Design & Emotion Blog

The MIT Media Lab has launched a new research initiative to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world’s children. To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been created.

Yesterday, the 100$ laptop that is to be distributed all around third world countries (One Laptop per Child), was presented in Tunis to UN boss Kofi Annan.

The design

The design of the laptop, to be real honest… is not bad! It looks inviting and friendly and is made out of very solid plastics.
The green color with yellow accents gives the laptop a fresh appearance.

To me, this initiative is already a success on several fronts. First, it will give millions of children the chance to use new technology to make learning easier and more fun.
Second, the design of the object itself will give the children a sense of pride to own a beautiful object and will hopefully put a smile on their face everytime they’ll use it.

The design shows a variety of useful functionalities. First of all, it can be used as a normal small-sized laptop. Furthermore it can be “folded” and work as an e-book. To watch tv or video it has a “theatre” mode, standing up. And last, when your battery or power runs out of energy, it shows a simple funcionality to wind the laptop up, like we used to do with our old flash lights.

This laptop wasn’t just designed to serve a functional purpose tough. It looks like designers really spent time to think of designing something usable AND great-looking for these children. Cheers to all the initiators and of course to the designers of the 100$ laptop!