On 24/10/09 12:08, Daniel Pope wrote:
> John Cooper wrote:
>> It is designed for education and easy learning for someone who has never
>> used a computer before. It is a very different interface, using a
>> journal to log task you do and therefore making it easy to go back to.
>
> I have a log on my PC. It's called "Recent Documents". But if my recent
> documents ran to dozens of pages it would be much less useful.
>
It cover all activities and it very logical. Much easier than having to
know file structures and what application to run. They can be eased in
to learning each application rather than how to work a computer.
> I think you're missing my point though. In usability we can talk about
> "affordances" [1]. Sugar has none. I cannot work out how to use it
> because I cannot by looking tell what any particular part of the user
> interface is supposed to do. Or I guess but I'm frequently wrong. Some
> of the applications are a lot better than the UI as a whole in that regard.
>
As a five or six year old, you wouldn't have all your current
understanding of computers and this has been designed with children.
> Or another example - 90% of things don't have tooltips. The one or two
> things that do and which take quite a long time to appear just serve to
> frustrate you more in the vast majority of situations when you really
> need them and they aren't there.
>
>> I found it difficult at first because of my file based computer use.
>> I believe the developers have worked hard to create a new UI and the
>> proof is it is being used and improved.
>
> I'm quite sure the developers have worked hard on it. But it's being
> used because that's what people are being given. It's being improved
> because there's still money behind it. I don't think that proves
> anything, and even if the developers have worked hard, they've gone off
> on some wild tangent.
Are you saying the developers working with 3rd world children have
forced an unworkable UI on them? The fact it has been accepted is proof
as they had a choice and if it was really so bad, they could have
deployed XP.
>
> It's often said that most programmers suck at HCI, but at least most
> programmers know to copy designs that work. You'd have to be pretty
> arrogant to think that you can design a better GUI than what the entire
> industry has researched and developed over 30 years.
>
Not arrogate, but innovative. It is a ridiculous idea that no one should
never try to re-invent the wheel. Being open to new ideas is essential
especially at the rate technology changes. The UI is aimed at children,
not adults. It doesn't mean they cannot adapt to other UI's later as
their learning rate is high. The ones who turn out to be programmers may
well think the way we do things is pants and create a better UI. Having
used an OS which is open source is a great starting platform and
hopefully will mean they will insist on it in future.
>> The hardware design is incredible and
>> very innovative,making it easy to fix and maintain over the years.
>
> I haven't seen the hardware.
>
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification
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