News from Mar 23, 2008

This week was spent laying the groundwork for the CLE. The design work covers:

• Dashboard views vs. site home page views
• Re-thinking how users navigate sites
• Re-thinking how users access tools
• Putting more thinking and detail into widgets (synoptic tool)
• Setting the stage for more efficient and robust preferences, permissions, and other configurations
• Getting jiggy with Web 2.0
• And a few other goodies...

To learn more, take a look at this week's flash presentation.

Also, you may want to download these screens as they'll be the focus of the presentation:

Dashboard	Site Home Page

Note: All designs are for "presentation only"! Any icons, photos, or other copyrighted materials used were done so for purposes of mock-up and will not be used in the final designs. Also, keep in mind that these designs are wire frames (rough sketches) and colors, style, etc. were intentionally omitted.

Enjoy!

General brainstorming... don't read too into it.

Object Model	Layout Schema	Layout Rules
Componants Overview	Widget Schema

As per recommendations made during this project's kick-off meeting, here's a few highlights (comments I heard and paraphrased here) from my interviews with folks in the community:

• Sakai lacks cohesion as a product. Not only are tools different in their interactions and other design patterns, but the product on the whole lacks a clear metaphor that guides the user's understand of how to best start and use it.

• Some folks recommended a start-up guide or wizard to get user's going. Also, video walk-throughs were discussed.

• Many people commented on Sakai being too "tool oriented" and that users need to hunt for obscure functionality across a myriad of tools to complete basic tasks. Very frustrating!

• While there's talk of a so called "flexible framework" (referring to Sakai being more than just a LMS/CMS – but a CLE, Portfolio, anything really!), in truth it's not. It's very difficult to make any modifications and the out-of-the-box offering is too cumbersome for those that just want to get up and running.

• Sakai analogy: A camel is horse designed by committee.

• Sakai is passe in its thinking. It lacks not only the Web 2.0 bells and whistles, but the "spirit" of Web 2.0. It's does a very basic and fairly out-dated thing.. and not that well.

• Tools that are important include: Resources, Gradebook, Announcements

• Saving state vs not-saving state?? Contentious issue!

• Consistency is still a big problem.

My summary: Overall, I heard lots of frustrations relating to nuanced issues within tools as well as issues when user tasks span multiple tools. Inconsistency was high on the list of complaints, but my sense is that if "good design" principles were applied to each tool, consistency would be less of an issue. In other words, consistency is a symptom of a broader problem – poor design. For example, the Wiki tool is designed quite well, and folks generally like it. Yet, it's quite inconsistent from other tools.

As for why the first project revolves around the portal (or CLE as I'm calling it – to which I'm referring to all things that are non-tools)? Simple: Before getting lost in details of any one tool, thinking about Sakai from a high-level will help set the stage for filling in the details later. That's why I agree with the original project goals which centered on the site setup. That's a good place to start since to setup a site, one must fist envision a site. That process touches so much of Sakai that I can't think of a better place to start.