[Sigia-l] UI for the $150 Laptop (OLPC)

[Ziya Oz]

Celeste 'seele' Paul:

> If you want to successfully contribute your time and make a difference in Open
> Source, whether it be OLPC or anything else out there, you have to make it
> personal.  

I most certainly do not have to.

Design evaluation/criticism is not a personal commitment.

It's absurd to think that if I were to criticize design work from, say,
Ford, Microsoft or Bank of America I should "prove myself" and join their
company. Or if I were to criticize a book I should camp out at the author's
study. Or if I were to criticize a painting I should hold the brush for its
painter. Or if I were to criticize a movie I should start to work as a gofer
on their set.

Design criticism is about the design *product,* not the people behind the
design. If I wanted to hold hands and sing Kumbaya with others that would be
a *different* activity, just not design criticism.

When it comes to consumer-facing products, their design becomes a matter for
all of us, no matter what their method of production happens to be, OSS or
otherwise.

OLPC is targeting about 100 million people around the world. That will
create its own segregated island within the much larger computing community.
When many OLPC users "graduate" into the latter world after a few years,
they will find it to be a completely alien place, nothing like the UI/UX on
OLPC. That's a gigantic problem. I ought to be able to point that out
without having to "prove" myself to the OSS.

If I were to mandate that starting tomorrow all social studies and biology
classes will be taught in an alien language *and* the teachers who are
supposed to teach the classes don't speak it, that's a gigantic problem. I
ought to be able to point out the design ramifications of that boneheaded
decision (inventing a completely new UI paradigm for OLPC) without having to
"start small to prove" myself. And so on...

My interest is not to "make a difference in Open Source." I am interested in
Design. Whether design criticism OSS projects is a waste of *my* time or not
is for me to decide. Needless to say, the OSS community is perfectly
entitled to ignore any design criticism from people not "committed" to its
cause. I hope you can see that that's more of a loss to OSS than to
individual critics.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba