Re: Eating one's own dog food

On Thu, 23 Aug 2001, Anne Pemberton wrote:

  Chaals,

           The animations have been lumped with the flicker in lots of
  discussions. Which is why I believed they were considered similarly. My
  error.

Err, no, our error I suspect.

[snip]
  But, as an overall statement, the
  kids I know to be ADD/ADHD are far less distractible and on task during
  their computer time than during their classroom time.
[snip]
  Perhaps I am just looking at the difference between the young ADD/ADHD
  person and the adult ADD/ADHD person.

Well, teaching kids is closer to usability testing than just theorising about
them, but still not the same thing. From my experience in a classroom
computers are more interesting than a lot of other stuff...

  Some things we could find out: when does distractability occur?  Upon
  opening the site? When users try to read the text with the animation
  still going? Does the distractability occur with a single animation? Does
  size matter? Does it help to put it in more white space? How far away
  from the animation should words be? Over 5 space, 10 space, or always
  down at least one line or two?

Yep, these are good things to learn about.

[snip]
  need to run down a copy of the Dolch words and work from that ...

You could go and buy a dictionary meant for primary schools. It isn't a
definitive list, but is probably a good start.

chaals