My – rather uneducated – feelings towards OLPC have always been ambiguous: Nice technological idea but will it be accepted. Today I found this Businessweek article by Bruce Nussbaum criticising the top-down approach of the project. It stirred a lot of discussion and only time will tell if the OLPC will make a difference.
I cannot – nor will I – make an informed verdict but when discussing things I remebered what Hans Rosling was saying in his 2007 TED talk (at min. 12:20):
The nice thing here is that you can’t see who are the researchers on this picture. That’s when research functions in poor societies. You must really live with the people.
Far too often this seems to be unfeasible in product development which leaves it to the emphatic abilities of the designers to create useful solutions. Jane Fulton Suri’s work is a good place to start on this emphatic design process.
No comments.