The Art and Science of Everything

At CHI, somebody asked Gary Marsden, winner of CHI’s 2007 Social Impact Award for his work on interaction design for Africa, about his thoughts on the One Laptop Per Child project. He was diplomatic, and even encouraging, but still circumspect.

“It is solving a problem that I’m not coming across in my research because the people we study are using cell phones. I haven’t seen the need in the populations we study.

The problem is that teachers don’t know how to teach with computers and the software needs to be good enough to replace teachers, because there aren’t enough of them.

Big access criteria is local content…

Lessons learned from your study that would have pay off for hundred dollar laptop:
Usability is irrelevant. People buy cell phones and that is all they have. No house, no car, that’s it. They will spend a long time figuring out how to use the phone. If you can provide a solution that makes someone’s life better, you don’t need usability. It is about understanding the community and the culture. Usability comes *after* that.”