we don't have yet the data to feed pootle, - I don't know if there's a plan about how to integrate the pootle output into the static site. Any more info about it? Though it's very important that the english-speaking world gets to know Sugar, I think it's critical for SugarLabs to explain itself to the spanish-speaking one, because they are the people that right now have most of the reasons for contributing back to the community. Thanks, Tomeu -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] next design meeting
Thanks Tomeu! I suggest we meet on #sugar-meeting this Saturday, at 10am EST (2pm UTC), to discuss these proposals. Eben and I are also working on the issues we discussed in the last meeting, though we need a bit more time to put mockups together. We are aiming to be ready in time for Sugarcamp. Hope to see you there on Saturday, Christian On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 5:31 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Hi all, during the past couple of weeks, several people have stepped forward with proposals that involve changes in the Sugar UI. Have added some topics to the next design meeting page: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Meetings#Meetings Please add yours and propose times for the next meeting, previous design meetings have been during the weekend because that has worked better for the design team members. Also, could the owners of the proposals mentioned add a link along their topic pointing to a email thread or another wiki page where the proposal is explained? Thanks, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] design meeting recap
Hi everyone Thanks to those of you who participated in the design meeting today. We came up with a list of design goals to make it into our development schedule for 0.86, with concrete tasks to be accomplished in advance of SugarCamp in May. I have added a meeting summary on the wiki, along with a link to the transcript: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Meetings Cheers, Christian -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] design meeting tomorrow at 9am EST/1pm UTC
Hi everyone We moved the meeting to 9am EST/1pm UTC tomorrow so Eben can join. Thanks, Christian -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] design meeting
Hi everyone I would like to propose that we hold a UI design meeting this Sunday at 11am EST/3pm UTC, to discuss a test protocol to measure the effectiveness of the current Home view, and quantify specific design tasks that we could work on for the next release. Please let me know if you would like to join but can't make it then. Thanks, Christian -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] design meeting
Hi there I'd like to propose a design meeting this Sunday to discuss a test protocol that we can use to help evaluate the Home view. Please join us at 11am EST (3pm UTC) on Sunday at #sugar-meeting. Cheers, Christian -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] design meeting
Hi David--this is mainly for the Sugar UI. We can talk about the unified nav bar during another meeting. Fred, let me know if we can use gCalendar... Thanks! Christian On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 10:27 AM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.orgwrote: Sounds Great. Is the main issue unifying the look and feel of the Sugar Labs web services? Secondly, would you contact Fed Grose (CCed) about scheduling the meeting on the Sugar Labs gCalendar? I looks like he has made enough improvement that it is worth trying again. thanks david On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 9:03 AM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: Hi there I'd like to propose a design meeting this Sunday to discuss a test protocol that we can use to help evaluate the Home view. Please join us at 11am EST (3pm UTC) on Sunday at #sugar-meeting. Cheers, Christian -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] design meeting
Hi Tomeu--I think it's important that you are there, since I wanted to talk about our upcoming observations. Should we reschedule for the following weekend, or is tomorrow afternoon a possibility? Christian On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 10:36 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 16:03, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: Hi there I'd like to propose a design meeting this Sunday to discuss a test protocol that we can use to help evaluate the Home view. Please join us at 11am EST (3pm UTC) on Sunday at #sugar-meeting. I won't be able to attend, but will follow up afterwards. Regards, Tomeu Cheers, Christian -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [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 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] UI design meeting tomorrow
Hi everyone Please join us for a design meeting tomorrow (Sat Mar 21) to discuss the Home view and the merits of potentially abandoning favorites for a single, consolidated view. 14:00 UTC / 10:00 EDT Best, Christian ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] DC Photo Jam 2 - New batch of photos of SoaS running on netbooks
Thanks Mike, these look great! Christian On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 9:40 PM, Mike Lee curious...@gmail.com wrote: Following up on a request from Walter and Christian a couple weeks ago, I finally got a photo session going this evening to capture some shots of SoaS running on an Asus EeePC 701 and Intel Classmate 2--complete with child! An added bonus was having Sasche Silbe come up on Chat on the Classmate 2 while I was shooting, so I was able to cache some colorful Chat lines. The images are high resolution, reproduction quality and set to CC. If you have any problems retrieving from Flickr, let me know. If you are not a contact of mine, I will have to Friend you to allow access to the high rez. http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouslee/sets/72157615270454953/ Mike http://www.olpclearningclub.org http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mikelee -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Call for images for upcoming Sugar Labs website
