#8645 NORM Not Tri: 763: Battery is white

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#8645: 763: Battery is white
-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
   Reporter:  bert       |       Owner:  marco        
       Type:  defect     |      Status:  closed       
   Priority:  normal     |   Milestone:  Not Triaged  
  Component:  sugar      |     Version:  not specified
 Resolution:  fixed      |    Keywords:               
Next_action:  never set  |    Verified:  0            
  Blockedby:             |    Blocking:               
-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------

Comment(by mikus):

 I'm not going to re-open, but I *do* disagree strongly:

 ((1)) I believe that in human-computer interfaces, white is often used for
 the 'absence' of something (vs. color being used to indicate 'presence').
 Here I think the user is more concerned with "is energy coming in from the
 outside?" than with "is my XO using its battery at this moment?".  So I
 would prefer to use color to indicate "battery is taken care of" (i.e.,
 there is an external plug supplying electricity), and to use white to
 indicate "the XO is running on its own" (i.e., the battery is draining
 because there is no supply of external electricity).

 I believe *white* for the "watch out" condition will be more noticeable
 than colored.  This is the OPPOSITE of the design described in the first
 comment.

 [[BR]]((2)) No matter which design gets chosen, what it tells the user
 needs to be CONSISTENT.  As it is implemented in current Joyride, I have
 seen the Frame icon *colored* when the battery was 98%+ charged (i.e., the
 battery was there, but in effect was not depleting), and have seen it
 *colored* when (because of an error) the charging circuit was idle (i.e.,
 the battery was the only source, and was depleting significantly).

 The user needs to be taught WHEN to take action, and when not to.  If this
 ticket is closed as 'fixed', then when the icon is white (per the design
 described in the first comment) the user can be told:  "You don't have to
 do anything -- the battery is being charged".  But when the icon is not
 white (per the design described in the first comment), the user does not
 know -- he needs to hover and look at the charge percentage to tell
 whether "battery is being used" is a good thing or a bad thing.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8645#comment:5>
One Laptop Per Child <http://laptop.org/>
OLPC bug tracking system