Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
I've been playing with the OLPC XO for a couple of weeks and understand some of the criticism being at it in this thread. However, I think it's definitely a system that invites exploration and experimentation. The Tam Tam music apps are pretty fun, and if you've got more than one, the mesh networking is cool. Clearly the apps (the whole system actually) seem like they're at a beta level, but there's still lots to play with. My teenager nephew and niece took a break from Guitar Hero and other XBox games to play with it (which says something), and thought it was fun. But clearly, it's a system that's aimed at young kids with unlimited time and lots of friends with them. Just watching two teenagers showing each other things they were discovering convinced me that this will definitely work in its intended environment. I did find the touchpad to be pretty tweaky, but quickly got the hang of it. It also didn't take me very long to map out the various functions on the keyboard. I guess I'm a bit confused by some of the criticism here though, comparing it to desktop Operating Systems and the kind of software used by Western adults. Using the OLPC XO reminded me a lot more of the great raw computing experiences that I had on Apple IIs in the late 1970s, and I know that I was happy to spend kajillions of hours hacking around on those. If our sophisticated desktop software (not to mention games) are so great, you'd think we'd be churning out a lot more programmers and developers of unique and new things than we are. I think that the raw peer-sharing-and-teaching model of the XO is pretty brilliant. I'll be anxious to see how little computer performs once they begin distributing them in larger numbers. My observations are that kids are far more tenacious and far less judgemental than adults and experts. I also don't think that every kid's experience will be equal, and that's actually one of its benefits. Some will naturally dig deeper and appreciate its open-ended nature. It wouldn't surprise me if twenty to thirty years from now there are some successful people who will say that their first formative experiences on a computer were on the OLPC XO. That's just the sense I get. I know that the race is on now to compete with the OLPC XO with small, inexpensive computers running Windows. I'd say it's all good, but I think that there's some real advantages to having this little Linux system out there. Jim James Leftwich, IDSA CXO - Chief Experience Officer SeeqPod, Inc. Emeryville, California http://www.seeqpod.com Orbit Interaction Palo Alto, California http://www.orbitnet.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=23928 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
(Reposted from an offlist response to Pauric. I accidentally left off the IxDA email.) A purely academic approach > focusing on the content layer will not address the needs of the do-ers > among us who understand through taking tools apart to see how they > work; I'm just not so convinced that learning to hack around a unique UNIX implementation will help those kids once they graduate from OLPC to something else. Sure, they could learn concepts they can apply in a myriad of other ways, but operating under the *assumption* that the kids will learn to hack the system in the first place is perhaps misguided. I installed Sugar on my mac and [...] > I think you're not understanding the full context of the design. To really see how Sugar works, you should check it out on an actual XO laptop. There are keys on the keyboard I still can't explain. Buttons on the monitor that have no explanation whatsoever. They all apparently correspond to some action in Sugar, but I have yet to discover their connection after several hours of usage. You also have to see for yourself how difficult it is to use the trackpad because the mouse is so jumpy and it's so easy to accidentally move it to the edge of the screen (which produces an overlay of the desktop navigation). Scrolling windows with it, hitting the right area to click, etc., are tricky actions at best. Granted, these things are designed for people with smaller hands than my own, but the lack of smooth interaction means you start getting very careful about what you click. You start calculating your moves more. As I started doing this, the first thing I wished for was better instructive design so I knew what I was doing and could stop guessing and making mistakes. [...] based on that I decided to put only $200 down for 1 laptop to be sent > off. I think its very unsuitable for western goals and would bet yours will > sit collecting dust in 6 months if not sooner. It's totally unsuitable for Western goals, and I'm definitely not trying to say it is suitable. What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter who you are - things are easier to learn if they're designed to be easily learnable. And Sugar, at the moment, has a low level of learnability. I dont think Nielsen gets 'social', he's very goal-quantitate result > driven and maybe not the best yardstick for the mushy-human-chaos > stuff. I'm not usually a big fan myself, but isn't his work focused entirely around research on how humans interact with computers? I don't want to invite the guy to a dinner party, but he sounds like a pretty good yardstick to me. As I interpret Nielsen's "Location is Irrelevant for Usability > Studies" I conclude that its true as long as there's a baseline in > collective understanding of technology. Remove any preceding exposure > and the methodology falls apart. Two quotes from that article: 1) "[...] people usually interpret the screen elements the same, no matter where they live. What's easy in one city is just as easy in another city." 2) "First, if a parking meter is intended for a region that had never before charged for parking, it might be a good idea to test with users who were completely new to the parking meter concept. Novices would doubtlessly encounter more usability problems than more experienced users." Your inference that a baseline understanding of the technology in question is required for the testing to be meaningful is in no way stated in that article, and I wholly disagree that it's a requirement. OLPC will be introducing computers into cultures that may have never even seen one up close. Just like a parking metter would be more difficult in a country that previously had none, a computer that lacks any instructive design whatsoever is going to be really difficult to digest when you've never even used a computer. This logic is exactly why so many people get their first PC home and barely ever learn to do anything but check email or browse the web. Without instructive and self-evident interfaces, Help, video training, or something else in place, there's simply no way to become an intermediate or advanced user without a ton of guessing, which has a decent chance at failure every single time you do it. Following this logic, it's like saying that furniture that requires assembly should come without instructions. But, I also think that Sugar fails in preparing kids for practical > applications... however, spreadsheets dont engage kid's imaginations. Agreed. But this is exactly why I think Sugar needs better instructive design. The intent is not to teach kids about UNIX, it's to give them access to a wealth of knowledge so they can do almost anything. It's to change their whole way of life, and to use education as a pathway out of poverty. But Sugar commits the cardinal sin of software design: it constantly gets in the way of its own purpose. Sure, Sugar developers are giving them computers, but interface-wise, they're giving them the UNIX equivalent of "Fis
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar not so Sweet?
