AP UX Week '07: One Laptop Per Child

[Live blogged notes from Adaptive Path UX Week 2007. On Laptop Per Child by Lisa Strausfeld]

This is the first ever UI demo of the laptop, but first we'll get some background on the project.

It is essential to do a multilaptop demo as they are not designed to travel alone.

Mission

• to educate all the children of the developing world
• to create a laptop affordable enought to be distributed to schoolchildren of developing governments by their own countries
• to create a tool for learning

This is based on the theories of Seymour Papert.

This emphasizes dynamic learning that encourages students to make things and teach eachother.

The project was announced by Nicholas Negropone in Jan 2005 and WEF. The final roung of beta machines were deployed in July 2007 and the first major rollout is September 2007.

The equipment is:

• durable
• low-power
• flash display
• BW and full color display
• high res display
• works in direct sunlight
• long-life handpowered battery
• peer-to-peer mesh network
• open-source software
• tools are about sharing, expressing, and collaborating not "learning" in a traditional sense

This project is a collaboration between Pentagram, OLPC, and RedHat.

The visual language of the system is based on abstraction.

Reason 1: Less is more

Abstraction as the expression of a reductionist aesthetic

Reason 2: It's less culturally specific

Abstraction is closer to the realm of idealism than realism

Reason 3: Reserves computing power

Prioritizes key computing tasks over graphics redering

Overview

Bwgin with XO: a representation of a person. The user can choose custom colors for contour and fill. Color is used in this way to signal ownership.

People can work together on and activity to produce artifcacts.

This is displayed on a field and fields can be organized to display object, activities, and people in different ways.

Based on relationship spheres that emphasize:

• Size
• Trust
• Collaboration

The spheres are:

• Home
• Friends
• Neighborhood (school)

In order to create continuity across these spheres, the interaction model is based on four zoom models.

3 spheres plus activity, the space in which collaboration happens. People are represented within the activity sphere with constant presence.

All activities are automatically recorded in the journal. Time based and non-hierarchical. Automatic, no saving. it is like a scrapbook of interactions with the laptop and with other people.

Early prototype demo

The home sphere shows you the individual and activities. At the group sphere you can interact with others and group them spatially.

Neighborhood shows group alignment and activity grouping.

The activity view is the full screen focus on what you are currently doing.

Current state of the interface

[Live video from three laptop screens]

Moving the cursor to the edge shows the "frame," a persistent interface element.

Launched a PDF in the read activity. It is being shared with others by being added on the "mesh" in the neighborhood view. Others can now join the activity. The PDF is immediately transfered and now lives on both laptops.

The screen can be rotated and folded down to e-book mode.

There is a built-in camera. If a photo view is shared, it shows up using that persons local camera. In a shared photo activity, the photos show up on all participating computers.

One member can leave an activity for another. For example, one could start a write activity and also share that with others. Writing is also collaborative like SubEthaEdit. Users can add images from the clipboard to the writing activity.

There are major UI issues to consider because collaboration is ubiquitous. They are still uncovering these issues.

For more information about all of this, see OLPC

Q: Role of text in the interface?

A: Mostly iconic because children are learning reading at the same time.

Q: Development of activities?

A: There are about 2000 developers creating activities for the laptop. There is a team working on a library of the activities and the hope is to make them like Mozilla add-ons.

If just one laptop gets on the Internet, they all can share that connection. If one is near the school connection and others are in the village, they will still work.

Another big part of the project is placing servers in schools to provide connectivity and libraries of content.

Q: How long did it take to build this interface?

A: Pentagram started last summer. It is constantly iterated. Even though production machines are going out, the builds get updated constantly.

Q: What is the life-span of the laptop?

A: This information is available online but it seems that the life-span is about five years. There are a number of environmental concerns that go into the laptop. Not sure about the life-cycle plans but these issues are being taken seriously.

Q: Love the network nature of the device but what about security and privacy for children?

A: It is a concern but at the moment it is not as big a concern because at first launch it being given to schools directly. There is a great deal of security. If the laptop is away from the school for too long it will stop working. These are designed to be in the hands of children.

If they are mass produced for the general public this will become more of a concern.

There are also trust relationships in the collaborative space.

Q: How did Pentagram make the decision to do this project? What process did you use to come up with the UI concepts?

A: Long history with Nicholas Negroponte and Walter Bender. Pentagram has been the creative agency for the whole project including identity and web.

The basic features were established by RedHat and the OLPC team. Pentagram came in to establish a model and a visual language which was about making a continuous space that made sense for all of the features. There is, for example, a strong emphasis on full screen interfaces and social qualities (the presence of friends at all times).

Q: How did the partnership process work with countries?

A: Nicholas Negroponte is handling this. He travels three hundred some days per year. He is managing vision and details of the whole project.

Q: How do you intend to transition people from this interface to other interfaces?

A: It is object oriented. Applications and objects are commonplace interface elements. It is relatively in keeping with traditional interfaces.

Q: Did you need to divorce yourself from the scope of the project's ambition?

A: "Is it realistic" isn't the framework for this project. It is a hugely ambitious activity. They are working with visionaries here. But the team is grounded, the atmosphere is inspiring. This is not a corporate project. People are working around the clock. Pentagram is not working pro bono, they are working at cost.

This is getting bigger as they go and that is exciting. The constraints are always present but the feedback is amazing.

Q: How do you do usability testing? How does a "universal" interface go over?

A: They are aware of how much they cannot know about the cultures that will be interacting with the laptop. There is a proposal to do testing as the laptops get in field. They did have to make assumptions as they worked.

The project is all about community. People in country are training teachers about the ideas embedded in the device and its interface. The surprising thing has been that the bugs are not the problem. Kids work around the problems and just make things.

There is debate about the "frame" part of the UI, about its discoverability, etc. In the classroom, only one kid needs to figure it out and then can share that nugget of knowledge. The kids are motivated to teach each-other and that is part of the point. This laptop does not live in a vacuum, it is designed for children to collaborate.

Q: What design elements presented the greatest challenge?

A: The neighborhood view was the hardest. There is debate about the layout particularly relating to density of the population. The scalability problem in Cambridge is unique because this thing picks up every WiFi point.

Q: Is there a style guide for activity designers? How extensible is this?

A: Activities show up on the bottom of the frame with simple icons.

The device is extensible through input jacks that can take pretty much anything. You could make this into a portable science lab very easily by building external sensors.

[demo of collaborative music app]