Slashdot Mirror
A Close(r) Look At OLPC Human Interface Guidelines
feranick writes "There have been a lot of articles on Slashdot about the OLPC project, most of
them regarding the hardware, the social impact or the cost of the
operation itself. However the software development,
specifically in the GUI didn't get so far much attention. This
blog summarizes some of the OLPC
global interface guidelines. You will see that what is really
new in the laptop is not the laptop itself, but the completely new idea
behind the design, where instead of applications you have activities,
documents are now journals,
'application bundles can be signed by
whoever works on them — because
there is a view source key on the keyboard,
anybody can modify an app
and distribute it'. It really looks like if this is successfully, we
could see a new breakthrough in GUI design also in mainstream PCs: "This
UI is quite simply one of the deepest and most interesting redesigns of
the desktop user interface ever produced. It makes MacOS look like what
it is — boring and unoriginal.""
The most annoying thing i can thing of in a UI and i find it every where, is the endless menus!
there should be some way to work this out
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
> "This UI is quite simply one of the deepest and most interesting redesigns of the desktop
> user interface ever produced. It makes MacOS look like what it is -- boring and unoriginal."
Wrong answer.
If something is good, it *is*, of its own accord. There is no need to assert *something else is bad* - unless you're feeling insecure.
Applications are activities, documents are journals...hell, why don't we call the laptop a leg-sittin' typing machine? To call the renaming of anything a major GUI change is absurd.
This is new? The people from Xerox Parc are going to disagree.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
The OLPC hardware is very nice actually. I've held it in my hands, and it is sturdy and looks nice. The worst part is the keyboard, which is dire - hopefully this is something they will work on in the future to improve. Sadly it had run out of battery when I got my mitts on it, so I cannot comment on the user interface, and the operation thereof.
However there are some interesting points in the blog post - it just depends on whether they are valid for the OLPC.
Fitts Law in corners for example works well when you have a mouse you can fling into the corner. But the OLPC has a trackpad, and we all know they're not so good for flinging the cursor into the corner. Something localised would be far better, for example a double-tap + pop-up directional menu for actions. Also Mac OS X lets you assign the corners to actions, contrary to his post. Many people disable these because they're annoying!
A View Source Key -- now there's a top level UI component that hundreds of millions of computer users have been begging for.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
"It makes MacOS look like what it is -- boring and unoriginal."
The new GUI might be revolutionary, and useful, and create the new paradigm. Just like MacOS did.
OLPC might make the now mature MacOS look boring. But if it makes MacOS look "unoriginal", just because so many have copied it, then the audience must be a world of children with the first laptop they've ever seen. Because MacOS originated the features that MacOS still keeps the cutting edge - until something like OLPC maybe replaces it. Even if so many others have copied it, MacOS is the original.
Unless you want to dig into MacOS's roots, like the Apple Lisa, or the Xerox Star. Which were prototypes, even the failed release Lisa. All PC design has been evolutionary, however big a leap one subsystem (like a GUI, or a LAN, or a laser printer on it, or an input peripheral like a mouse) makes. But those seminal roots just show how original was the MacOS, which made it work with its original improvements and integrations.
We should replace the ancient Mac GUI paradigm. It was revolutionary in the home and office, because it finally put the home and office on the screen, replacing the algebra classroom and typesetter formes. The original. Now it's over two decades old, and we're all more familiar with PCs than with file cabinets and document scrolls. So when we improve the paradigm, it's good to target the original. Pretending that MacOS isn't original makes it harder to beat it.
--
make install -not war
Giving food will only sustain a larger famine. It actually makes the problem worse.
Just so you know as well, there is a world food shortage. Food is basically oil in terms of scarcity and world-wide production. We don't have the food to feed the world. The world needs to learn how to do it themselves. Therefore if we spent all our time and effort giving people food the world would actually be a worse place. Giving people the ability to learn how to do things for themselves, as opposed to only teaching them how to put out their hand and beg for food is surely a much better approach to the problem.
There was another obvious point: You can still give them food at the same time. The OLPC project does not prevent aid! Also, I love how everyone is so specific to "omg teh children". Because as soon as people become adults we really just couldn't care less, huh? Perhaps if they had some/any education before they became adults they'd be able to take care of the children themselves. Also, let's just skip the arms trade arguments altogether and blame the OLPC project for the proliferation of the problem.
