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phetsims / reactants-products-and-leftovers

"Reactants, Products and Leftovers" is an educational simulation in HTML5, by PhET Interactive Simulations.
GNU General Public License v3.0
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decide on UI component for coefficients in 'Custom' sandwich #8

Closed pixelzoom closed 9 years ago

pixelzoom commented 9 years ago

As of 1.0.0-dev.10 ... The 'coefficients' query parameter determines whether to use 'spinners' (default) or 'pickers' for changing equation coefficients in the 'Custom' sandwich. See partial screenshots below. There is a tiny bit of logic involved in supporting this (see RPALBaseView), but it would be good to decide on one approach and remove the unused code and query parameter.

This is a design issue which will be finalized after interviews.

coefficients=spinners screenshot_399

coefficients=pickers screenshot_400

ycarpenterphet commented 9 years ago

Decision: Let's use coefficients = spinners.

Rationale: This has been successful in all interviews, where students first action after switching to the custom sandwich has in every case been to change the 'recipe' using the spinners in the equation. During previous interviews with the equation at the top and the pickers in the equation, no students changed the recipe coefficients first, often becoming confused as to why no products were made -- and many even required interviewer prompting to realize the pickers were interactive.

pixelzoom commented 9 years ago

Done, closing.

Also worth noting... This is not a problem that is inherent with pickers; they have been shown to work well in other sims (e.g., Graphing Lines, Balancing Chemical Equations,...). But (as with any UI component) they need to be used consistently to be most effective. In RPAL, we were mixing spinners and pickers, two very different interfaces for doing the same things. After using the spinners, this makes it difficult for users to recognize the pickers as controls for doing the same thing.