A Close(r) Look At OLPC Human Interface Guidelines 152
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.""
So why slag off MacOS? (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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.
So? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So why slag off MacOS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are the latest changes coming out for OS X Leopard "boring and unoriginal"? Heck, we don't even know about half of them yet!
Nonetheless, many of these "unoriginal" ideas are actually "conventions" adopted by all major OS's because there was some agreement that they were "best of breed" ways to illustrate or accomplish something. That's not always a "bad" thing!
New (Score:4, Insightful)
This is new? The people from Xerox Parc are going to disagree.
A new UI? (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:OLPC Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
(sneaking off topic. mod me down!)
And because they violate everything a reasonable UI person holds dear. I'll grant that OS X didn't originally make great use of the corners. One is for the Apple menu, which is rarely needed, and the other is for the clock's menu, which is almost never needed. However, keeping those in the corners and then adding an option to have the corner respond to other actions is a bit annoying - now there's no easy way to know exactly what the corner will do until you try it. That, or discover it automagically because none of the Exposé actions require a click.
Which gets to the next problem. These corner actions are generally things that radically rearrange the screen, start a screen saver, etc. Without a click. This is extremely undesirable when you consider that Fitts Law cuts both ways - the corners are such easy targets that most users will frequently hit them even when they don't intend to. For example, it's common for me to fling the cursor off toward a corner when I want to get it out of my way so I can read a document more easily or whatever. With hot corners enabled, I'll often end up hitting one of those corners, which ironically massively re-arranges the screen, usually in a way that makes it completely impossible for me to continue my reading. Just about the exact opposite of what I was intending to do. Similar problems for when I'm trying to use a UI element that's close to a corner (window resizing controls, Apple menu, etc.)
The only hot corner I like and use is the one which keeps the screen saver from activating. It's also the only one that doesn't have a nasty habit of mucking with the screen when I don't want it to.
Re:Endless Submenus (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, personally, I see this as a minor evolutionary improvement on the 'tool palette' interface [adobe.com] made popular by Adobe Systems' Photoshop and Illustrator appliations, but that's just me.
Re:New (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only is the idea of "activities, not applications" old, it is not even a good idea. It puts a very important kind of choice in the hands of the person with the least information about what the user wants to do, which is extremely bad design.
People have heirarchies of goals. For example, I want to pass some course so I need to edit some document so I need to start
To take a hardware example, a nail gun is not a replacement for a hammer, as it is almost completely useless for many of the functions that hammers are routinely used for, like smashing things. Frequently, I want to use a hammer for something other than driving nails, and if some idiot developer handed me a nail gun because they presumed they knew what I was going to do with the hammer it would be annoying to say the least. Why should a developer be choosing what tool I use? And what business does a developer have in deciding what "activities" are legitimate? I want a toolbox that I can do with what I please, not a finite, static list of "activities" that are tied to a bunch of tools that are unrelated to those activities except in some developer's imagination.
There is a role for guidance in UI design--a system that suggests a tool for a given job--but to design the whole UI around the notion that the UI designer personally knows what activities a user will want to perform and that the UI designer personally knows how the user will want to perform them is simply a mistake. There are some tasks where the association is sort of clear, but the fact that "some A are B" does not imply that "all A are B", now does it? To defend this kind of design one needs to be able to prove that in the majority of cases the UI desiger, who has no clue about the user's actual goals, is more likely to make appropriate judgments about how to achieve them than the user ever will. This is a tall order.
The fact is that a lot of what users do is ill-defined and amorphous and not easily subject to classification. For example: what "activity" am I engaged in right now? Posting to
oh... there we go again (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mod me whatever....but... (Score:3, Insightful)
If humans would spend as much time, money, and effort with feeding children as they are with giving third world countries hand cranked computers with pretty picture interfaces, the world would be a better place.
A smart businessman looks for return on investment. Right now many countries spend huge amounts providing food to other countries. This investment is much larger than the OLPC project. The food donated in this way destroys the local market for food, decimating the remains of the agricultural sector (the only real industry in many places) and making them dependent upon future handouts. The way around this is to provide them with more the the results of an industry, but with all the tools and knowledge necessary to build the industry from scratch. For agriculture that can compete, this means the entire industrial base to make farm equipment, irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, GM foods, etc. This investment would be huge, but some level of it is provided in some places. Alternately, for a relatively tiny investment we can provide them with all the tools and knowledge needed to compete in the computer/intellectual property market. The OLPC project gives them everything needed to gain education and learn to create applications and information on computers.
Thank you for the green foot pedal computer with the fishes on the screen! I wish I could eat them...I am so hungry...
Sorry, but your world view is out of date. For the most part, people do have food. They just don't have jobs so they can build a life... partly because we gave them food. It is humane to give starving people food, but it is much better to give starving people both food and a means of making money so they can buy their own food in future.
The best UI in the world.... (Score:3, Insightful)
from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ask_OLPC_a_Question [laptop.org]
"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.
Re:Vaporware (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:New (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Memory usage? (Score:2, Insightful)
Without an actual figure attached to the display ("activity A is using 60% of your total memory... You may launch any new activity that uses 28Mb or less"), the memory indicator is somewhat useless. I'm not saying it's not important to display this information, just wondering at the logic of displaying it in a way that is not exactly intuitive or even meaningful.
I can think of several ways in which to notify the user that new activities cannot be begun due to memory contraints. Touting the chosen method as a feature does not seem in-line with the goals of the project, and the display could IMO be used to render something of more relevance to the user without sacrificing the ability to warn in low memory conditions.