Description for 'opt/alt + C' unclear

[Nancy-Salpepi]

Test device
MacBook Air (m1 chip)

Operating System
13.1

Browser
safari 16.1

Problem description
For phetsims/qa#879, in the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog, for "With Voicing enabled, Check Current Shape" I was expecting to hear the actual shape when I press option + c, but I only hear properties when the shape name is hidden. It took me a minute to realize why I was sometimes hearing the name and sometimes wasn't. Perhaps there is a way to make this clearer in the description for option + c ?

Troubleshooting information: !!!!! DO NOT EDIT !!!!! Name: ‪Quadrilateral‬ URL: https://phet-dev.colorado.edu/html/quadrilateral/1.0.0-dev.73/phet/quadrilateral_all_phet.html Version: 1.0.0-dev.73 2023-01-08 23:48:12 UTC Features missing: applicationcache, applicationcache, touch Flags: pixelRatioScaling User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/108.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Language: en-US Window: 1475x780 Pixel Ratio: 1.7999999523162842/1 WebGL: WebGL 1.0 (OpenGL ES 2.0 Chromium) GLSL: WebGL GLSL ES 1.0 (OpenGL ES GLSL ES 1.0 Chromium) Vendor: WebKit (WebKit WebGL) Vertex: attribs: 16 varying: 31 uniform: 1024 Texture: size: 16384 imageUnits: 16 (vertex: 16, combined: 32) Max viewport: 16384x16384 OES_texture_float: true Dependencies JSON: {}

[jessegreenberg]

Thanks @Nancy-Salpepi. Removing my assignment but assigning @BLFiedler to review this design recommendation.

[Nancy-Salpepi]

Also, with the Shape Name hidden, the information given with opt/alt + C is inconsistent. For some shapes only information about the sides is given (ex. rhombus, parallelogram), for others only angles are mentioned (ex. Rectangle), and with some shapes I hear info about both (ex. Square).

[terracoda]

@BLFiedler, in #333 Iist out side-by-side the key-shape-property Context Response and the full shape-defining State Description that is available when one plays the Current Details button.

Do you think a learner should be able to check the shape name without toggling the Shape Name Hidden button?

My original thought for this shortcut was that it would be a quick way to replay the "currently displayed" shape information, that is either:

• the shape's name when shape name is shown, or
• the shape's defining transformation property/properties when the shape name is hidden.

Personally, I thought that being able to re-voice that shape transformation property (when shape name is hidden) would help learners attend to and make sense of that information.

I closed #333 because that's how it was designed. Now I am second guessing myself.

@BLFiedler, do you think there should be a shortcut to just simple voice the shape name, or should we leave it as designed - voicing the shape name or shape information depending on what is visibly displayed?

If we leave it as-is, I can adjust the language in the keyboard shortcuts dialog.

[terracoda]

Also, the current design is a way to hear the shape transformation property/ies when Voicing is enabled but context responses is not checked.

Considering that use case, I like the current design.

[terracoda]

Are the following good questions to ignite in learners:

1. Why is it saying, "All right angles"?
2. What does it mean to have "Opposite sides in parallel"?
3. Why does it sometimes tell me about the corners and the sides and other times only the sides?
4. When 2 corners adjacent corners are equal
5. If no sides are parallel, can any sides or corners be equal?

Something to really note about the current interaction design is that one does not get move side and moving corner object responses with mouse input - only keyboard input.

Maybe that's part of the "sparseness" question that was mentioned in #333.

[terracoda]

@BLFiedler, my main design question is whether we leave it as-is, or provide a more detailed context response to replace the shape-transformation context response. This new context response would be more like (but still different from) the details button.

Square:

• All corners right angles. All sides equal.

Rectangle:

• All corners right angles. Opposite sides equal.

Parallelogram:

• Opposite corners equal. Opposite sides equal and parallel.

Rhombus:

• Opposite corners equal. All sides equal.

Kite:

• One pair of opposite corners equal. Pairs of adjacent sides equal.

Dart:

• One pair of opposite corners are equal. Pairs of adjacent sides are equal. One corner points inward.

Concave Quadrilateral:

• Details for this shape can vary a little, here's two examples:
  • No corners equal. No sides are equal, no sides in parallel. One corner points inward.
  • No corners equal. One pair of adjacent sides are equal, no sides in parallel. One corner points inward.

Convex Quadrilateral:

• Details for this shape can vary a little, here's two examples:
  • No corners equal. One pair of adjacent sides equal. No sides in parallel.
  • No corners equal. No sides equal. No sides in parallel.
    -No corners equal. Pairs of adjacent sides equal. No sides in parallel.

While helpful, I don't think these more detailed "check-shape" context responses would evoke the same kinds of questions from learners which could restrict the use of the tool in class rooms.

I think I have talked myself through this design problem.

@BLFiedler, unless you see a real benefit to changing the current check-shape response, I think I am comfortable with leaving it as-is.

[terracoda]

New description for Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.
Change:

• "With Voicing enabled Check Current Shape" (apologies for bad caps here)

To:

• With Voicing enabled, check current shape name or properties.

If the above is too long:

• With Voicing enabled, check shape name or properties.

[brettfiedler]

A fair bit of thought went into the descriptions and to not have the keyboard shortcut be a custom, separate interaction. It is simply a reminder. I don't think accessing the shape name when the shape name is not visible would be great for interface consistency.

I agree we should leave the functionality as-is, but with a change to the keyboard dialog wording as you suggest in the comment above this @terracoda for clarity

[terracoda]

Thanks @BLFiedler, assigning to @jessegreenberg to update the dialog. I couldn't find the string.

[jessegreenberg]

Updated in the above commit. I went with the shorter one, just because I thought it looked better. But if you want to play with different strings, it lives here in the code:

quadrilateral/js/quadrilateral/view/ShapeShortcutsHelpSection.ts

Lines 21 to 23 in d95de40

	// Voicing is NOT translatable and will never be. This content is invisible in non-english locales and when Voicing
	// is not supported.
	const checkShapeWithVoicingString = 'With Voicing enabled, check shape name or properties.';

Let me know if the layout of the text and icon needs to change.

[terracoda]

Hmm, nothing else has a visual period. Sorry about that @jessegreenberg. I need to document this. I checked RaP and Faraday's Law, and there are no visual periods in the Keyboard Shortcut dialogs. However, of course, we need periods for the accessible content read out from the PDOM.

@jessegreenberg, can you remove the visual period, and keep the period in the PDOM/A11y View, just like we have done for other sims?

Apologies, that I missed that.

[terracoda]

Everything else looks good.

[terracoda]

Oh, the accessible content in the A11y View hasn't been updated. I'll see if I can do that.

[terracoda]

I am going to try to update the ts file.

[terracoda]

I made the change locally. Ping me when you are working on Quad.

[jessegreenberg]

@terracoda and I met today for this and made the commit. Anything else here @terracoda?

[terracoda]

Nope, all good.