I just think that this OS is on the wrong path. I believe a better path to educating children via computer would be to have a computer with (the admittedly present) USB 2.0 port(s) and allow that to be the main source of programs beyond a web browser. Then, have certain shortcuts to certain cites on the hard drive that I guess is actually a flash drive so that the kids can click and be on google, click and go to a web based word proccessor, click and go to you tube, etc. Basically, the web can do all the simple required functions of a computer and we should be spending our energy perfecting and promoting these instead of putting crippled odd applications on their computers.

Then, sell apps, games, ebooks, whatever on usb drives because these are cheap easy ways to distribute content.

And I agree, if you grow up using something other than a traditional PC/mac, they will be extrodinarily difficult to understand when you, say, get an education and go to a respected university to continue your education and they assume you can use a PC. We aren’t doing them a huge favor by dumbing down and turning around our computers.

Now that the One Laptop Per Child’s ,a href=’http://www.olpcnews.com/software/operating_system/”>Sugar User Interface is somewhat baked and out in the wild, usability experts are starting to review it in detail. While everyone gives full credit to …

1. Re: OPLC video on youtube.com (karl)
2. Re: OPLC video on youtube.com (Kim Rose)
3. Re: OPLC video on youtube.com (Alan Kay)

———————————————————————-

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 18:56:14 +0100
From: karl
Subject: Re: [Etoys] OPLC video on youtube.com
To: etoys@laptop.org
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Alan Kay skrev:
> Maybe we should at least tell the guy who made the video ???
>
> He probably couldn’t even see the exit button from the continuous
> demos ….
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
> ————-
>
> At 05:27 AM 11/25/2006, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> On Nov 25, 2006, at 11:54 , karl wrote:
>>
>>> I saw on Slashdot a link to a video of the UI of the OPLC:
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwzCsOFxT-U&mode=related&search=
>>>
>>> It was painful to watch the Squeak part of that video. I shows so
>>> many of the common mistakes
>>> people make with Squeak. And it shows a lot of quirks in Squeak
>>> and etoys. Should the event playback be modal so the user input
>>> will not disrupt the playback. What are do other people think ?
>>
>> The problem is that the emulation images are not set up to run at the
>> original resolution, but at 640×480. One has to fix them before
>> running, but that is too cumbersome for most people:
>>
>>
>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_images_for_emulation#Image_Configuration
>>
>> I filed a bug to correct this:
>>
>> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/504
>>
>> But maybe we need to lobby someone to get it fixed ASAP.
Granted, but there are a few issues that are Squeak specific:

He pulls a game out of the Object tool but he drops it within the bounds
of the Object tool and the game disappears! Quite confusing.

He tries to get the game again, and the game gets embedded in a project
within a project, and the game gets cropped off. Also quite confusing to
a new user. (The same will happen to Script tiles when you have a
PasteUpMorph on the desktop.)

Event playback is not modal, so you can change stuff while the playback
is playing, like close the paint palette. This is confusing. Maybe event
playback could happen within a ‘playback morph’ with ‘video player
buttons’ to control the playback ?

Karl

——————————

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 10:04:04 -0800
From: Kim Rose
Subject: Re: [Etoys] OPLC video on youtube.com
To: karl , etoys@laptop.org
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”us-ascii” ; format=”flowed”

The demos were constructed in a book morph — the demo’er is getting
stuck by the bounds of the page… I think this is where most
problems are stemming from.
– Kim

At 6:56 PM +0100 11/25/06, karl wrote:
>Alan Kay skrev:
>>Maybe we should at least tell the guy who made the video ???
>>
>>He probably couldn’t even see the exit button from the continuous demos ….
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>Alan
>>
>>————-
>>
>>At 05:27 AM 11/25/2006, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>>>On Nov 25, 2006, at 11:54 , karl wrote:
>>>
>>>>I saw on Slashdot a link to a video of the UI of the OPLC:
>>>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwzCsOFxT-U&mode=related&search=
>>>>
>>>>It was painful to watch the Squeak part of that video. I shows so
>>>>many of the common mistakes
>>>>people make with Squeak. And it shows a lot of quirks in Squeak
>>>>and etoys. Should the event playback be modal so the user input
>>>>will not disrupt the playback. What are do other people think ?
>>>
>>>The problem is that the emulation images are not set up to run at the
>>>original resolution, but at 640×480. One has to fix them before
>>>running, but that is too cumbersome for most people:
>>>
>>>
>>>http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_images_for_emulation#Image_Configuration
>>>
>>>I filed a bug to correct this:
>>>
>>> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/504
>>>
>>>But maybe we need to lobby someone to get it fixed ASAP.
>Granted, but there are a few issues that are Squeak specific:
>
>He pulls a game out of the Object tool but he drops it within the
>bounds of the Object tool and the game disappears! Quite confusing.
>
>He tries to get the game again, and the game gets embedded in a
>project within a project, and the game gets cropped off. Also quite
>confusing to a new user. (The same will happen to Script tiles when
>you have a PasteUpMorph on the desktop.)
>
>Event playback is not modal, so you can change stuff while the
>playback is playing, like close the paint palette. This is
>confusing. Maybe event playback could happen within a ‘playback
>morph’ with ‘video player buttons’ to control the playback ?
>
>Karl
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Etoys mailing list
>Etoys@laptop.org
>http://mailman.laptop.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys

——————————

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2006 06:05:43 -0800
From: Alan Kay
Subject: Re: [Etoys] OPLC video on youtube.com
To: karl , etoys@laptop.org
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”us-ascii”; format=flowed

Yes, it’s possible that we want to only let the end-user choose the
“stop demo” button while event playback is running, and then take the
EU to the project with choices.

