The OLPC Human Interface Guidelines
By Eddie Lopez. Saturday, 27. January 2007, 15:21:49
This link sums up the OLPC HIG Guidlines by saying:
If you haven’t done so already, go read the OLPC HIG now. I swear to God, this document is a work of pure, inspired genius....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 list of things this UI gets right is so long it makes my head spin
..and I wanted to note the very first paragraph of the "Core Ideas" section which I thought was interesting:
Activities, Not Applications
There are no software applications in the traditional sense on the laptop. The laptop focuses children around "activities." This is more than a new naming convention; it represents an intrinsic quality of the learning experience we hope the children will have when using the laptop. Activities are distinct from applications in their foci—collaboration and expression—and their implementation—journaling and iteration.
They even took new ideas approach to the trackpad and keyboard. No capslock, "erase" instead of delete, larger enter key...
Of course, OLPC has been in the news at around these parts as well as it's currently in Opera's hands running the browser.
WIDGETIZE
csant # 27. January 2007, 18:42
On my (want)todo list is sharing my ideas on the Sugar UI. Maybe some day that I find some time...
WillYum # 27. January 2007, 19:03
From the UI standpoint, the overall concepts seem easy to get and very cool but I admit to serious confusion when it comes to the details.
Sadly, I don't see how Opera's going to convince the OLPC folks to change the paradigm for them. They want to give children the ability to "look under the hood" at any point and while Opera is amazingly customizable it's still not open source.
Forgive my tangent.
Anyway, it'll be exciting to see what they come up with.
Yum
Eddie_Lopez # 27. January 2007, 20:47
Well, it may not be new, but I think you'd be hard pressed to to find a keyboard at Best Buy or the like without one.
I noticed it moreso because I'm beta testing Enso and I've been visiting that key quite a bit
Kelson # 29. January 2007, 16:45