Food is good and all, but the fact is that in most of the countries this laptop is aimed at, people eat well. They're frankly some of the oldest cultures around (Arabic, Thai, Nigerian) and have survived because they know how to make and produce and eat food. That's not the issue. I spent a month working in the villages of rural Thailand. These people eat well but they have nothing to do. They just sit around during the summer and talk, as there is no extra water for farming, no economy to support, and no need to do anything other than talk. Everyone is doing just fine.
What is needed is education, access to the world beyond their village and the "city" miles away. These laptops will possibly (though again, efficacy has yet to be proven) encourage such interaction, learning and initialization into the modern world. Furthermore, the people are not stupid. The one computer that was in the government office was used regularly by middle and high-schoolers downloading music, reading up on the latest news from Bangkok, the weather, or various other games. But creation of original content, for access within the village, is another issue altogether.
As a side - those people were some of the happiest people I have ever met. They were not hungry, were not in a hurry, never spent much time indoors, never needed anything more than what they had. By connecting them to the capitalistic global society with these laptops we take away their status quo. They will be hungry, not for food, but for education, for money, for placement within the larger world. And it will destroy the villages as they know it. For better or worse.
Something to think about.
There's a VMWare image of the OLPC system (forget where...found the link on OSNews.com) and I downloaded it and played with it a bit. The "Sugar" interface is one those things that presumably works better on the intended hardware, because moving the mouse around to get to the "desktop" or whatever it was got old really fast.
The other issue, which I can appreciate is a very non-trivial task because it has to work with non-computer savvy kids (and presumably adults) in a variety of languages, is that the icons didn't make any sense to me, nor did most of the interface. I got that the globe icon was a browser, but that was pretty much it. A couple of apps I still don't understand what they do.
Being that it's Linux underneath, the standard ctrl-alt-backspace killed the interface and I was able to log in as root (no password) and poke around. The one programming language they include is Perl, and that got me thinking about why not give the kids an interface or some capability to develop their own software too? The next killer app could be written by a kid on a OLPC machine. It looked like they also included a version of Squeak (Smalltalk) as well, but I only saw the interface come up once and wasn't able to get back to it again. Would they ship the docs in all languages as well?
Typical american view of the world: everyone is starving out there. FYI: the OLPC is not intended to starving people, it is *not* food... It is intended for people who get their *basic* needs met already with the idea of helping themselves get out of poverty and hopefully improving the general economy of the country as well. Gee, what's so difficult to grasp? Following your argument we should not give any education to the poor either since what they need is food? What huge nonsense.
is the one that hasn't been usability tested yet.
from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ask_OLPC_a_Question
"There is very little public information about requirements gathering, usability and user testing. In other words, how do you know whether the OLPC (i) will meet your users' needs and (ii) is easy enough for them to use? Have the target user groups been characterized? What ongoing plans do you have for this? I`d Like test the OLPC in Argentina, Please contct with me to know how. Thanks.
As far as I know, there are two local groups in Argentina with test boards (don't know if anybody has the 2B1/XO prototypes though). They are Ututo and Tuquito. I know Ututo had some explicit arrangements to let other people use/test the boards. If anybody knows about other groups (or about any local XOs) please let me know (or post in the OLPC Argentina pages. --Xavi 07:23, 6 December 2006 (EST)"
Before you go off spouting that you've designed a radical new UI that's better than anything else you might want to usability test it. Now I couldn't find anything on the link to Ututo and the link to Tuquito doesn't seem to have any English content but from the answer to the question it doesn't sound like there's a real plan for user testing a radical new UI that will be given to people who, according to the HIG are young and inexperienced.
To the designer's credit both of those criteria (young and inexperienced) give you the best possible scenario for introducing a new UI since children are more willing to play around and experiment and inexperienced computer users don't have the legacy of using an OS that worked any different from what you're giving them. Even with those advantages I'd hope that a project that is intended for a global audience would have more substantial usability testing plans than "lets give a couple to some people in Argentina and see what they think". I'm certainly not going to go all gaga over an untested UI that starts by throwing out decades of learning about how people interact with software.
I saw a demo of Sugar running on an actual laptop only last Thursday. It exists, therefore, it cannot be vapourware.