Cheers,

Alan

————

At 09:56 AM 11/25/2006, karl wrote:
>Alan Kay skrev:
>>Maybe we should at least tell the guy who made the video ???
>>
>>He probably couldn’t even see the exit button from the continuous demos ….
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>Alan
>>
>>————-
>>
>>At 05:27 AM 11/25/2006, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>>>On Nov 25, 2006, at 11:54 , karl wrote:
>>>
>>>>I saw on Slashdot a link to a video of the UI of the OPLC:
>>>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwzCsOFxT-U&mode=related&search=
>>>>
>>>>It was painful to watch the Squeak part of that video. I shows so
>>>>many of the common mistakes
>>>>people make with Squeak. And it shows a lot of quirks in Squeak
>>>>and etoys. Should the event playback be modal so the user input
>>>>will not disrupt the playback. What are do other people think ?
>>>
>>>The problem is that the emulation images are not set up to run at the
>>>original resolution, but at 640×480. One has to fix them before
>>>running, but that is too cumbersome for most people:
>>>
>>>
>>>http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_images_for_emulation#Image_Configuration
>>>
>>>I filed a bug to correct this:
>>>
>>> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/504
>>>
>>>But maybe we need to lobby someone to get it fixed ASAP.
>Granted, but there are a few issues that are Squeak specific:
>
>He pulls a game out of the Object tool but he drops it within the
>bounds of the Object tool and the game disappears! Quite confusing.
>
>He tries to get the game again, and the game gets embedded in a
>project within a project, and the game gets cropped off. Also quite
>confusing to a new user. (The same will happen to Script tiles when
>you have a PasteUpMorph on the desktop.)
>
>Event playback is not modal, so you can change stuff while the
>playback is playing, like close the paint palette. This is
>confusing. Maybe event playback could happen within a ‘playback
>morph’ with ‘video player buttons’ to control the playback ?
>
>Karl

At a proper resolution, you would see the introductory demonstration, and a dozen or so example projects that show quite well that this is *not* for learning programming but much more.

I don’t think the User Interface is just an “application launcher”. Have a look at my latest post about the integration of collaborative tools into the desktop. It is very adventurous, revolutionary even, but I do worry a possible lack of user testing. I wonder if you can turn the WiFi off to conserve battery power even further? I guess it’s against the concept of the Mesh network.

That’s pretty damn powerful in and of itself! It supports Midi, graphics, web programming stuff, it’s a pretty killer system.

Man, I need a OLPC now… :D

The User Interface itself is not the important part of the system. The applications themselves (or ‘Activities’) are the ‘tools’ for education.
Sugar allows users to ‘network’ by making the user part of a group or neighbourhood.

The applications in the latest distribution are cut down versions of products available as open source. Certainly they have been tailored to work within the hardware requirements of the OLPC. Any laptop that could work for four days continuously on a full charge is worth cut down versions of software. I would think that the current distribution is not the last. Lets see how far the ongoing development goes before shooting the dev team ;)

I’m afraid there were a couple of innacuracies in my video. Firstly, The web browser is not firefox – apparently it is “Dillo”. Secondly, the title bar doubles up as the address bar. Sorry about that!

Geir:
I agree with pretty much everything you say. I didn’t mean to imply that the current desktop model (a la xp, osx, kde etc) is the panacea of UI design. I just have some reservations about Sugar in its current implementation. It needs user testing, and lots of it. This way, if there are any problems with the UI they can be ironed out and the OLPC can completely fulfil its (amazing) potential.

Surely the point is that children deserve the opportunity to learn skills which allow them to compete in a global economy. They need to be able to stand up equal to those who have learnt their IT skills in the ‘developed’ world. The third world doesn’t need our cast-offs, hand me downs or knock off, simplified products that prevent them from ever gaining any kind of level pegging.

I think that you took the OLPC idea from a different point of view. The OLPC is there to give low cost education and information, with some “bonus” coming from the use of a computer platform.

Don’t you think that a book is ok both for a 8 years old boy and for a 11 years old boy? Sure, it is. It’s good from the beginning to our deaths.
The OLPC is the same: bring information. Since it access *any* kind of data format – it’s a computer – the information could be displayed both from a illustrated book for youngers and from a high-density book for older students.

So, give a boy a OLPC and you are feeding him for life (well… ok…). :)

Also, aven if I agree that it could be tested before shipping (and I think they did… no?) for an optimal UI design, I don’t think that using Gnome, KDE or any other already-existing tool will help.
“What kind of foundation are we giving these kids when they eventually get faced with a ‘normal’ desktop?”
The answer is simple: we’re giving them something, but not everything. That isn’t a computer and doesn’t want to educate completely on how to use a computer. It’s a TOOL to LEARN, and nothing more.

It’s like saying that the UI of your mobile phone is wrong just because it doesn’t educate on how to use a PC. You’ll see that even if the UI of a mobile could be bad, really bad, the reason under this isn’t that it doesn’t use Gnome or KDE… :)