For a taste of Sugar: * install it on your own machine (win/linux/mac/etc) * build it (preferable) or run in emulation * find + report bugs * see goodies that need design help, and * participate in the Sugar community. But the laptop is the wrong discussion. The cell-top is THE platform. 2.2 billion are currently in use on planet earth with another billion slated to be sold this year. The open cell phone is it: iphone-ish services, Android, Linux Kids in Nairobi are hacking cell services now from monitoring community blood banks to minute-swapping services. Local teenagers and college kids have already been shaping the cell-top service in Africa (and many other continents). The cell phone is your bank, shopping center, medical record, concierge, and more. The OLPC is cute, cuddly, and a fabulous concept. The cell-top is dominating the global service scene. -Juhan PS: Android (or a particular Android service) would be a perfect vehicle for the IXDA community to jump onto as a Design project. *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar not so Sweet?
Sorry, great correction ... It does require more than one child with many cameras. ;) my main point was let's get a study going on the observational level, and not rely on heuristics. I've never been a fan of them anyway. -- dave On Dec 27, 2007 11:55 AM, Alan Wexelblat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Dec 27, 2007 8:18 AM, David Malouf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > 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. > > I think this would lead to interesting, but distorted, results. > Here's the point: nobody uses these things in isolation. They're used > in the contexts of classrooms and homes where adults are present. > They're given by people with knowledge who share some of that > knowledge to get the children started. They're shared with other > children, possibly around the world, who share a pool of knowledge. If > you strip away that context you miss the crucial success criteria. > It's like taking a car from the showroom floor and complaining it > doesn't go anywhere because you didn't put fuel in its tank. > > > -- 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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar not so Sweet?
On Dec 27, 2007 8:18 AM, David Malouf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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. I think this would lead to interesting, but distorted, results. Here's the point: nobody uses these things in isolation. They're used in the contexts of classrooms and homes where adults are present. They're given by people with knowledge who share some of that knowledge to get the children started. They're shared with other children, possibly around the world, who share a pool of knowledge. If you strip away that context you miss the crucial success criteria. It's like taking a car from the showroom floor and complaining it doesn't go anywhere because you didn't put fuel in its tank. Putting one (mistake) in front of a single child (mistake) without saying anything (mistake) would produce such a compounding of errors that you'd still likely get irrelevant results. Or perhaps you'd reduplicate some of the work that's been done on childrens' explorative learning methods, but is that what you want to find out? (I think Allison Druin did great work in this area, see http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/kiddesign/ for what she's up to now.) I see now that I've really soaked in the Papert sauce, despite never taking his class. Blame six years at the Media Lab. Peer learning and peer teaching is such an important and fundamental part of my thought processes that I forget others don't see things that way. I cited Amy Bruckman earlier because she was a friend and I've thought her work was brilliant for over a decade. You can also look up some of Mitch Resnick's publications (he was her advisor and Papert's student) or any of the other work in that group if you want to learn about these ideas. I'm not prepared to say there aren't universal principles of design; Fitt's Law still describes the time to move a pointer to a target and so on, regardless of whether the person moving the pointer is me, my kid, or a person who's never seen a computer screen and pointing device before. What I'm saying is that it's not important to the last situation as it is to the first. The original point of this thread was about usability and its relationship to the (possible) success of the XO. My argument is that the universal principles of design we operate by aren't relevant to this success/failure, not that they don't exist. The challenge "say something nice about the design" written by someone who hasn't used it and isn't in the target audience is an expectation that the UI would somehow conform to adult, western, single-user notions of goodness. This is not an iPod - never was, never will be. The nicest thing I can say about the design is that I have to fight my kid to get him to relinquish it. I hear similar stories coming back from real-world OLPC deployments. If there's a usability metric that trumps that, I have yet to see it. --Alan *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
