• Idea:

    Interactive RSS Reader for OLPC

  • Goal:

    provide a highly attractive user interface to stimulate children's interests in reading online new articles.

  • Approach:

    use icons and animations and special effects to create a highly interactive RSS reader interface

  • Rationale:

    the news reader currently installed on OLPC's uses traditional GUI design to present feeds. This design, however, may not be very appealing to young users. To attract children to browse and consume online news, it would be necessary to design an interface that meet their tastes.

  • Interface description:

    • The main looking of the interactive RSS reader.
    • Each feed is represented by an icon with title and related image
    • Feeds belong to the same category will form a stack with latest feed on top
    • Move mouse around to browse other categories or click on one stack to enter one category to.

    The news reading mode.

    • Once enter a particular category, feeds in this category will scatter around.
    • Icon size will be increased to contain some lines from the news article.
    • click on any icon will enter full reading mode.

    • In this mode, full content will be displayed.
    • with one click, the user will return to the previous mode to read other news.

  • Other possible features:

    • Kids can share news they find interesting by "folding" one feed into a paper airplane and send to their friends.
    • If network condition does not allow each individual child to access internet, they can download news feed from their teachers PC. And teachers are able to select news resources for their students.