Hi everyone, since we are expecting a large amount of press coverage starting Monday (Sean has the details), I wanted to renew the below request for authentic Sugar images. We are looking for any of the following images for the static website: (1) screenshots of Sugar showing how children are using specific activities (see for example the attached Chat activity) (2) images of Sugar installed on platforms other than the XO (Mike Lee has offered to shoot a few of these, but if you know of any other images please let me know) (3) photos of children using Sugar on their laptops/computers in the classroom/computer lab. Thanks so much--please send any images you have to my address before Monday! Also compelling would be testimonials/quotes by both children and educators. If you have access to any such information, please send it my way as well. Christian On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 5:08 PM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Sugar community! We are currently working on launching a public-facing Sugar Labs website, and are in need of compelling imagery to engage visitors. In particular, we are looking for images of authentic Sugar activities that kids have worked on/are working on, either as direct screenshots, or as photographs of Sugar running on a device (XO laptop, Intel Classmate, etc.). The focus should ideally be on Sugar (not on the device, or the child using it). The idea is to show how Sugar is used/adapted by kids. I've attached an image of a chat activity by Uruguayan schoolchildren as an example for what we are looking for. In addition, please also forward any interesting Sugar-related photography you have access to, anything that would help an outsider understand the experience and benefits of using Sugar. Your help finding great, evocative images would be highly appreciated. Please send any images (highest res available, or a link) to me directly, at: anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com Thanks, Christian -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [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!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- anyth
Re: [IAEP] New sugarlabs website
Thanks so much, Tomeu and Carol! I think Bernie is looking into the http://sugarlabs.org issue... Walter and I had discussed translations earlier. We could either go the route of Google Translate, or turn to volunteers to help translate the content manually... Does anyone have thoughts on this? Christian On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 21:46, Carol Farlow Lerche c...@msbit.com wrote: Congratulations on the new website. It looks great. The designer did a wonderful job of listening to feedback, which isn't easy. Yes, kudos to Christian and the people who contributed feedback and content. I really love it ;) Btw, http://sugarlabs.org still points to the old static page. Also, what's the plan about translations? Regards, Tomeu -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] First competitor?
I think we'd need to know the specific points of contention. I can't imagine which design decisions might work less well on PCs. Sugar remains significantly easier to use than standard PC operating systems... Christian On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:27 AM, Eben Eliason eben.elia...@gmail.comwrote: Sugar is a very good interface for the OLPC computers it was made for, but many of the design decisions and interfaces don't work nearly as well on standard PCs. I'm curious what people think about this statement. I tend to agree that some design decisions were biased toward the XO-1 hardware, but I don't think that any of the decisions actually fail on a standard PC, and I actually think Sugar scales pretty well in terms of interaction. However, if we can assume their perspective and locate some areas which aren't ideal on all hardware, perhaps we can work on resolving them. Anyone have some examples? - Eben On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 3:45 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: It claims to be a standalone home computer environment for kids, not a classroom environment. On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:29 AM, Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org wrote: ,Josh williams wrote: Looks like a Microsoft project, they're hosted on IIS and the site is written in ASP. Might also be a bad choice of web hosting provider. The entire ISO image contains free software. -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://www.sugarlabs.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] First competitor?
On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Christian Marc Schmidt christianm...@gmail.com wrote: I think we'd need to know the specific points of contention. I can't imagine which design decisions might work less well on PCs. Sugar remains significantly easier to use than standard PC operating systems... Put Sugar in front of the average adult sitting alone, without any instruction, for 20 minutes. I doubt many of them would agree with you. Caroline, I agree this is a challenge. Of course I would argue that this is due to our familiarity with current desktop-based operating systems and the difficulty of breaking old habits. Sugar was designed from the ground up, and hence does require a bit of a learning curve for those of us who use other systems (but for new users should prove much easier to learn). So our marketing needs to continuously address that Sugar is not designed for adults, but for children! A first-time getting started page sounds like a great idea--we did something like that for OLPC, perhaps we can appropriate that format for Sugar Labs...? Christian Thats not how Sugar was designed to be used, but it is the conditions under which it is usually evaluated. I think this is one of our marketing challenges. Christian On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:27 AM, Eben Eliason eben.elia...@gmail.comwrote: Sugar is a very good interface for the OLPC computers it was made for, but many of the design decisions and interfaces don't work nearly as well on standard PCs. I'm curious what people think about this statement. I tend to agree that some design decisions were biased toward the XO-1 hardware, but I don't think that any of the decisions actually fail on a standard PC, and I actually think Sugar scales pretty well in terms of interaction. However, if we can assume their perspective and locate some areas which aren't ideal on all hardware, perhaps we can work on resolving them. Anyone have some examples? - Eben On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 3:45 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: It claims to be a standalone home computer environment for kids, not a classroom environment. On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:29 AM, Bernie Innocenti ber...@codewiz.org wrote: ,Josh williams wrote: Looks like a Microsoft project, they're hosted on IIS and the site is written in ASP. Might also be a bad choice of web hosting provider. The entire ISO image contains free software. -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://www.sugarlabs.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax -- anyth...@christianmarcschmidt.com http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com 917/ 575 0013 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] First competitor?
