[Educators] [educators] TUE Total User Experience

Yama Ploskonka yama at netoso.com
Mon Apr 7 07:57:54 EDT 2008


Yes.

Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> Well, I totally agree with all that you said.
> 
> The core Sugar development team is very small, currently just two
> full-time and one part-time people, in the process of getting one more
> person full-time.
> 
> I don't think is in our capacity to reach directly the teachers, so I
> see two possibilities here: teachers reach us or someone in the middle
> organizes the feedback and the subsequent dialog.

That's what I feel would be the way.  Teachers are not reaching out, 
ergo someone has to get in the middle to get the feedback going.

> Currently, the Sugar team can communicate fluently in Spanish,
> Brazilian, French and English. With this I want to say that language
> is not the major problem here, but organizing the effort of getting
> ideas flowing.

good to know we don't need to mess with internal translation, to some 
extent.  I handle all those languages myself plus a couple others, so I 
should fit in fine with a no-translating policy, coming upwards. 
However, at some moment we might have to worry about stuff coming back 
to the teachers.  As my dad says, we'll deal with that when we need to.

BTW, I do not think this is just a Sugar issue, but since Sugar-list is 
sort of a major catch-all, it'll do fine to work that team in.  I am not 
copying them to keep precisely that list's noise level down, but when 
things really get going I guess we can keep them apprised of major advances.







> Thanks,
> 
> Tomeu
> 
> On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 1:36 AM, Yama Ploskonka <yama at netoso.com> wrote:
>> By all means.  One problem that I am finding in the way to success with OLPC
>> is that somehow reports on the end-user experience are not coming across,
>> and there is little or no interaction with end-users to improve on the OLPC
>> experience.
>>
>>  I correspond with the Localization and Server lists, and OLPC News, and
>> privately with quite a few OLPC folk, and I keep noticing very dedicated
>> teams and individuals working in their sides of the project.  Yet extremely
>> little is coming from the actual classrooms, from the end-users.
>>
>>  I am totally convinced that this is not because we have solved all problems
>> and our users are totally satisfied and there is nothing more that needs
>> doing.  It is very clear, actually, that we have not achieved such a level
>> of success yet.
>>
>>  It is a fact that teachers, students, parents are not communicating with
>> developers, unless there are channels I and many others are not aware of.
>> Besides this evidence, I have actually and after much effort managed to talk
>> to a teacher in Uruguay.  Not being at liberty to share details I can merely
>> mention that there's much to hear from them (I read they are not allowed to
>> talk to the press, and I want to respect that).
>>
>>  Is this important?  Well, communication and getting the OLPC users involved
>> in their own education is part of the core, the very purpose of the whole
>> project, unless I am very mistaken.  So far, it is not happening.
>>
>>  Do we need to make it happen?  I should think so.  I do think that
>> everybody, in any of the deployments, can honestly say that the task is not
>> yet done - that is part of what makes this an exiting thing to be a part of.
>> So far, it is the developers who voice opinions, and a bunch of dedicated
>> outsiders like I.  Unless we get the end-users in, this is just benevolent
>> cultural colonialism.
>>
>>  Total User Experience uses a holistic approach to evaluate and improve
>> through feedback what is the interaction between the user and technology, in
>> this case the OLPC XO.
>>
>>  I know this sounds like another ugly buzzword, but I am rather curious on
>> what we can learn by actually designing our communication channels to
>> receive that feedback.  It is more than anything a matter of the usability
>> of the full OLPC experience, rather than just the usability of eToys or even
>> Sugar.  What is learned in this way would hopefully become quite useful when
>> it comes to implement ever more successful deployments, since eventually
>> OLPC should be generating communication, sharing and creation of knowledge,
>> should it not?
>>
>>  Apologies for a long and somehow rambling note.  Hope we can move on from
>> here to practical matters, the elementary ones being
>>         -       why is it that teachers do not communicate,
>>         -       how we can fix that.
>>  Then, when they are communicating, hopefully we can center in more mundane
>> issues of usability to improve on them.
>>
>>  Yama
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 10:12 PM, Yama Ploskonka <yama at netoso.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>  I believe that a TUE approach could help.  Please advise.
>>>>
>>> Hi, could you please elaborate about what is TUE and how that could help
>> here?
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Tomeu
>>>
>>>
> 


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