Re: [kidsUI] Browser example

[Sanjay Chandrasekharan <schandr2@chat.carleton.ca>]

Hey folks,

We are making progress! See below.

> What we've been talking about is a file manager, a program that runs over a window
> manager of a desktop environment.  I can see that using animation in this sort of program
> could be appealing to children.  But what about the window managers and desktop
> environments themselves?  These provide things like pop-up menus, window frames, scroll
> bars, minimize- maximize- and close-buttons, etc.  Are these sorts of things amenable to
> animation?  Or is there some other way of looking at these things that might make them
> more usable for kids?
>
> It just occurred to me that when we say "desktop environment" we're using the term
> "environment" to mean the background that things get done against--the "world" of the
> computer to the users, as it were.  If we're to have animated agents helping users,
> perhaps the environment should be modelled as the world those agents live in.  This might
> mean a user's home directory would represent his bedroom, while games on the system might
> be in a playroom, and connections to other systems would be represented by a TV set or by
> other, near-by buildings.  How does this sound?  Am I missing some shortcoming that's
> painfully obvious to others?
>
> Do any of you folks from the various window manager and environment projects have any
> thoughts on this?

I was going to mention this. No agent exists in a vacuum. All agents need to be situated in a
world of objects. So there should be kid equivalents of maximize and minimize buttons, scroll
bars etc. I think the "screen-as-a-desktop" metaphor needs to go. Kids are not familiar with
a desktop anyway.

The pop-up menus are not a problem. I can see a character coming up with a menu. A crucial
issue here is language. If we use an animated character, I think the language should be first
person, instead of the "comment from nowhere" model used by Windows. ("This program has
performed an illegal operation...yeah, right!) So we will have the character saying stuff
like "what do you think you are doing?", or "look what you did!" or something like that.

BTW, this is getting interesting and interesting! :-) We'll have lots of fun designing this!
:-)

I like Doug's idea of creating a house-like environment. We need to think more about this. A
good game for inspiration is The Sims. http://www.thesims.com/us/

BTW, a small clarification. My notion of agent is actually an apology for an agent. The agent
in the file transfer is not actually "helping" the user, like, say,  the Microsoft Office
Agent. The file transfer agent is just adding to the user experience. I think these kind of
"active" components are needed before we can actually introduce "real" agents into the
interface, the kind that helps users.

Sanjay

-------------------------------------
Sanjay Chandrasekharan,
Ph.D Student (Cognitive Science),
Carleton University,
Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada K1S 5B6
Phone: 520-2600 ext 1568

http://wabakimi.carleton.ca/~schandr2