I love the card idea. Walter, could you please resend the link? The only challenge will be how and where to print the cards. Do we have a budget for these type of expenses? Christian On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 9:19 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: Maybe it is time to pursue the card stack idea... I had circulated a link a month or so back. If Christian could design a template, we could let the community start making cards. We could then have various paths through the card decks for different audiences. -walter On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 9:12 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: Maybe the 0.84 refresh of the Sugar manual is an opportunity to address this. I'd aim for a card or a 1 pager that helps you with your first time with Sugar. -walter On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 9:09 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.com wrote: Thats not how Sugar was designed to be used, but it is the conditions under which it is usually evaluated. I think this is one of our marketing challenges. +1 I was flummoxed my first 20 minutes with Sugar a year ago (How do I save/retrieve a file?) Actually, I was also flummoxed in 1986 when I first used a Mac (How do I get a directory listing? Where's the CLI?) And in 1982 when I first used a PC (What am I supposed to type at this prompt?) But - I was *not* when I used my very first computer, a colorful Commodore VIC-20 which booted directly into BASIC. That's because the machine came with perhaps the friendliest little blue beginner's manual I have ever used (sample: 'Hit the Return key a couple of times to clear it out'). Food for thought ___ Marketing mailing list market...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax -- 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!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] http://www-testing.sugarlabs.org/
Ben, could you please let us know where you encountered any bugs? Thanks, Christian On 2/27/09 11:56 AM, Benjamin M. Schwartz bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu wrote: David Farning wrote: Sorry there was a typo in my last email the site is actually http://www-testing.sugarlabs.org/ I forcefully object to everything about this website. It is ugly, off-putting, unnavigable, unreadable, buggy, empty of any helpful information, and in many other ways among the worst websites I could possibly imagine for this purpose. It is a very cool javascript tech demo, which is not at all useful here. Meanwhile, the front page of the wiki is beautiful. It presents the visitor immediately with a statement explaining what Sugar is, and a bunch of clearly named links to learn more about Sugar and Sugar Labs. Scrolling down presents a wealth of introductory information about Sugar, presented in a logical fashion. It does all of this in a non-headache-inducing color scheme, using complete sentences. Clearly a lot of work has been put into this, and it shows. Unless someone wants to come up with a decent webpage (must be better than laptop.org!), let's just stick to the wiki. --Ben -- Christian Marc Schmidt schm...@pentagram.com Pentagram Design, Inc. 204 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 212/ 802 0248 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] http://www-testing.sugarlabs.org/
Please let me know if anyone else encounters this. I haven't seen it while testing on Mac/PC systems in Firefox, Safari and IE... Christian On 2/27/09 12:12 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: For some reason, the first couple of times I looked at the site from www-testing.sl.o the floating menu was rather jerky. But now I can not reproduce it. david On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Christian Marc Schmidt schm...@pentagram.com wrote: Ben, could you please let us know where you encountered any bugs? Thanks, Christian On 2/27/09 11:56 AM, Benjamin M. Schwartz bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu wrote: David Farning wrote: Sorry there was a typo in my last email the site is actually http://www-testing.sugarlabs.org/ I forcefully object to everything about this website. It is ugly, off-putting, unnavigable, unreadable, buggy, empty of any helpful information, and in many other ways among the worst websites I could possibly imagine for this purpose. It is a very cool javascript tech demo, which is not at all useful here. Meanwhile, the front page of the wiki is beautiful. It presents the visitor immediately with a statement explaining what Sugar is, and a bunch of clearly named links to learn more about Sugar and Sugar Labs. Scrolling down presents a wealth of introductory information about Sugar, presented in a logical fashion. It does all of this in a non-headache-inducing color scheme, using complete sentences. Clearly a lot of work has been put into this, and it shows. Unless someone wants to come up with a decent webpage (must be better than laptop.org!), let's just stick to the wiki. --Ben -- Christian Marc Schmidt schm...@pentagram.com Pentagram Design, Inc. 204 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 212/ 802 0248 -- Christian Marc Schmidt schm...@pentagram.com Pentagram Design, Inc. 204 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 212/ 802 0248 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] http://www-testing.sugarlabs.org/