I'm wondering if I'm the only one on this list who got an OLPC for his kid and is just letting the kid go with it? Context: my kid is seven, and definitely above average in conventional intelligence, reading/literacy metrics, and is reasonably well experienced with conventional PCs, including both browser- and desktop-based age-appropriate software. He adores his OLPC. Even though he hasn't managed to connect it up yet with anyone else. Even though it's slow (he noticed that) and sometimes frustrating (particularly opaque in respect to connecting to conventional wireless networks). He's using it to take pictures of everything. And play music. The other morning he was all eager to show us the music video he and his (four year old) brother created with it. I didn't even know it could do that. He's found the simplistic math games (he's well beyond that in skill level) and he's found the python interface (I think I managed to keep a mostly straight face when he showed me that - I'm not even saying the word "programming" to him). I'm doing my best to let him be him and do things in as natural a way as he can (though I still insist he do his schoolwork first). So what do I make of this? I think we're using the wrong yardsticks. Jakob be damned, usability is NOT universal. The difference between zero and one is much much bigger than the difference between one and two. Sure, I can think of ways that the UI could be clearer. The how-to-get-started two-pager that came in the box was just downright awful. I had to look online to figure out how to get it hooked up to my uncle's Apple Airport; once it did that I showed my boy the news feeds. Pictures he liked, the rest he was bored with in about 2 minutes. Who cares about the proficiency of the usability techniques of the UI if the users are bored? Given the constraints and the goals of the OLPC project I think they've done a pretty good job and I'm betting they have a lot of success with their target audience. Which is, I assure you, is absolutely no one reading this mailing list. It's not even my seven-year-old, though he's much closer to the target population than I am. He's exploring and learning and finding things I didn't find because that's his way of interacting. He doesn't want manuals - wouldn't read them if he had them - and instructions just bore him. He wants to poke and prod and play and if the machine gets into some state he doesn't understand or can't figure out how to get out of then he might ask for some help. Mostly though he just plays with it some more until he figures it out. If he had other kids around him they'd all be poking and prodding and sharing knowledge in ways that make our usual one-person-one-machine notion of computer interaction outmoded. The last time I saw a usability evaluation that had any relationship to what I'm seeing now it was done by Amy Bruckman and her team on the kids MOO she created. (Google MediaMOO and MOOSE Crossing if you want to read about that.) So while it's nice to go on about "standards" I think it's important to realize we are using the wrong standards of measurement here. It's like trying to measure the thrill of a motorcycle's acceleration with a slide rule and calipers. We have expectations and associations that just aren't relevant. My boy knows what standard PCs are like and what they do and he doesn't find anything to complain about here (trust me, he's not shy about complaining when he finds something that doesn't meet his standards). I can't wait until he has other OLPCs in his local neighborhood. *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar not so Sweet?
This sounds so much like the Nature vs. Nurture debate that one might as well state it up front to stave off a lot of discharged steam. Practically every discipline centered around people (psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, medicine, etc.) has engaged (and will continue to engage) in this debate, explicitly or implicitly. Consider the decline of Skinnerian behaviorism after Chomsky's work on linguistics. Despite the bad rap that Behaviorism has got, numerous organizations and institutions (the military, for instance) apply it successfully. So let's just say that there are many universal principles of design and a significant fraction of these are a consequence of common biological and physical constraints. And further, to the extent that there are common determinants of culture, there are additional principles of design that could be considered kinda-sorta universal. And then there are probably some idiosyncratic cultural issues for which no 'universal principles' will work (at all times). But then this has always been the case in every realm of human endeavor since time immemorial. The variable plasticity of the human mind (across age groups, cultures, contexts, etc.) in its ability to adapt to circumstances will render this discussion quite fruitless. On the other hand, there's nothing so fun as a good fight! Fruitlessness apart, it's likely to bring out some interesting issues. -murli On 12/27/07, Dan Saffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > This begs the question: are there universal principles of > (interaction) design that apply regardless of the context or user > base? Are there standards that apply equally to CEOs in London and > impoverished children in sub-Saharan Africa? > > My guess is: yes, there are some. Fitts' Law, Hick's Law, Tesler's > Law, the Poka-Yoke Principle, and probably a few others are fixed. > > What these are would be an interesting list. > > Dan > > *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
Yes, exactly. Sorry if my original post was a little confusing, this is the point I was trying to communicate. :) On Dec 27, 2007 2:12 AM, Sebi Tauciuc <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > You are right. Of course, we should also keep in mind that enabling and > encouraging hacking is one thing, forcing it on all users of a system in > order to achieve basic tasks is another. > (I'm not saying this system is doing that - I just understood from the > discussion so far that there might be a risk of it doing that) > > On Dec 27, 2007 2:25 AM, Matthew Nish-Lapidus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > [...] building the system to encourage hacking > > > > seems like a good idea to me. > > -- Matt Nish-Lapidus work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / www.bibliocommons.com -- personal: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / www.nishlapidus.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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar not so Sweet?
