Summer of Code/2010/Adaptive UI Framework for Different Age Groups

About me

1. What is your name?

Mohan Raj Rajamanickam

2. What is your email address?

mohanraj dot cit at gmail dot com

3. What is your Sugar Labs wiki username?

Mohanr

4. What is your IRC nickname?

mohanr

5. What is your primary language?

English for all verbal, written communication. (Mother tongue: Tamil)

6. Where are you located, and what hours do you tend to work?

Vancouver, Canada. I am a morning person and usually not very productive after 9pm.

7. Have you participated in an open-source project before? If not, why do you want to work on an open-source project this summer?

I have not contributed code directly so far. My contributions have been limited to a number of bug reports and ideas spread across several projects.

I was instrumental in introducing Linux in my undergraduate CS department back in 2001. I have been wanting to contribute to Open-source ever since. I had dreamed of making significant contributions when I quit my corporate job and joined an NGO as the IT manager. But my time there was spent in developing and deploying the IT infrastructure using 100% Open-source software (Plone, Django, Zope, MySQL, Apache, TeX, Ubuntu). My deep desire to contribute and be part of the community would often turn to guilt, especially when I would be awed by the quality of some feature in the Open-source software stack I use every day (Linux has been my Primary OS since 2002).

I am back in school doing my CS Masters now and I think this summer, this SoC could enable me to finally contribute to the community as an Open-source developer.

About my project

1. What is the name of your project?

Adaptive UI Framework for Different Age Groups

2. Describe your project in 10-20 sentences. What are you making? Who are you making it for, and why do they need it? What technologies (programming languages, etc.) will you be using?

Can we design UI targeted at different age groups of children such that it improves their experience with the system ? Can UI designed specifically for different age groups facilitate learnability of the UI and the system features that it abstracts, especially as they move from one age group to another ? (culminating in a desktop, for e.g. from Ubuntu-sugar-remix to Ubuntu).

We would need to architect and build a UI abstraction layer that would enable users of different age groups to experience the system differently. This should be achieved requiring minimal change on part of the rest of the code base, especially activities.

Scope: A UI abstraction framework is too much work: for something that we aren't even sure we need. And I won't be able to do it in 3 months single handedly. So I could start paving way for what could eventually become a framework, but still manage to contribute something significant and useful for the community in these 3 months. Lets take the feature of discoverability of keyboard shortcuts and context menus. I could start working on bringing this feature into Sugar. But do younger children need keyboard shortcuts ? Can the clues for enhancing discoverability of such features lead to confusion for those who dont need it ? So depending upon the age of the child using the system (obtained from user profile), the system could choose to expose clues to certain features or not. I will limit my target groups to two. The exact age ranges of the two groups can be fixed after a bit of exploration (6-10 and 11-15 ? Prior work by Allison Druin and Ben Bederson suggest that Children start thinking differently after 10). I think this can be done in 3 months.

3. What is the timeline for development of your project?

This work will be part of my Master's thesis. I would hence be working on the project for the next 1.5 years.

• May 1 - May 23:
  • Familiarize with the code base and the developers behind it.
  • Back ground research of prior work concerning technology and children.
  • Conduct an informal user study observing children from the 2 target age groups using the system.

• Week 1 (May 23 - 30): Brainstorm different designs based on the observations. Form basic UI design principles and sample mockups for the different age groups. Improvise with feedback from mentor & community. These principles would guide the rest of my GSoC work.
• Week 2 (May 30 - June 6): Start building the necessary support structures in the core system for Adaptive UI.
• Week 3 (June 6 - 13): Continue building support structures for Adaptive UI. Code review and commit. No changes to system behavior at this point.
• Week 4 (June 13 - 20): Start work on improving discoverability of keyboard shortcuts.
• Week 5 (June 20 - 27): Code review and commit. Blog. System should now have enhanced (age agnostic) discoverability of keyboard shortcuts.
• Week 6 (June 27 - July 4): Hook up the keyboard shortcuts discoverability feature with the Adaptive UI mechanism. Give user the ability to turn-off this hook.
• Week 7 (July 4 - 11): Code review and commit. System should now have discoverability of keyboard shortcuts feature depending upon the age of the user.
• Week 8 (July 11 - 18): Refactoring week. Review all committed code. Refactor, code review and commit. Blog.
• Week 9 (July 18 - 25): Start work on improving discoverability of context menus.
• Week 10 (July 25 - Aug 1): Code review and commit.
• Week 11 (Aug 1 - 8): Hook it up with the Adaptive core.
• Week 12 (Aug 8 - 15): Finish work, core review and commit.
• Sign-off GSoC
• Week 13 (Aug 15 - 22): Document work. Blog. Put up a presentation summarizing my work and experience so far.

Week 9 - Week 12 is a safety zone. If everything goes well, I should be able to go through it as planned. Otherwise, I can use this time to finish any pending work from previous weeks.

4. Convince us, in 5-15 sentences, that you will be able to successfully complete your project in the timeline you have described.

• Over 6 years experience in Python

I have been working as a software engineer for 6 years and I have been programming in Python for most part of it.

