IDE tweaks, and so much more

This week was one of those frustrating weeks where you can't quite point to one singular overarching accomplishment. Aside from preparing for the new software release, I had my attentions split every which way on restructuring badges on the community, generalizing modules such as "quick-view" and lightboxes so they can be easily implemented in badges, and organizing my thoughts on paper for the challenges study.

The new release now includes tags on the "share" dialog. As promised, users can now add tags to their worlds before they are uploaded. I wanted this pane to be smarter for the release, such as with some auto-taggings and autocomplete implemented (autocomplete works on the web side, just not on the IDE), but I couldn't finish those features in time for our release. Next release! Mini tutorials on the opening Looking Glass dialog have also been updated to include the new remix look and feel.

I've been trying to organize my thoughts on paper for the mish-mash of results from the formative studies on challenges. My experience at the Science Center last week created some new ideas about "physical" challenges that don't afford socialization between the characters. For example, the bunny ice skating challenge simply includes a bunny and an isolated frozen pond, so the bunny has little else to do but skate around. Some participants have struggled with jumping straight into animating stories for their first experience with Looking Glass, especially when the scene offers little else for them to do. Scenes that allow for scene characters to interact with each other seem to be a much more accomodating setting for beginners; 'say' and 'walkTo' are easy enough to learn and implement quickly. Scenes that are entirely social with little to no custom animations seem to be a great fall-back for beginners, and participants have appeared really engaged by character interactions.