hmmm? I actually don't agree. why? b/c few if any of these laws came out of research on young people. They are all tests done on adults that have gone through the same level of socialization. And if my reading is correct all of these laws are based on research only done in specific western industrialized settings. By no means are these cross-culural/sub-cultural studies and I do question them. They are also not age-based studies and further they are contextualized around a specific use-context of computational areas. I also think that like in any product design, interaction design and HCI theory are not the only parts of the puzzle. I think that there may be pieces of instructional design that may counter our basic interpretations of standard HCI theory. I don't know for sure if any of this is true, but when I look at my kids toys, they really don't follow what I would expect in standard HCI or even ergonomics, but they are quite successful. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=23928 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar not so Sweet?
On Dec 27, 2007, at 5:18 AM, David Malouf wrote: > 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. This begs the question: are there universal principles of (interaction) design that apply regardless of the context or user base? Are there standards that apply equally to CEOs in London and impoverished children in sub-Saharan Africa? My guess is: yes, there are some. Fitts' Law, Hick's Law, Tesler's Law, the Poka-Yoke Principle, and probably a few others are fixed. What these are would be an interesting list. Dan *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar not so Sweet?
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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
You are right. Of course, we should also keep in mind that enabling and encouraging hacking is one thing, forcing it on all users of a system in order to achieve basic tasks is another. (I'm not saying this system is doing that - I just understood from the discussion so far that there might be a risk of it doing that) On Dec 27, 2007 2:25 AM, Matthew Nish-Lapidus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [...] building the system to encourage hacking > seems like a good idea to me. > > Sebi -- Sergiu Sebastian Tauciuc http://www.sergiutauciuc.ro/en/ *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
I'm not saying we should give anybody substandard equipment, I don't necessarily think Sugar is substandard (i haven't had enough time to fully evaluate it yet). All I'm saying, like pauric, is that sometimes things that seem unintuitive to adults (or at least adults already familiar with a specific type of computing) are not so for children. I also believe that children shouldn't really be led or instructed as much as some people do.. If, as pauric said, the OLPC is intended to excourage exploration and thusly has a UI that is slightly obtuse, that might just be the right approach. If the UI hinders them from doing what they need to do it would be a failure if it opens up other possibilities for deeper exploration and hacking then it could be a huge success. You're right, just because we -can- figure it out doesn't mean we should have to. But that's not really what i intended to say I just wanted to put forth the idea that exploratory interfaces could work, depending on the goals. I see the OLPC program as more than giving people access to information, it's also giving them access to new technology and skills, building the system to encourage hacking seems like a good idea to me. On Dec 26, 2007 4:59 PM, Dan Saffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Dec 26, 2007, at 12:34 PM, Matthew Nish-Lapidus wrote: > > > If these kids are given access to a hacker friendly system they will > > learn how to make it do what they want. Pauric is entirely right, > > children learn best by exploring and being "thrown into the deep end." > > I'm sure a lot of us here have stories from our childhood about our > > first computers and how we learned how to use them without > > documentation or helpful interfaces. > > This argument doesn't work, logically. To summarize: let's give kids > sub-standard equipment. They're smart. They'll figure it out. > > Now remove kids and put users in there. Or adults. Why would we > tolerate a lesser product for kids, simply because they can figure it > out? Adults can figure out Windows 3.1, but I wouldn't want to inflict > it on them. > > The question for me becomes, what is the ultimate goal of giving the > kids laptops? My guess is that it gives them access to information > that they otherwise wouldn't have. Does the current device and UI > support that goal sufficiently, without forcing users to modify it to > achieve that goal? I don't know the answer. > > Dan > > > > > *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 > -- Matt Nish-Lapidus work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / www.bibliocommons.com -- personal: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / www.nishlapidus.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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
Robert, I said "however, spreadsheets dont engage kid's imaginations." and I'll take that back, I appreciate you're not talking about a UI interaction that suits the needs and desires of a developed country. However, I have little trouble imagining being 5 again and being given an XO. Could the UI design be better - undoubtedly. Would a finely tuned Sugar with web 2.0 corners and feedback at every corner made my wide eyed learning any more efficient in my Mongolian Yurt? questionable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=23928 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
