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A Close(r) Look At OLPC Human Interface Guidelines

Posted by Hemos on from the making-the-audience-understand dept.

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.""

3 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. So why slag off MacOS? by Toby+The+Economist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > "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.

  2. View Source Key by jamesl · · Score: 5, Funny

    A View Source Key -- now there's a top level UI component that hundreds of millions of computer users have been begging for.

  3. oh... there we go again by cpotoso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.