6. The elliptical text snippets are good demo / PowerPoint fodder but don't help peolpe answer the questions I imagine people are going to come to the site to find out. Especially since they're phrased as statements/answers, so people with different questions have to read each one and decide if it answers the question(s) they have. What are the questions you are trying to help people answer?\ Martin, we could use your help in identifying snippets that work better and help answer the questions people may have when they come to the site. The thought was that each keyphrase would have an analogous text segment on a subpage. The wording is flexible, so if confusing let's find keyphrases that work better! Thanks, Christian 7. Maybe the next page is a better skeleton for the first page: http://www-testing.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=pagepage=about_overview . Best, Christian Martin -- Christian Marc Schmidt schm...@pentagram.com Pentagram Design, Inc. 204 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 212/ 802 0248 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Feedback re static frontend site
or even table of contents would be better than index... an index is traditionally at the end of a book ;-) * Activities page: instead of alpha sort, I would mix them up and start with the Journal ..more to come thanks Sean Marketing Coordinator -- Christian Marc Schmidt schm...@pentagram.com Pentagram Design, Inc. 204 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 212/ 802 0248 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] http://www-testing.sugarlabs.org/
Adding to the visual problems is that I don't have Helvetica installed on my machine. I think I'm getting the standard, ugly Arial that comes with Windows. Perhaps we can embed a Creative Commons licensed Helvetica clone in the site? Thanks for your feedback, Nate. Installing Helvetica is a great idea. Can we get an open source license? 3. It never says what Sugar is. Sugar is a computer operating environment for students, designed to replace or complement existing desktop user interfaces. The website never states anything plainly, opting instead for this long list of dull incomplete aphorisms, which link to phrases that are _still_ not valid sentences. Even aggregating all the information in that list, I would not be able to tell you what Sugar is. I agree that there needs to be a promintently displayed page that attempts to describe Sugar in a few paragraphs. I find the current list of ...sentences... to be very intimidating for some reason. People aren't used to reading content organized like this. I think we can work on making these keyphrases more succinct and meaningful. In essence, they attempt to describe Sugar dynamically (through the contents of the site) without the need for a static mission statement. If you have any thoughts on better keyphrases, please let us know! Christian Finally, let me say thanks to the folks who have worked on the site. It may not be perfect but it's a great step in the right direction. Thanks, Nate -- Christian Marc Schmidt schm...@pentagram.com Pentagram Design, Inc. 204 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 212/ 802 0248 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] http://www-testing.sugarlabs.org/
Thank you, everyone, for your feedback on the test site. The goal remains to get the site launched very soonwe¹ll work on a revised build will that will attempt to address the main concerns raised today. Best, Christian On 2/27/09 2:55 PM, Carol Farlow Lerche c...@msbit.com wrote: I second Michael's suggestion about a web design that echoes the Sugar design. Think how useful this would be if carried to school servers. And as a basis for web-served Sugar-like activities. I have to agree with the conclusion that the test design is off-putting. It is certainly not intelligible to children. One of the foundations of the Sugar interface is to make things iconic and simple and universal. The flood of words, most of them jargon, just doesn't work. On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Michael Stone michael.r.st...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 11:56:52AM -0500, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: David Farning wrote: Sorry there was a typo in my last email the site is actually http://www-testing.sugarlabs.org/ I forcefully object to everything about this website. It is ugly, off-putting, unnavigable, unreadable, buggy, empty of any helpful information, and in many other ways among the worst websites I could possibly imagine for this purpose. It is a very cool javascript tech demo, which is not at all useful here. Meanwhile, the front page of the wiki is beautiful. It presents the visitor immediately with a statement explaining what Sugar is, and a bunch of clearly named links to learn more about Sugar and Sugar Labs. Scrolling down presents a wealth of introductory information about Sugar, presented in a logical fashion. It does all of this in a non-headache-inducing color scheme, using complete sentences. Clearly a lot of work has been put into this, and it shows. Christian, I wish I felt differently, but I agree with pretty much everything Ben said. In fact, I found myself so put off by the new design that I left the site after reading no more than two entries. I was particularly frustrated by the meaningless colors, the