13 Apr 2007 0941H

$100 Laptop (OLPC) Interface

OLPC Interface

Wow, I’m really excited by the interface for the new One Laptop Per Child system. Looks like the MIT folks worked with Pentagram and RedHat to design it. I really like how they elaborate on their principles that guide the design of the UI, and then the demo does away with the desktop metaphor, which we’ve been socialized into for all its quirks and weirdness. There’s no desktop mandate, which itself stemmed from the Western/American office environment.

I am a little worried about the use of icons and their universal appeal, because we’re Westerners and Northerners designing essentially for the South and Non-Westerners. For instance you’ll note the writing icon at bottom center here. What about cultures that write right to left and open their books from what we would say is the back and read to the front? Or up top with the search widget: we only know this is the search widget because of the magnifying glass icon, but would other cultures know that is what it is, and that it performs search, and why search is necessary? Or the battery icon for that matter. These representations are not value-neutral, but tacitly imbued with the values of the first world and our culture of consumption.

Thus by using the vernacular that first worlders have become familiar with in our computing, there is a chance that what we’re doing here could be a kind of first-world design imperialism or design colonialism, that suppresses native design vernaculars or discourses, which are native ways of seeing, thinking, and describing the world. It’s a kind of design orientalism, where the vernacular of the first world is used to colonize the eyes, hands and minds of the third, I suppose one might call it.

So, I feel pretty strongly that the usability thing should be fairly rigorously tested, but, other than that, the demo is very purty. Take a gander.

Permanent link to $100 Laptop (OLPC) Interface

Filed under Design, Technology, User Experience, Web

Respond »

Be the first to respond to "$100 Laptop (OLPC) Interface"

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

No responses yet.

And now it's your turn.

Fire your weapon, soldier. Just be careful of friendly fire. NAME & EMAIL required.

Your response