Robert: "The goal shouldn't be to force these kids to dedicate all sorts of attention to the tool, but on the content to which the tool provides access" I see this missing support mechanism as a challenge turned in to an opportunity. I agree with your risk assessment and maybe have a more optimistic view of the potential outcome. A purely academic approach focusing on the content layer will not address the needs of the do-ers among us who understand through taking tools apart to see how they work; I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand. - Confucius Dan:"My guess is that it gives them access to information that they otherwise wouldn't have." Included is access to the basic concepts of information technology, its more than just the content on the screen. Robert: "From what I can tell, Alan Kay's name isn't typically followed by "designer"." Actually, he might be more in tune with the project at hand than you might have realised: http://www.vpri.org/ And I -strongly- urge you to watch this through.. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1109203988787201616 Robert:"How does Alan Kay's experience make up for the apparent lack of quality interaction design? " I cant answer that question, but I ask you to think about the bigger picture here, the context of the endeavor. I installed Sugar on my mac and based on that I decided to put only $200 down for 1 laptop to be sent off. I think its very unsuitable for western goals and would bet yours will sit collecting dust in 6 months if not sooner. "They live in a different world, for sure, but their brains are still human, and human behavior is what led Nielsen to this list of usability heuristics." I dont think Nielsen gets 'social', he's very goal-quantitate result driven and maybe not the best yardstick for the mushy-human-chaos stuff. As I interpret Nielsen's "Location is Irrelevant for Usability Studies" I conclude that its true as long as there's a baseline in collective understanding of technology. Remove any preceding exposure and the methodology falls apart. Take his Parking Meter example from the linked page. In this case there is no concept of meter, parking or even car - its as much use as providing feedback on the "Help and documentation" that comes with negotiating Peruvian border control. "so I'm hoping I just don't get what you're saying." nope, I think you got me right and we have a different view on the matter, but thats what makes for great debate and learning. I will accept that I might have an optimistic view of the potential. But, I also think that Sugar fails in preparing kids for practical applications... however, spreadsheets dont engage kid's imaginations. regards - pauric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=23928 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
> If anything we should define a new set of heuristics as I'm having a > lot of trouble applying any of 10 principles to the context of a dirt > floor classroom of 50 kids, 1 teacher, where the only other piece of > technology is a light switch (at best) > http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html Seriously? These kids are in a different culture, not a different species. They live in a different world, for sure, but their brains are still human, and human behavior is what led Nielsen to this list of usability heuristics. He's even stated elsewhere ( http://www.useit.com/alertbox/user-test-locations.html) that it doesn't matter where you perform usability tests, they generally have the same result regardless. I'm not sure I've ever disagreed with you this sharply, Pauric, so I'm hoping I just don't get what you're saying. -r- *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
> I'd like to think that there's a future generation of nerds, who > like me, got their start supporting & fixing their friend's > computers. Oh, I'm sure there is, but is the goal here to create a generation of kids in developing countries who can hack a computer, or is to provide tools for educating themselves in a variety of other ways? I'm sure you're aware Alan Kay is a principal designer on the > project although I dont know the extent of his involvement. >From what I can tell, Alan Kay's name isn't typically followed by "designer". Am I missing something? How does Alan Kay's experience make up for the apparent lack of quality interaction design? I would have to disagree with the thinking that Sugar fails because > it does not "communicates how to make things work" > > Children learn best by exploring their world. I agree with this, but again, the goal shouldn't be to force these kids to dedicate all sorts of attention to the tool, but on the content to which the tool provides access. -r- *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
On Dec 26, 2007, at 12:34 PM, Matthew Nish-Lapidus wrote: > If these kids are given access to a hacker friendly system they will > learn how to make it do what they want. Pauric is entirely right, > children learn best by exploring and being "thrown into the deep end." > I'm sure a lot of us here have stories from our childhood about our > first computers and how we learned how to use them without > documentation or helpful interfaces. This argument doesn't work, logically. To summarize: let's give kids sub-standard equipment. They're smart. They'll figure it out. Now remove kids and put users in there. Or adults. Why would we tolerate a lesser product for kids, simply because they can figure it out? Adults can figure out Windows 3.1, but I wouldn't want to inflict it on them. The question for me becomes, what is the ultimate goal of giving the kids laptops? My guess is that it gives them access to information that they otherwise wouldn't have. Does the current device and UI support that goal sufficiently, without forcing users to modify it to achieve that goal? I don't know the answer. Dan *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
