I would like to make a suggestion for this thread, as I see it facing some unnecessary poles, as I see the posters and all of them are equally interested in good interaction design and more importantly successful product design.
We don't have equal access to the tool, nor are we quite frankly qualified to truly give a heuristic analysis because in my mind our most standard heuristics of HCI don't necessarily apply the same way here. Not that we throw them out, but there are other forces at play that I would imagine few of us have been designing for. I know there are a few of us on this list from LeapFrog for example. I would love their insights as both interaction and instructional designers on this topic. Just as it is really hard for someone who has been doing consumer products for years fall directly into place doing enterprise products, this is exponentially true about moving from tools of task towards tools of learning. I agree that there are a ton of problems with the eco-system design. I would say that the main cause is that there is a problem with the very problem statement itself. It is very US-centric, not in that it is imperialistic in nature as much as it assumes a US cultural outlook within societies where the same soci-political-economics are not at play. That is, "give a man a fishing rod and he can save himself from starvation." This individualism based on the power of capitalism doesn't even work in the US due to outside forces such as racism, classism and sexism (to name a few). These forces on the context of design are even stronger in the developing (or actually NOT developing) nations of the world. I would love to see someone who has the device slap it down in front of their kids (if they have any) don't tell them a thing and see what happens over the course of days and weeks and video tape the whole thing. There is the child observation project in Berkeley which has a ton of cameras for just such testing. It would be amazing to do that type of observational research on the tool. Short of that, if all you are going to give me in the critiques are theories based on existing heuristics, I think we are way off-base here. Is there anyone on the list who has worked in instructional design for little people? done so in a "non"-linguistic format, relying purely on symbology to communicate? The closest project I know of like this for adults is the MotoFone by Motorola for the developing world. Gabriel White gave a great presentation of this work at the SF IxDA event that coincided with ICSID/IDSA World Congress. A lot went into thinking about "illiterate" users. Anyway, I hope we will learn a lot from the case studies. I wish they came less from obvious PR sources however. I wonder if some student here, wouldn't want to change their thesis and work on a Fulbright grant to travel to Peru to find out what is happening on the ground? Anyone? -- dave -- David Malouf http://synapticburn.com/ http://ixda.org/ http://motorola.com/ ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
