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 ? 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.

: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.

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

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