On Dec 26, 2007, at 1:04 PM, pauric wrote: > Dan: "And how about some heuristic evaluations from this community?" > > The impression I get from the reviews you quoted is that on a scale > of DOS to OS X, Sugar is a missed opportunity. BTW, I never suggested we should use DOS/Windows/Mac/Whatever as the means of evaluation. Instead, we should do as Robert suggested and look to the universal principles of design, perhaps combined with some basic good interaction design characteristics, and evaluate using those. > I would say, wrong scale, it cant be measured by conventional > standards. Of course there is no such thing as a perfect design but > unless the IxDA sponsors some Ethnographic research in the depths of > the Amazon I Think its a fools errand to judge the endeavor by > western standards. The counterargument is that it was designed by people in US with no input from any end-user or research whatsoever, to my knowledge. Why shouldn't we judge it by Western standards? Side discussion: I've heard argued is that there is no such thing anymore as "Western" and "Eastern" any longer. Not touching that one, although feel free, I'm interested! :) > If anything we should define a new set of heuristics as I'm having a > lot of trouble applying any of 10 principles to the context of a dirt > floor classroom of 50 kids, 1 teacher, where the only other piece of > technology is a light switch (at best) > http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html This is an excellent idea. I know Nokia has done a lot of work in emerging markets. Perhaps that would be the right place to start. Dan *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
pauric <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I would have to disagree with the thinking that Sugar fails because > it does not "communicates how to make things work" > > Children learn best by exploring their world. Please take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt, because I've not had the chance to actually play with an OLPC. I've two real life incidences to relay about my niece when she was a young'n; about 17 years ago. First was when I installed Kid Pix on my Mac, in anticipation of her visit. She was 3 yrs at the time. Because of age, I assumed she had no experience with Macs or any other computer. So I had every intention of getting the thing up and running, launching Kid Pix and showing her how to use it. She needed absolutely no help from me. She knew how to turn the computer on, locate the app (it wasn't iconified the desktop), launch it (double click, mind you) and get busy. Clearly, she'd been introduced to a Mac and that app before, but given her age, I was floored that she had no trouble. A few years later, I purchased and installed some kid's math application on a PC for her. She was 7 or 8 yrs. Once installation was complete and the app launched, we were presented with a display of cartoon characters positioned around a colorful room. I saw no menubar, no apparent icons, dialogs, message area nor any other items I would have taken queue from for next steps. I was a bit embarrassed not knowing how to continue. As I stepped away from the computer keyboard to search for the blasted users manual, my niece took control, studied the screen for a second then immediately started interacting, successfully, mind you, with the app; an app she'd never seen before. My big point of all this is I've learned to keep an extra wide open mind about what will work for kids. Does Sugar fail to communicate how things work? I suspect that like most computers, there's loads of room for improvement with Sugar, but it may not fail to the degree we experts think it fails. The primary target audience is almost a different species! :D (well they seem that way to me sometimes) desiree Desiree McCrorey UI Architect/Web Producer www.healthline.com desiredcreations.com Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
Dan: "And how about some heuristic evaluations from this community?" The impression I get from the reviews you quoted is that on a scale of DOS to OS X, Sugar is a missed opportunity. I would say, wrong scale, it cant be measured by conventional standards. Of course there is no such thing as a perfect design but unless the IxDA sponsors some Ethnographic research in the depths of the Amazon I Think its a fools errand to judge the endeavor by western standards. If anything we should define a new set of heuristics as I'm having a lot of trouble applying any of 10 principles to the context of a dirt floor classroom of 50 kids, 1 teacher, where the only other piece of technology is a light switch (at best) http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=23928 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
I couldn't agree more with pauric on this one. Most people I know who are leaders in technology, programming, and even a lot of designers, got their start with computers as children. When we got our first computer I was 7 and it was a c64. No instructions, no GUI.. just the BASIC language and a lot of curiosity. I hacked away at it until I figured it out, and I attribute a lot of my success to that early beginning. If these kids are given access to a hacker friendly system they will learn how to make it do what they want. Pauric is entirely right, children learn best by exploring and being "thrown into the deep end." I'm sure a lot of us here have stories from our childhood about our first computers and how we learned how to use them without documentation or helpful interfaces. On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:42:28, pauric <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [snip] > I'd like to think that there's a future generation of nerds, who > like me, got their start supporting & fixing their friend's > computers. > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmYDgncMhXw > Frankly, I think throwing kids in at the deep end of maker/hacker > culture is a stroke of genius. [snip] > Children learn best by exploring their world. > > regards -pauric -- Matt Nish-Lapidus work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / www.bibliocommons.com -- personal: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / www.nishlapidus.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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
On Dec 26, 2007, at 10:48 AM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. wrote:
>>
> On another note, can I ask why you're exploring this, Dan? Are you
> collecting info for a paper or some other purpose, or are you just
> curious?
I'm just curious. Adaptive Path bought us all one (two) for a holiday
gift but they haven't arrived yet. And then there was those two
negative posts from people whose opinions I respect that caught my eye.
But a paper/post/detailed critique from this community ("How to
Improve the OLPC UI") would be valuable and a useful service.
