Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: End User confusion with where a sequence is saved

By: Dave Bauer

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The architecture of LAMS interal storage is confusing to end users, especially when using LAMS with an LMS integration.

First you have your "personal" folder. Let's say an author creates a new sequence and saves it in their folder. Now they want to use the sequence in a class within their LMS.

This copies the sequence behind the scenes and stores the copy in a cryptically names folder under "My Groups" where the terminology My Groups is misleading, as underneath is "Run Sequences" which doesn't really mean much to an end user. Under that is a folder with a secret code that is not apparently related to the actual class in the LMS.

This is compounded when using the live edit feature. One of our authors used Live Edit, and could not find the copy of the sequence with the saved changes.

It looks like the desktop folder metaphor breaks down here. Ideally an author could find any sequence they worked on by the actual class name from the LMS (the human readable name) as well as search recently edited sequences, and group sequences that are based on the same original sequence together.

I created a video to explain how this works http://screencast.com/t/Z4XezVRJS

The video should reveal the confusing nature of the current interface.

I am willing to contribute designing a new interface. I can help out with mockups, but I don't think I have the Java skills to actually code this. In general I am a great proponent of a search based interface which predicts which sequences will be the most interesting. A compromise is to name the folders under "My Groups" with the human-readable names from the LMS.

Posted by Dave Bauer