• • Worked as a contractor at Google for 1 year 5 months (Python throughout)
    • Obtained Python readability (Google's internal seal of approval that I can write readable Python code according to their guidelines) from Alex Martelli
    • Improved quality of code by performing code reviews on daily basis for the team (for about 6 months)
• Passionate about Opensource
  • Quit my job as software engineer in an MNC and took up the position of IT manager for a local non-profit organization
    • Had the opportunity to fully realize my long-time passion for Open Source Software (OSS)
    • Delivered the solutions using exclusively OSS
    • Instrumental in the introduction of Linux into the undergraduate CS lab
• Penchant for clean design and efficiency
  • Won appreciation award for the self-initiative of single-handedly developing a custom test automation framework for streamlining QA
  • Received first prize in intra-college software competition
  • At the non-profit, managed the development of web applications and increased the number of unique visitors to the website over 30 fold within a year. Saved around 20% in operational costs through streamlining various processes.

Myself and the community

1. If your project is successfully completed, what will its impact be on the Sugar Labs community?

Sugar (& OLPC), I believe, is based on the principles of Constructionism. Discoverability and learnability of the system features with minimal external help hence becomes very important factors. This project will pave way for a framework for improving the discoverability of the features of the system in a customized manner depending upon the individual using the system. I am going to bank upon only one factor: age. But once the framework is mature (12-24 months), I can imagine various plugins that take into account other differences: culture, previous experience with technology, physical disabilities - to name a few. This will immensely improve the system's reach and usability among the millions of children using it every day. This could also enable activity and system developers to target certain features at specific users without worrying too much about whether it makes sense to have it for all users or whether the UI is getting too complicated or the system is going to suffer from feature creep .. etc.

2. Do you have any ideas on where you would like your deployment to be, who you would like to be involved, and how we can help you and the community in your area begin it?

I would like a deployment center at UBC, Vancouver. I will also work with my university in locating students to try out the UI through the university's summer programs and other outreach efforts such as Science exhibition fairs. If possible I would like to observe children using the UI before beginning coding.

Optional, after GSoC: I am also interested in observing how children with radically different levels of exposure to technology react to Sugar. I will be travelling between Canada and India (once a year). Hence, if it is possible, I would also like to visit a center at India when I am there and observe how differently the children who have minimal (affordability and) exposure to technology react to the design of SugarUI / OLPC.

3. What will you do if you get stuck on your project and your mentor isn't around?

Use the alternate contacts obtained from mentor beforehand. Fall back on community: IRC; if the problem still exists after 12h contact mailing list. If nothing works and if it seems like I am slipping behind on schedule, contact the GSoC person: Tim McNamara.

4. How do you propose you will be keeping the community informed of your progress and any problems or questions you might have over the course of the project?

Maintain wiki page documenting progress, encountered problems and solutions obtained. Blog when a milestone is reached. Mail a weekly summary to the mentor, ccing other developers interested/knowledgeable in the area and if necessary, the developers mailing list.

Miscellaneous

Screenshot of my first modification to my development environment. Note that the drop-down menu text has my email address (in place of the word "Restart").

What is your t-shirt size?

XXL (I know, I have to lose weight :)

Describe a great learning experience you had as a child.

I have been a star-eyed kid passionate about energy conservation for as long as I can remember; drawing plans and trying to build perpetual motion systems. I am not sure when or how it happened, but eventually I began to realize that perfect energy conservation might not be possible. That friction, trade-offs and losses are an inevitable part of the equation.

I still catch myself wanting to design the perfect architecture, write the perfect program or buy the perfect laptop that will last perpetually. I have to often remind myself that Engineering (and much of life) is a balancing act of making the most elegant compromises in the limited time frame (and improvise later). Its been a tough and valuable lesson.

Is there anything else we should have asked you or anything else that we should know that might make us like you or your project more?

Here is an excerpt from my 'Statement of Purpose' which was submitted as part of my graduate application:

 After Ph.D. ?
   After obtaining my Ph.D., I would like to 
     work on selected Open source projects; esp. those aimed at children, for e.g OLPC project's Sugar 
       build a team of volunteers and mentor them in areas of usability 
     work as a professor in a research oriented university or
       as a research scientist in a usability lab
     work with children in making computer a viable part of their creativity tool-set.

 Research Ideas
   One exciting idea, that I have been dwelling on from my undergraduate years and made an unsuccessful attempt at college, is on adaptive interfaces. I want to research on interfaces that are a breeze to use irrespective of the different types of users and systems. The interface adapts statically and dynamically to both the users on one end and the system on the other. The static adaptations depends on pre-generated profiles for the systems and users. The dynamic adaptations depend on various factors like the current avg. load on the system, time of the day/year, weather, current social scenario and ultimately self-learning from the demonstrated preferences of the user. 

TODO

• Apply in melange, google's web app before April 9
• Check the image requirements (Restart). Make changes to code and upload a new image if necessary.
• Expand the timeline to outline my work beyond GSoC to the end of my thesis.
• Obtain answers from members on the impact of this project on the community.
• 'comment on the talk page of other applications'