dark - light background transition, the useless sound bytes, and the invisible one-word menu that overlaps other text when I scroll. In more detail, this is not the Sugar design that I enjoy -- in Sugar: * Colors denote individual identity and contribution; they aren't uniform over a page and they aren't randomly regenerated on each visit. * Contrast is used carefully: I would never see a black menu with yellow text over a pure white background, nor a yellow menu with white text on a white background. (Both of which I observed.) * Text colors are never reversed for emphasis. * Views are scoped and zoomable, and information is usually arranged in visually pleasing layouts with gray-out filters or search; not organized hierarchically. (The exception is toolbars, which Eben redesigned in a fashion much more consistent with Sugar's design imperatives: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Designs/Toolbars ) (At any rate, contrast the hierarchy-free Neighborhood View and the Home View with semi-hierarchical Journal or the (deeply hierarchical) source code layout.) * For better and for worse, icons are used everywhere in place of short text. Short text is presented only on hover. Now, as an alternate suggestion: why not use the desire for a nicer website as an opportunity to test out our actual underlying UI design principles? For example, I'd love to see a Sugar front-page that used the Frame and its zoomable Views for navigation, perhaps organizing hierarchical content with Eben's Toolbar design. Regards, Michael P.S. - Just think of the educational opportunity that's slipping away by not dogfooding the existing design work. :) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christian Marc Schmidt schm...@pentagram.com Pentagram Design, Inc. 204 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 212/ 802 0248 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] www-testing.sugarlabs.org - BUGS
Thanks Josh, we'll fix these in the next build. Christian On 2/27/09 3:55 PM, ,Josh williams joshcwilli...@gmail.com wrote: There are a few bugs I've noticed on the site. First one I feel is pretty big, but I'm a really big on usability, and it will likely only affect a small number of users. Disabling Javascript causes the logo to disappear. This doesn't seem to be a problem when disabling images, but the default size for SugarLabs is fairly small. It should also be an H1 tag and not just a link. The second bug is fairly minor and I've only tested it in Firefox and safari. If you visit the about page or any other page via the navigation menu, and then press the back button on the browser, the navigation pops back out to its original state. Like I said, not a big deal, but it's kind of annoying. -Josh Christian Marc Schmidt wrote: Thank you, everyone, for your feedback on the test site. The goal remains to get the site launched very soonwe¹ll work on a revised build will that will attempt to address the main concerns raised today. Best, Christian On 2/27/09 2:55 PM, Carol Farlow Lerche c...@msbit.com wrote: I second Michael's suggestion about a web design that echoes the Sugar design. Think how useful this would be if carried to school servers. And as a basis for web-served Sugar-like activities. I have to agree with the conclusion that the test design is off-putting. It is certainly not intelligible to children. One of the foundations of the Sugar interface is to make things iconic and simple and universal. The flood of words, most of them jargon, just doesn't work. On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Michael Stone michael.r.st...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 11:56:52AM -0500, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: David Farning wrote: Sorry there was a typo in my last email the site is actually http://www-testing.sugarlabs.org/ I forcefully object to everything about this website. It is ugly, off-putting, unnavigable, unreadable, buggy, empty of any helpful information, and in many other ways among the worst websites I could possibly imagine for this purpose. It is a very cool javascript tech demo, which is not at all useful here. Meanwhile, the front page of the wiki is beautiful. It presents the visitor immediately with a statement explaining what Sugar is, and a bunch of clearly named links to learn more about Sugar and Sugar Labs. Scrolling down presents a wealth of introductory information about Sugar, presented in a logical fashion. It does all of this in a non-headache-inducing color scheme, using complete sentences. Clearly a lot of work has been put into this, and it shows. Christian, I wish I felt differently, but I agree with pretty much everything Ben said. In fact, I found myself so put off by the new design that I left the site after reading no more than two entries. I was particularly frustrated by the meaningless colors, the dark - light background transition, the useless sound bytes, and the invisible one-word menu that overlaps other text when I scroll. In more detail, this is not the Sugar design that I enjoy -- in Sugar: * Colors denote individual identity and contribution; they aren't uniform over a page and they aren't randomly regenerated on each visit. * Contrast is used carefully: I would never see a black menu with yellow text over a pure white background, nor a yellow menu with white text on a white background. (Both of which I observed.) * Text