One Confusing Laptop Per Child

Nicco somehow scored an OLPC, and it's been kicking around the office for the better part of a week. Despite having been tantalized by glimpses of Phil Torrone's OLPC at SXSW, I initially kept my distance — it was too embarrassing to admit that I didn't know how to open the damn thing. The secret was eventually revealed to me (you have to open the wifi antennae first! er, of course!) and I started playing around with it. I can now confidently say that I'm too stupid for it.

Even after watching a walkthrough, I still find it extremely difficult to navigate the UI and understand what I'm doing. It's quite boring visually, making for an even more drab experience than would normally be had from the lousy LCD. And the decision to eschew text, while understandable, is undercut by ugly and incomprehensible pictographs. The RSS reader is represented by a snare drum, for instance. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

I realize that it may be unfair for me to dismiss this UI simply because I lack familiarity with it — I've been using an entirely different UI paradigm for years. Nor is it fair to attack its lack of razzle-dazzle — the OLPC's modest hardware isn't exactly up to running GNOME's transparency effects. This laptop is designed for children in the developing world, and it'll probably suit them just fine. Not only will they be able to learn the system faster than I can, but the returns they receive from investing their time in it will be greater than those reaped by an adult first-worlder who's already surrounded with bigger-budget computers.

Still, I can't help but wonder whether the OLPC UI is an act of hubris. Interface design is about the creation of metaphors that are comprehensible, efficient, and correlate logically to the systems they represent. Deciding that the file/folder/window metaphors that have been evolving since Xerox PARC aren't worth adopting is a bold move, to say the least.

I'm inclined to agree with Harry Brignull when he says that the UI is patronizing. Abandoning the conceptual framework used by the rest of the computing community means that it'll be that much harder for OLPC users to become conversant in the world of technology as a whole. Yes, there's a Linux kernel in there and (I'm assured) a command line that can be accessed. But well-meaning UI decisions can have subtle unintended consequences. For instance, hiding the address bar in the browser seems like a good way to remove clutter and marshal limited pixels. But it also undercuts a user's ability to learn that a URL represents a unique resource that's organized in a hierarchical structure relative to other resources. Can that concept be taught later? Yes, of course. But kids using traditional UIs will know it intuitively. Will OLPC users? I'm not so sure.

The OLPC is a nifty little device and I'm sure it'll be a useful tool for communities (there's reason to doubt that this is an effective way to spend education dollars). But right now the UI makes it seem likely to serve more as an internet appliance than a general-purpose computer. That's a shame. The OLPC will never be able to compete directly with other computers — it doesn't have the budget to do so. Consequently, it ought to plan on those OLPC users who are able eventually moving on to superior machines — and that means it ought to speak the same symbolic language as the rest of the world.