The winner of the Inaugural Brit Insurance Design Award ("intended as Design world's answer to the Turner prize") was announced last night: A hand powered laptop for developing countries, developed by MIT for the One Laptop Per Child initiative. The judges commented that it was "a feat beyond the design itself".
It's interesting to consider what the stronger part of the design is, the laptop itself, or the innovation and organisation surrounding the OLPC initiative. Could we categorise the laptop at the individual level, and the initiative at the global level?
It might also be a useful exercise to pick through the 100 shortlisted designs and categorise them at the different levels.
Following this one per child initiative there is now an announcement by British manufacturer Elonex of the imminent launch of a £99 small computer aimed at school kids. Achieved by using only freeware. I found John Naughton and David Chapman in the coffee bar trying out the OPC computers the other day, they are nicely designed, though apparently you have to put aside your expectations of computers to use them. Elonex are based in Bromsgrove and I wonder whether they would be worth going to visit.
Posted by: Georgina Holden | March 25, 2008 at 07:50 PM