PhET-iO Design

[pixelzoom]

From https://github.com/phetsims/equality-explorer/issues/151#issuecomment-1075712054 ...

As we did with Natural Selection, the first phase of adding PhET-iO support needs to be design. Identify sim-specific features, provide as much information as possible to make sure that PhET-iO instrumentation is done in a way that it can support those features.

I'm not clear on who is doing the PhET-iO design for this sim, so I'm assigning to both @amanda-phet and @arouinfar. Whoever is not doing the design, please unassign yourself.

[kathy-phet]

It will be @amanda-phet with @catherinecarter participating in PhET-iO pedagogy / instructional design ideation. Removing @arouinfar. Thanks for doing some baseline instrumentation. As you come across your own questions or ideas, @pixelzoom, please feel free to add here, of course. I would say we will aim to have design ideas by 10/27 (after the dev common code sprint week).

[pixelzoom]

See https://github.com/phetsims/equality-explorer/issues/192 for checklist, which includes many "Design" items.

[pixelzoom]

See https://github.com/phetsims/equality-explorer/issues/197 for some high-prority design questions related to statefulness of animation.

[pixelzoom]

I've completed the initial instrumentation for https://github.com/phetsims/equality-explorer/issues/192. Caveats:

• Initial instrumentation covers static elements only. There are no dynamic elements or custom IOTypes.
• Because there are no dynamic elements, the State wrapper will definitely not work.
• Focus on Studio. Wrappers other than Studio are unlikely to work at this stage.

Next steps for designers:

• [ ] Complete relevant parts of the checklist in #192. Especially important is to identifiy sim-specific PhET-iO features.

• [ ] Read model.md and implementation-notes.md to familiarize yourself with terminology and architecture of the code. The latter is especially important, because it is exposed in the Studio tree, and you won't understand the tree without a basic understanding of the architecture. The most important elements to understand are: Scene, Term, TermCreator, Snapshot, UniversalOperator.

• [ ] Review #200 to familiarize yourself with the dynamic elements that have not been instrumented, and which are therefore not yet present in the Studio tree. And because this sim relies heavily on dynamic elements, there are many things not present in the Studio tree.

• [ ] Review specific design issues:

  • 197

  • 202

• [ ] Schedule a Q&A meeting with me after you've done all of the above.

[pixelzoom]

At 11/8/2022 design meeting, I reviewed the checklist in https://github.com/phetsims/equality-explorer/issues/191#issuecomment-1306323892 with @amanda-phet and @catherinecarter.