OLPC's UI To Be Kid-Tested In February

dfoulger writes "The AP is reporting that kid testing of Negroponte's '$100 Laptop' starts in February. This article is some of the first mainstream coverage of just how different the user interface of the XO Computer is — it ditches the traditional office metaphors in favor of a 'neighborhood' and an activity-based journaling approach. Video of Sugar, as the UI is called, has been out on the net for a while, and Popular Science recently gave the color / monochrome display a 'Grand Award' in its 2006 technology roundup. What do you think of this new UI?"

URL Bar

[duguk]

I've just watched the video and it looks fairly good.

Why is there no URL bar? It explains there isn't one but why not? Seems a bit of a problem for visiting specific sites as you'd have to use Google for everything it seems.

Monkeyboi

Not blown away

[edwardpickman]

I understand why they did it but as a rule I hate icon based systems. I have a CG software I was trying to use that went that route. In that case they went too small with the icons to cram more in so they look like colored blobs. Instead of glancing at text I find I waste most of my time holding the cursor over icon after icon waiting for the roll over text to tell me what the function is. I was also surprised they were boasting of no text bar on the browser. Leaves you at the mercy of the search engine. In may be better for kids starting out the way they laid it out but how does it give them an education in computers when it doesn't teach them how any other computer on the planet works? They'd be better off with a ten year old Windows machine or far better off with a current Linux system. Nice idea but it seems completely pointless.

Re:How about reading and writing?

[zr-rifle]

What does the laptop have to do with the Montessori method? If the Montessori method is inferior, why has a 2006 study proven that Montessori students averagely perform better?

Re:How about reading and writing?

[Phil-14]

I was unaware that the current US educational system had anything to do with Montessori methods to begin with.

Wrong focus

[PurifyYourMind]

They need to test with adults. There's a reason there's a cliche of "my kid fixed the VCR, computer, etc."--because kids' brains are sponges for new stimuli. They're still forming their how-the-world-works schemas and can easily adapt to new things. Adults, even ones who haven't used computers, are going to have more fixed ways of going about things, less willing to learn new concepts, less patient, less curious (just as a general rule.. I've known some older people who are insatiable learners).

Re:Not sure about that UI...

[Tim C]

Kids are very smart... and I believe they would have little trouble dealing with a modern, full-featured UI and OS.

My daughter is 7. From time to time, I let her use my PC (other times, I can't stop her...). In XP Pro, she's figured out how to:

* Log on using her mother's account (the password is trivial, it's her name)
* Change her display picture
* Change the password
* Fire up Firefox and surf to a couple of her favourite sites (others she has to ask for help)
* Send voice clips using Live Messenger

She worked out how to record herself singing on her mum's phone and change the tone for text messages to be that sound clip. She's changed the name and background image on one of the cordless house phones, something I didn't even know you could do (not that I've really played with them much, they're just phones...)

Kids are smarter than most adults give them credit for (strange, really, given they were all kids themselves once). Some kids are *much* smarter. I know it's a statistically insignificantly small sample size, but in my experience, kids are perfectly capable of using a modern UI.

However, given the low specs of the machine, it may well be that the machine isn't capable of presenting a full, modern UI (yes, yes, WindowMaker, fvwm, fluxbox, etc - I know. They're not what I mean by "full, modern UI".)

Icon Collision?

[a.phoenicis]

I find it truly amazing that nobody on the development team realized the obvious icon collision with their primary symbol... the "child" splat and this much older, and more universal symbol [aapcc.org].

Re:celebrity gossip blogs and children's minds

[TheRaven64]

It is easy to waste a lot of time on gadgets when what you really need is quality time learning the multiplication table and working on reading comprehension. Those kinds of things are best done with pencil and paper.

Are you sure? Reading comprehension can be improved if you have access to a large library of eBooks, and an on-board dictionary; click on any word you don't know in the eBook, and get a definition of it. If that's all it takes, most children would probably click and then they learn something. If they have to go and find a paper dictionary and look up a word in it then they wouldn't bother.

As for multiplication tables, I think it would be easier to learn them if the computer could perform testing (i.e. repeatedly ask multiplication questions and get the child to enter the results. Gradually reduce the amount of time allowed to answer. At first, provide a graphical representation of an N by M square of blobs to re-inforce the association between the numbers and shapes). I found learning French and German vocabulary much easier when I wrote a program to test myself. I entered the English/foreign word pairs, and it would repeatedly ask me one and expect me to provide the other within 5-10 seconds before going on to the next one. Running this for about 20 minutes, followed by a break for 40 minutes and then another 5 minutes locked a set of words in my long-term memory far more efficiently than any other method I've yet encountered.

Re:How about reading and writing?

[mysticgoat]

Maybe I'm just a fundamentalist, but children first need to learn basic skills like reading and writing.

And why does parent post think this excludes learning with a computer?

My daughter enjoyed programs I wrote in Applesoft on an Apple ][ that helped her learn her alphabet and basic counting when she was 3 and 4 years old. She was reading before she entered first grade.

Certainly the most critical part of it was her mother schooling her. But she also has vivid and pleasant memories of playing with that old Apple. The computer was of definite value to her as part of a broad learning experience.

There can be no question that the OLPC computers will be an incredibly valuable adjunct in teaching kids the basic skills of literacy, and of how to learn.

Etoys

[RAMMS+EIN]

Cool, it has Etoys. :-) Etoys is amazing; a great way to get started with writing software, especially games. And it's a nice stepping stone to Smalltalk, which is a very nice programming language.

Re:How about reading and writing?

[Anonymous Coward]

> If the Montessori method is inferior, why has a 2006 study proven that Montessori students averagely perform better?

Montessori schools are private, and thus get to select their students, so they don't ever have the inconvenience of anyone who might actually drive their averages down. They're also expensive, and the correlation between affluence and academic performance is pretty well known.

In what way is the interface easy?

[Millenniumman]

Personally, I don't find it easy to use at all. When it first boots up, you get a screen with a little symbol in the front. Clicking it does nothing. Eventually, if you happen to leave your cursor on the side of the screen, a little thing will pop up. You then have a few strange, ambiguous, unlabeled icons. Only one of them really indicates what it does (the chat one), and it probably wouldn't to people who had never seen a computer.

Even if you figure out what those buttons do, the interface is very tedious. The only way to switch "activities" is to move your cursor to the side, wait, click a little, unlabeled button, and click another unlabeled, ambiguous button. In other systems you just click the (I'll admit, likely unlabeled) button on the taskbar/dock. It might seem like I'm complaining over nothing, but trying to, say, take notes off a web page in abiword would take much longer than with with a book, paper, and pencil, even assuming the person using it could type (unlikely).

How is this easier than GNOME, KDE, Aqua, XFCE, or even Windows?