Dan
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Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/ptech/12/25/onelaptop.onevillage.ap/index.html " Take Kevin, the aspiring trumpet player. Sitting in his dirt-floor kitchen as his mother cooks lunch, he draws a soccer field on his XO, then erases it. Kevin plays a song by "Caliente," his favorite combo, that he recorded off Arahuay's single TV channel. He shows a reporter photos he took of him with his 3-year-old brother. A bare light bulb hangs by a wire from the ceiling. A hen bobs around the floor. There are no books in this two-room house. Kevin's parents didn't get past the sixth grade. Indeed, the laptop project also has adults in its sights. Parents in Arahuay are asking Mendoza, the visiting psychologist, what the Internet can do for them. Among them is Charito Arrendondo, 39, who sheds brief tears of joy when a reporter asks what the laptop belonging to ruddy-cheeked Miluska -- the youngest of her six children -- has meant to her. Miluska's father, it turns out, abandoned the family when she was 1. "We never imagined having a computer," said Arrendondo, a cook. Is she afraid to use the laptop, as is typical of many Arahuay parents, about half of whom are illiterate? "No, I like it. Sometimes when I'm alone and the kids are not around I turn it on and poke around." Arrendondo likes to play checkers on the laptop. "It's also got chess, which I sort of know," she said, pausing briefly. "I'm going to learn." " Robert: "It's clearly stated on the OLPC site that they do not offer tech support because they hope users will become savvy enough with the XO to fix issues on their own. I think this is ... well, insane." I'd like to think that there's a future generation of nerds, who like me, got their start supporting & fixing their friend's computers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmYDgncMhXw Frankly, I think throwing kids in at the deep end of maker/hacker culture is a stroke of genius. Robert: "So far, a huge number of design decisions have clearly been made by the proverbial developer. " I'm sure you're aware Alan Kay is a principal designer on the project although I dont know the extent of his involvement. From the interviews I've read there's method to his madness, I might not necessarily agree with the result, but it's certainly not your typical OSS engineering centric featurefest. I would have to disagree with the thinking that Sugar fails because it does not "communicates how to make things work" Children learn best by exploring their world. regards -pauric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=23928 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
These are interesting commentaries. I think there is a lot of value in
looking at this operating system being open to 'different paradigms' and
very little value looking at it from the perspective of a hardcore windows
or mac user.
These computers are going to be used by children with little or no exposure
to personal computers. From everything I've read about the development of
Sugar it seems that it was built to support the tasks of these children.
Whether it's successful or not needs to be tested in the field rather than
the laboratory.
Sugar is also based on the faith that a community of users will develop. If
these communities develop then the operating system has much more potential
than it would for individual users. I am hoping that once it is set free in
the world some unpredicted things will happen.
Cheers,
Julie
On Dec 26, 2007 12:40 AM, Dan Saffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'd be interested in hearing from interaction designers who have
> played extensively with the new One Laptop Per Child UI ("Sugar").
>
> I saw the first public demo of Sugar back in August at AP's UX Week:
>
> <
> http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2007/08/14/uxweek2007-lisa-strausfeld-on-one-laptop-per-child/
> >
>
> but never really got to play with it. I was willing to keep an open
> mind about the UI, even though it uses very different paradigms than
> the ones we're all used to.
>
> But then Christopher Fahey's critique:
>
> <
> http://www.graphpaper.com/2007/12-23_challenge-if-you-cant-say-something-nice-about-olpc
> >
>
> "From what I've seen, the UI bears all the hallmarks of a user
> interface disaster, a case study in designer-driven design. I don't
> understand why the whole UX world isn't awash in skepticism over an OS
> that looks all the world like a Microsoft BOB for the Wallpaper* set."
>
> and Adam Greenfield's
>
> >
>
> "Despite its inclusion of some innovative and useful features, I find
> the OLPC device's Sugar operating system poorly integrated with
> applications (here nicely dubbed "activities"), to the degree that it
> may well be impossible to evaluate whether the underlying idea ever
> had any merit. My first impression - and I reiterate, it's only that -
> is that many of the applications bundled with the device epitomize
> everything that's wrong with FLOSS user interfaces, even when the OS
> itself has been created by professional information designers."
>
> And more...
>
> <
> http://issues-in-publishing.blogspot.com/2007/12/first-reactions-to-olpc.html
> >
>
> "Sugar is the operating system on the XO, and it, too, is very cool,
> but it is slow, and not intuitive for the hardcore windows and mac
> users. It is just not as advanced an operating system, and it is clear
> that it was built by developers for developers."
>
>
> I'd be curious to see how the UI (and the machine in general) are
> working in the field. I know for fact that no generative user research
> was done for these, but I wonder if any testing has been done since
> then.
>
> And how about some heuristic evaluations from this community?
>
> Dan
>
>
>
>
>
> *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)!
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>
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Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
Sugar is presented as a challenge to the children: decipher-me or give
up. You can see in the videos I posted when they discover something
new the first thing they do is to show up to their peers. Soon there
are some kids that explore more the possibilites of the systems and
serve the others with support.
> It's clearly stated on the OLPC site that they do not offer tech support
> because they hope users will become savvy enough with the XO to fix issues
> on their own. I think this is ... well, insane. Including an app for writing
> basic Python does not, by any means, ensure that the kids on the other end
> of the OLPC initiative will ever understand it.
They are confident that their system will turn every child into
hackers. I cannot agree on that, but the system is clearly a hacker
artifact and as so, can stimulate hackering activities.
