Changes

: At no other phase in the life of a human being does the cognitive and physical abilities attain such a rapid growth as during childhood. Yet we expose a single interface for all children from the age of 5 to 12 (and beyond) though their cognitive and motor skills have changed enormously during that period. Can we design UI targeted at younger children so 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).

: At no other phase in the life of a human being does the cognitive and physical abilities attain such a rapid growth as during childhood. Yet we expose a single interface for all children from the age of 5 to 12 (and beyond) though their cognitive and motor skills have changed enormously during that period. Can we design UI targeted at younger children so 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).

:'''Scope''': 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. But a UI abstraction framework is a lot of work, for something that we aren't even sure we need. Hence 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 work on bringing this feature into Sugar as part of GSoC. But do younger children need context menus or 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 user using the system (obtained from user profile), the system could choose to expose clues to certain features or not. (We can even think about exposing/hiding certain features depending upon age. But I am hesitant to go in that direction unless there is a clear reason/evidence to do so). 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 ? Work by [http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&q=author:%22Allison+Druin%22+author:%22Ben+Bederson%22&btnG=Search&lr=lang_en&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_vis=0 Allison Druin and Ben Bederson] seems to suggest that Children start thinking differently after 10). I believe that this part can be done in 3 months. I believe that this effort could also evolve to help [http://www.olpcnews.com/use_cases/community/one_xo_laptop_grandmother.html senior citizens] eventually.

:'''Scope''': 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. But a UI abstraction framework is a lot of work, for something that we aren't even sure we need. Hence 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 context menus and keyboard shortcuts. I could work on bringing this feature into Sugar as part of GSoC. But do younger children need context menus or 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 user using the system (obtained from user profile), the system could choose to expose clues to certain features or not. (We can even think about exposing/hiding certain features depending upon age. But I am hesitant to go in that direction unless there is a clear reason/evidence to do so). 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 ? Work by [http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&q=author:%22Allison+Druin%22+author:%22Ben+Bederson%22&btnG=Search&lr=lang_en&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_vis=0 Allison Druin and Ben Bederson] seems to suggest that Children start thinking differently after 10). I believe that this part can be done in 3 months. I believe that this effort could also evolve to help [http://www.olpcnews.com/use_cases/community/one_xo_laptop_grandmother.html senior citizens] eventually.

:'''Maintainability''': One concern that I have and is shared (via IRC) by [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:TimClicks TimClicks] is about the additional challenges this would place on the rest of the code base in terms of maintainability. There is a wide range of approaches we can take to implementing the UI abstraction layer. At one end of the spectrum we have the simple but cumbersome solution wherein each target system feature is tagged manually according to the target age, for example. But this would eventually lead to a maintenance nightmare. On the other end we have a complex system that categorizes features automatically. This again I think is not realistic to achieve. What could work is a system that takes the middle ground. I could start off from the manual end of the spectrum with a very limited set of features and get it done within GSoC. After GSoC, we could evolve the system crystallizing design guidelines based on user studies and using it to slowly push the system further along the spectrum and bringing more of the system under the abstraction layer along the way.

:'''Maintainability''': One concern that I have and is shared by [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:TimClicks TimClicks] (at #sugar) is about the additional challenges this would place on the rest of the code base in terms of maintainability. There is a wide range of approaches we can take to implementing the UI abstraction layer. At one end of the spectrum we have the simple but cumbersome solution wherein each target system feature is tagged manually according to the target age, for example. But this would eventually lead to a maintenance nightmare. On the other end we have a complex system that categorizes features automatically. This again I think is not realistic to achieve. What could work is a system that takes the middle ground. I could start off from the manual end of the spectrum with a very limited set of features and get it done within GSoC. After GSoC, we could evolve the system crystallizing design guidelines based on user studies and using it to slowly push the system further along the spectrum and bringing more of the system under the abstraction layer along the way.

:'''Similar efforts''': Some of the more popular programs have started developing a version for children. For example Openoffice has [http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page Ooo4kids]. Inkscape is considering a [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/+spec/kidscape-project version targeted at children]. But these efforts are different from this proposal in that they were built for adults and are now being re-designed for children. Still, I think that there is an opportunity for learning from these and similar efforts.

:'''Similar efforts''': Some of the more popular programs have started developing a version for children. For example Openoffice has [http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page Ooo4kids]. Inkscape is considering a [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/+spec/kidscape-project version targeted at children]. But these efforts are different from this proposal in that they were built for adults and are now being re-designed for children. Still, I think that there is an opportunity for learning from these and similar efforts.