colors are never reversed for emphasis. * Views are scoped and zoomable, and information is usually arranged in visually pleasing layouts with gray-out filters or search; not organized hierarchically. (The exception is toolbars, which Eben redesigned in a fashion much more consistent with Sugar's design imperatives: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Designs/Toolbars ) (At any rate, contrast the hierarchy-free Neighborhood View and the Home View with semi-hierarchical Journal or the (deeply hierarchical) source code layout.) * For better and for worse, icons are used everywhere in place of short text. Short text is presented only on hover. Now, as an alternate suggestion: why not use the desire for a nicer website as an opportunity to test out our actual underlying UI design principles? For example, I'd love to see a Sugar front-page that used the Frame and its zoomable Views for navigation, perhaps organizing
Re: [IAEP] Color combos for the logo
Thanks, David, and everyone else for your input on the Sugar Labs logo. Based on this conversation, I'll plan on documenting the design intent behind the logo on the wiki this weekend. While the logo concept is based on the treatment of icons in the Sugar interface, my initial feeling was that we should restrict the color combinations to only a few carefully chosen ones, both for recognizability and optimal control. I could, however, also see doing a full spectrum of color options, and it sounds like that is where the consensus is headed. I still think that each combination should be manually created, so we don't run into any contrast/legibility issues. I'll try this concept and run it by the group. There will also be usage guidelines, as I mentioned before, entailing in what context a particular color combination should be used. Color aside, I don't believe the logo should be altered in any other way. The change in color in itself is enough variation, and we need to pin down other variables to maintain a degree of consistency. More soon... Christian On 12/5/08 1:21 PM, David Farning [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 9:58 AM, Gary C Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 5 Dec 2008, at 07:00, Bernie Innocenti wrote: Gary C Martin wrote: Uploaded 4 more colours (red, yellow, brown, purple), feel free to remove/overwrite if they are not what was intended (I tried to stick to similar saturation and just hit different hues). http://sugarlabs.org/go/MarketingTeam/Logo BTW: is there a design brief for this somewhere? Like: is the inner blue a requirement, or could that be inverted (e.g. variable colour inside, blue outline), or can perhaps both colours be varied, what about black/white (for print), etc, etc. I thought we were just imitating the color pairs or the XO guy, thus both colors should vary. Yea that's what I thought too, but didn't see that formally stated anywhere. The concept of contrasting colour pairs as individual identity was/is a strong, unique design element (of the Sugar UI), seems to make sense to bring that forward into the Sugar branding (using different colour variations suggested the diverse community of individuals behind Sugar). Design is going to be a interesting aspects of the project. How do we engage artistic individuals, who often crave freedom and creativity, to help Eben and Christian make _their_ vision a reality? david But let's hear what Christian thinks a bout it. OK, will do. --Gary For our Gitorious instance, I came up with this logo idea: http://git.sugarlabs.org/ Yes, these colors don't match well with the background or perhaps with each other... Dammit Jim, I'm a programmer, not a painter! -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://www.sugarlabs.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christian Marc Schmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pentagram Design, Inc. 204 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 212/ 802 0248 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Color combos for the logo
On 12/5/08 4:06 PM, Jameson Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: While the logo concept is based on the treatment of icons in the Sugar interface, my initial feeling was that we should restrict the color combinations to only a few carefully chosen ones, both for recognizability and optimal control. I agree on the limited choices, but would like to see the center color vary across the choices, as on the XO. Sure, I can explore this. Color aside, I don't believe the logo should be altered in any other way. The change in color in itself is enough variation, and we need to pin down other variables to maintain a degree of consistency. I think that there should be two versions: sugarlabs is the organization, sugar is the product. Yes, I agree. Also, when I requested the SVG for mashups, I did not mean altering it, I meant things like rotating it and including it in larger graphics. Putting it on the screen of a laptop, for instance. I still think that an open source project should have an open source - vector - logo. Now I understand. Sure, I can provide SVGs, if that is the format of choice. More soon, Christian Jameson -- Christian Marc Schmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pentagram Design, Inc. 204 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 212/ 802 0248 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
