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

[Celeste 'seele' Paul]

On Wednesday 29 November 2006 16:16, Ziya Oz wrote:
> 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.

Then you will most likely fail successfully contributing design advice to an 
open source project.

> Design evaluation/criticism is not a personal commitment.

Sure, if you like talking to yourself.  Pointing out problems and not trying 
to fix them seems to be a bad habit in this industry.

> 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

It's absurd to think that just because you say something they will care about 
what you have to say.

Your original statement was the intent to critique the Laptop UI and 
Guidelines.  Please, stop me now if you only intended blab on about something 
and never intend to try fix it.

> 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.

If you wanted to fix whatever it was you were criticizing, then you might have 
to be a little friendly.

> 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.

Oh please.  You're suggesting environments supporting alternate models of 
interaction are going to ruin millions of kids who go on to use Word in an 
archaic desktop environment?  What about all these other ubiquitous devices 
and environments and video game consoles out there?  Are they destroying 
humanity's capcity to use Windows too?

> 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...

Ignorance must be bliss because only you seem to think the sky is falling.  
Let's all stop innovating now.

> 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.

With an attitude like that, I don't think we're missing much.

~ C

-- 
Celeste 'seele' Paul
www.obso1337.org