Brainstorming- characteristics of our language

(Sep 12 - Sept 19)

During this week we am doing more reseach about existing block programming languages, especially on those that according professionals are best block programming languages in education. Among those languages are Scracth, Scratch Jr. App Inventor, Lego, and Alice. Our research for this week is focused on existing evaluations of those top block programming languages in education. Base on those evaluations we will start elaborating the reubric of our block programming language. What wil make our language sucessful? What characteristics it must to have? What would be nice to have?

Here are some ideas

Help and documentation: even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

MustHave
Hints
Error Prevention

Error prevention: even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place.

Visibility of System Status

Visibility of system status: the system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
Help users recognise, diagnose, and recover from errors

error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution
Consistency and Standards

Consistency and standards: users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
Nice to Have
User control and freedom:

Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked ‘emergency exit’ to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.