Laptops designed by 7-year-olds


Rosecrans Baldwin of The Morning News writes,

You may have seen a link circulating a while ago about a group of 7-year-olds designing laptops (it was on a CNET blog post by Amy Tiemann). Well, I tracked them down, and now many permission slips later, we just published a gallery on TMN of what the future looks like in laptop design if 7-year-olds are to be believed. There's an interview with Ms. Tiemann about the club, as well as some interviews with the kids.
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Discussion

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Those are fun. I like the one with the QWERTY keyboard stretched across one long row at the top.

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#2 posted by Anonymous , November 19, 2007 9:31 AM

Reminds me of a hardware rendition of the toolbars in any Microsoft Office app.

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Holey spelchek, Batmn!

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I like the 8-year-old who put an "iPhone" button on hers.

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I wish my laptop had a hamster button. That would be awesome.

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When do these go into production? I need a kitten button.

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Interesting how thy put everything the computer does on the keyboard, including the applications.

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It makes sense to me-- when I was that age, my friends and I played something like two games and Paintbrush on their computer. If we'd had a button or something instead of putting in disks, we would have saved a lot of time. If your computer does only a few things, it makes sense to have shortcut buttons. It's when your computer becomes a window to a branching tree of other stuff to do that you want a generalized input apparatus.

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I want a "MATH BOTTON".

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"Immediet buy"? 7 years old and they're already infringing US patents.

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It's also interesting how several kids put a "10" key in with the numbers -- sometimes instead of a zero key. It's easy to forget how much "basic" math kids haven't really picked up yet at that age.

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I have to wonder what Maddox would make of all this...

But aside from that, this really reminds me of the Anti-Coloring books by Susan Striker that my parents let me loose on as a child. More fun than conventional colouring books, less fun than scribbling on the walls in crayon. Life is compromise.

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Rily werd games izz my favoritez!

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Don't worry - if we've learned anything from BoingBoing, it's that some artist out there will create real versions of these within a month.

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I noticed at least two laptops that had buttons that link to webkinz. Any parent of an 8-year-old knows that webkinz is the hottest Web site for that age group. I also noticed a link to a Barbie web site. Did anyone else notice any specific web links. I'm sure a lot of the "animal" keys are most likely intended to be links to lolcats or cuteoverload - other popular sites with that age group.

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I haven't seen any laptops with hardware 'google' button, but I bet it won't be long. Pretty clever ideas from some of them. It makes me wonder if buttons like 'kitten' are meant to produce a kitten or just a shortened way of typing.

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Dog, cat, kitten, puppy, leash, collar, food, shop, and especially "name pet"--this wasn't designed by a 7-year-old, it was designed by a NetHack player.

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Wonderful.

All they need now is an Operating System designed by a 7-year-old.

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It's really interesting to consider that computers completely rewire our brains to think more logically. Using a computer forces us to consider abstract ideas like hierarchies, and shortcuts. And really, their ideas aren't too far off from what several companies try to do. A lot of keyboards have "hotkeys" for browsers and whatnot that seem like a good idea at surface value. However, pressing [CTRL+C] instead of a designated Copy button just seems more accessible. A bit like how a stenotype machines are chorded, rather than having a full keyboard.
I can see this thought process when trying to teach my mother simple tasks on the computer. She needs things to be very straightforward. If she uses a program, she needs a shortcut on her desktop. On the other hand, I have desktop shortcuts disabled. To me, having a program under an array of directories just seems more logical.
Eventually, all computers will just need three buttons: [1], [0], and [CTRL+ALT+DEL]

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I would have to say that we taught computers to think logically (think may be a bad word). The concepts of hierarchies, shortcuts (or perhaps pointers is better) were/are heavily used in how we process our environment. Maybe whats happening is the computer is simply allowing you to focus more on the concepts you've already been using.

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What's interesting is that a 7-year-old understands the need for privacy: "Private code", "code settings", and also understands how important it is to really, really, really close an application with that gigantic "CLOSE" button!

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it's unanimous: all computers will ship with a GAMES button!

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@countd

Logical fallacies can be put in binary.

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#24 posted by Anonymous , November 19, 2007 3:25 PM

These children have obviously reinvented the Canon Cat. Jef Raskin would have a field day with this.

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