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% The Sugar User Interface
%
%
The Sugar platform encourages learning through personal expression.
The user interface differs from the traditional Desktop metaphor. It
uses a "zooming" metaphor—each view represents a different scale of
interaction. You move between a view of the network "neighborhood", your
"friends", your "home page", and your currently open application
("Activity"). Each view occupies the entire screen. There are no
overlapping windows to deal with.
With Sugar, you zoom between views: from your network neighborhood to
your current Activity.
Sugar supports sharing and collaboration by default. Sugar brings many
of the rich collaboration mechanisms we are accustomed to from the
Internet directly into the user interface. Sharing a file, starting a
chat, collaborating in a writing exercise, or playing a game with other
people are never more than a single click away.
Sugar incorporates a Frame around the border of the screen; the Frame
holds status information, such as alerts, a clipboard, open activities,
and your current collaborators.
Sugar maintains a Journal (or diary) of everything you do; it is a place
for reflection. You do not need to save files or create folders;
Activities automatically save your work to the Journal.
Sugar emphasizes discovery. Every object in the interface has a menu
that reveals more details and options for action. Many Activities
include a "view source" option; for example, the Browse activity lets
you examine the HTML code that reveals how a web page is created. Most
Activities are written in the Python scripting language. You can see how
they work, and make changes to them.
Sugar has clarity of design. There is no need to "double click". There
are no overlapping windows. Sugar uses color and shape throughout the
interface to provide a fun, expressive, approachable platform for
computing.
For parents and teachers
========================
**Activities, not Applications**
Sugar does not have applications in the traditional sense. Activities
are distinct from applications in what they focus on (collaboration and
expression) and in their implementation (journaling and iteration). This
is more than a new naming convention; it represents an intrinsic quality
of the learning experience we hope the children will have when using
Sugar.
**Presence is always Present**
Everyone has the potential for learning and teaching. Sugar puts
collaboration at the core of the user experience in order to realize
this potential. The presence of other learners encourages children to
take responsibility for others' learning as well as their own. The
exchange of ideas amongst peers makes the learning process more engaging
and stimulates critical thinking skills. Sugar encourages these types of
social interaction with the laptops.
Most activities have the potential to become network enabled. For
example, consider the Browse activity. With typical computer interfaces,
you browse in isolation. In Sugar, sharing links is an integral part of
Browse, transforming web-surfing into a group collaboration.
**Tools of Expression**
Sugar emphases thinking, expressing, and communicating using technology.
Sugar starts from the premise that we want to use what people already
know in order to make connections to new knowledge. Computation is a
"thing to think with". Sugar makes the primary activity of the children
one of creative expression, in whatever form that might take. Most
activities focus on the creation of some type of object, be it a
drawing, a song, a story, a game, or a program. In another language
shift describing the user experience, we refer to objects rather than
files as the primary stuff of creative expression.
As most software developers would agree, the best way to learn how to
write a program is to write one, or perhaps teach someone else how to do
so. Studying the syntax of the language is useful, but it doesn't teach
one how to code. We apply the principle of "learning through doing" to
all types of creation. For example, we emphasize composing music over
downloading music. We also encourage the children to engage in the
process of collaborative critique of their expressions and to iterate
upon this expression as well.
Turning the traditional file system into objects speaks more directly to
real-world metaphors: instead of a sound file, we have an actual sound;
instead of a text file, a story. In order to support this concept,
activity developers can define object types and associated icons to
represent them.
**Journaling**
The concept of the Journal, a written documentation of everyday events,
is generally understood, albeit in various forms across cultures. A
journal typically chronicles the Activities one has done throughout the
day. We have adopted a journal metaphor for the file system as our
approach to file organization. The underlying implementation of the
journal does not differ significantly from file systems in contemporary
operating systems. The file system layout is less important than the
journal itself.
The journal embodies the idea of storing a history of the things a child
has done and the activities a child has participated in. The child,
parent, and teacher can reflect on the journal to assess progress.
The Journal stores objects created while the student runs an Activity.
This function is secondary, although important. The Journal naturally
lends itself to a chronological organization. Objects in the Journal can
be tagged, searched, and sorted by a variety of means. The Journal
records what a child has done, not just what the child has saved. The
Journal is a portfolio or scrapbook history of the child's interactions
with the machine and also with peers.
The Journal includes entries explicitly created by the children with
entries that are implicitly created through the child's participation in
an Activities. Developers must think carefully about how an activity
integrates with the Journal more so than with a traditional file system
that functions independently of an application. The Activities, the
objects, and the means of recording all tightly integrate to create a
different kind of computer experience.
author
:
> © Walter Bender 2008
>
> adam hyde 2008
>
> Brian Jordan 2008
>
> David Farning 2008
>
> Janet Swisher 2008
>
> Rob Mason 2008
|
