Answering Questions: Part I

I think that building remixes up as something that is searchable and reuseable is generally a good idea. New users of Looking Glass can be confused as to how remix is incorporated into programming, but having pre-fabricated animations should jumpstart their understanding of remix by streamlining the process. Furthermore, with tutorials, the users begin to get a feel for how to use Looking Glass.

• Perhaps as a part of or in addition to the Storytelling 101 badge, there could be a quest to remix a particular pre-fabricated animation into a world and share it.
• The animation is designed to incorporate a variety of action-ordering boxes, movement commands, etc. Going through the tutorial for this particular animation will show users where some of the basic tools of the Looking Glass IDE are located.
• Instead of an tutorial video for badges, these could be standardized learning animations, so the user can do and learn simultaneously.

We had also previously been toying with the idea of rebranding bookmarks. As you work with Looking Glass, you pick up on the terminology. Initially though, I had thought that bookmarks is just something that you select so that you can view it later. If I hadn't been told, it is unlikely that I would have known that by bookmarking something, it is stored so that in the IDE so that these worlds can be found again to be remixed.

• One possibility is "Remix Later," which I like because it's very explicit about how making that selection will affect the world.
• Storing these worlds and challenges and animations that are to be used later on the IDE can make the storage space appear very cluttered. There would need to be some type of sorting implemented that allows users to sort by the file type (Worlds, Challenges, Animations) or by topic (flips, jumps, spins, etc.) 

Another thing that needs to be considered is how to encourage users to continue to use custom remix. Over time there will be a lot of animations that will accumulate, minimizing the need for custom remixes. Part of the learning experience does come from exploring a world and selecting the functionality desired. With pre-fabricated remixes, there will be less of a need to create new remixes.

• Remove animations after a certain period of time. But then it'll be difficult to track the remixes over time if a new flip animation has to be remixed every month.
• When sorting remix searches, we can set it up to change regularly preventing too many remixes of a single animation. Encouraging users to make their own.
•  We could sort by user choice (search for a flip, if an animation is viewed and bookmarked, then that is better than the others in the category).
• Creating personal libraries would mean that after they make a remix, they can store it and not have to go through the remix again. Personal libraries that are only allowed to be accessed by the user ould put a damper on searching though. Perhaps it could be more like a library system where animations are "checked out." Each time the user checks out an animation, then it gets less encouraged for them to check it out again and more encouraged to make their own copy.