Changes

:University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. I am a morning person and usually not very productive after 9pm.

:University of British Columbia, 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?

; 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. This limitation has been a constant source of frustration. 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).  

:Regrettably, I have not contributed code so far. My contributions have been limited to a number of bug reports and ideas spread across several projects. This limitation has been a constant source of frustration. 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 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 a non-profit as their IT manager. But my time there was spent in developing and deploying the IT infrastructure using 100% Open-source software stack (Plone, Django, Zope, MySQL, Apache, TeX, Ubuntu).  

: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 a non-profit as their IT manager. But my time there was spent in developing and deploying the IT infrastructure using 100% Open-source software stack (Plone, Django, Zope, MySQL, Apache, TeX, Ubuntu).  

I am back in school now doing my Computer Science Masters in Human Computer Interaction and I think this summer, this SoC could enable me to finally contribute to the community in the capacity of a developer/designer.

I am back in school now doing my Computer Science Masters in Human Computer Interaction and I think this summer, this SoC could enable me to finally contribute to the community in the capacity of a developer/designer.

: 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 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 ? Work by Allison Druin and Ben Bederson suggests that Children start thinking differently after 10). I believe that this part can be done in 3 months.

: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 ? Can our effort also help [http://www.olpcnews.com/use_cases/community/one_xo_laptop_grandmother.html senior citizens] ? 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.

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

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