In this case, success is not a mean of technology adoption, but of
technology appropriation. If these people, in their culture and place
can appropriate this techonology to do something they find useful, so
it can be considered sucessful. Let users judge it.
--
.
.{ Frederick van Amstel }. Curitiba ´´ PR
¶ ...''|| www.usabilidoido.com.br
.
ICQ 60424910 / MSN e Gtalk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
\\...
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Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
> I didn´t observed directly the XO in use, but I´m very skeptical about > expert reviewers from outside of the target community. If the > interface is different maybe that´s because the situation is > different. I haven't used it *extensively*, but since getting my hands on an XO last week, I've had a few chances to spend an hour or so with it and check things out. I agree it would be foolish to judge the social aspects of the OS without being surrounded by other people using them so the social components could be examined, but I disagree that the difference in situation should be given as much leeway as you're giving it. Good design principles can be applied regardless, and the XO is lacking in this area. For example, the #1 thing I've noticed with Sugar is the same #1 thing I've noticed in most web apps: an incredible lack of instructive design elements. I think the people working on this OS and on the multitude of applications that can be used to extend it are doing fantastic things - don't get me wrong - but they're in desperate need of a skilled interface designer, at the very least. >From the very first moment, it's difficult to tell even how to *open* the laptop. Once you turn it on and start trying to make sense of the environment, most clicks are guesses. Few are educated guesses. There's simply nothing - *anywhere* - that communicates how to make things work, what they do, what they mean, etc. There's nothing instructive about the UI, nothing self-evident. And the Getting Started guide at www.laptopgiving.org/start is more of a marketing piece than a how-to. It would convince you to buy the product, but does a poor job of telling you how to use it. You don't have to be an ethnographic design researcher to know that getting users up to speed is essential for a good experience. One can only hope that those who deliver these machines are also sticking around to train their recipients. It's clearly stated on the OLPC site that they do not offer tech support because they hope users will become savvy enough with the XO to fix issues on their own. I think this is ... well, insane. Including an app for writing basic Python does not, by any means, ensure that the kids on the other end of the OLPC initiative will ever understand it. So far, a huge number of design decisions have clearly been made by the proverbial developer. And he's not just *any* developer, he's a *UNIX* developer. He is - let's face it - in his own league of geekiness. On another note, can I ask why you're exploring this, Dan? Are you collecting info for a paper or some other purpose, or are you just curious? -r- *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
I didn´t observed directly the XO in use, but I´m very skeptical about
expert reviewers from outside of the target community. If the
interface is different maybe that´s because the situation is
different. The XO is a socially oriented machine. Any fair evaluation
must be in a social context, not by a context unaware individual.
The XO was tested in many schools in the world. Here are videos of XO
in use in a brazilian classroom (Luciana de Abreu School - Porto
Alegre):
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=w3XlQgqAvWQ
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=fRpCmV5zHYo
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=FMcw0PtYTaA
--
.
.{ Frederick van Amstel }. Curitiba ´´ PR
¶ ...''|| www.usabilidoido.com.br
.
ICQ 60424910 / MSN e Gtalk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
\\...
--
.
.{ Frederick van Amstel }. Curitiba ´´ PR
¶ ...''|| www.usabilidoido.com.br
.
ICQ 60424910 / MSN e Gtalk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
\\...
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[IxDA Discuss] OLPC: Sugar Not So Sweet?
I'd be interested in hearing from interaction designers who have
played extensively with the new One Laptop Per Child UI ("Sugar").
I saw the first public demo of Sugar back in August at AP's UX Week:
but never really got to play with it. I was willing to keep an open
mind about the UI, even though it uses very different paradigms than
the ones we're all used to.
But then Christopher Fahey's critique:
"From what I’ve seen, the UI bears all the hallmarks of a user
interface disaster, a case study in designer-driven design. I don’t
understand why the whole UX world isn’t awash in skepticism over an OS
that looks all the world like a Microsoft BOB for the Wallpaper* set."
and Adam Greenfield's
"Despite its inclusion of some innovative and useful features, I find
the OLPC device’s Sugar operating system poorly integrated with
applications (here nicely dubbed “activities”), to the degree that it
may well be impossible to evaluate whether the underlying idea ever
had any merit. My first impression - and I reiterate, it’s only that -
is that many of the applications bundled with the device epitomize
everything that’s wrong with FLOSS user interfaces, even when the OS
itself has been created by professional information designers."
And more...
"Sugar is the operating system on the XO, and it, too, is very cool,
but it is slow, and not intuitive for the hardcore windows and mac
users. It is just not as advanced an operating system, and it is clear
that it was built by developers for developers."
I'd be curious to see how the UI (and the machine in general) are
working in the field. I know for fact that no generative user research
was done for these, but I wonder if any testing has been done since
then.
And how about some heuristic evaluations from this community?
Dan
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