We will be adding new items to the BUY OUR STUFF section over the coming weeks while we plan our program for 2010. Please consider purchasing an item to help us continue our work. Supporters of our program will be eligible for inclusion in the “Friends of the Rural Design Collective.”

We will keep this site on the ‘net for posterity. We had a blast participating in the One Laptop Per Child’s Contributor Program!

As we like to say at #rdcHQ – Stay tuned (… and BUY OUR STUFF!)

Click On This Bumper Sticker – Make Good Things Happen.

The RDC Needs You^TM – Buy our spiffy bumper sticker (click on it above) and learn more about becoming a Friend of The Rural Design Collective. All proceeds go towards continued work and good deeds on projects like the ones you see here, plus the continued development of the RDC and our mentoring program!

We presented both a web solution as well as a localized USB stick solution containing 2000 public domain books at the conference. You can read more about the event here, and you can check out our web solution in the Rural Design Collective UI Lab. When we first started this project, our goal was to make public domain books more accessible and appealing to kids. Technology in this space is progressing rapidly, so it was fun to balance innovation with a well-defined set of deliverables. That is what makes working the Web so interesting – there is always something new and challenging to learn.

We have a lot of ideas regarding the next steps for our project (and our program), and we plan to implement them. We will be releasing our documentation and code in the next month (everything will be available for download), including a roadmap of the next steps for this particular project. We are very excited about the Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS), but just did not have enough time to work it out this season. We may work it in as an Extra Credit project this winter as we are eager to get set up as a catalog so we can hit the ground running next summer, adding more books and metadata to our collection. We have 600+ digital public domain books that were donated to our program by the Boston Public Library in support of our program (if you were wondering what the gray book icons are in our user interface, they represent placeholder categories for books that were donated by BPL).

The future looks bright! We are planning for next season and working out long-term goals for the Rural Design Collective. We already have eager candidates for mentees, a list of potential Friends of the RDC, a lot of interest, and many opportunities for projects. We will be spending the winter months on outreach and applying for grants. As always, we will share what we learn here.

Steven and Scotty have been working together to create a completely localized version of the collection for the sticks using the new genCollectionInterface tool. The biggest hurdle to overcome is presenting the user interface initially when the stick is inserted into the XO, and delivering the metadata before the book is opened in the Journal. In the meantime, we also developed an online version of the user interface that utilizes a streamlined version of the Internet Archive bookreader (also known as the embeddable bookreader). This bookreader interface works amazingly well on the XO and fits neatly on the screen. We also optimized the collection interface for viewing on the XO – we strongly encourage you to view it on a little green machine if you can (it looks a bit bare in a web browser – but wonderful on the XO … see the screenshots below!). We still have a bit of tweaking to do, but we are quite pleased with the results!

Additional Screenshots: [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ]. We worked diligently to provide an “XO-friendly” interface that accommodates the native elements in the Sugar UI. We are still tweaking some navigational issues, and resolving screen resolution on the XO – but we are pleased with the results!

It is possible to generate either version of the user interface using the genCollectionInterface tool with minor modifications to the code. Right now, we are trying to reach consensus as a team on how much crossover there should be between the online and local versions.

Levi has polished up his public domain icon set, creating one that is Sugar-friendly. We are exploring how to finesse the resolution in Sugar, given the fact that the XO browser renders the pages using 134 DPI. We are also researching to see if there are any standard naming conventions for Sugar icons so we can appropriately name and format the icons for the various states (on, off, hover) so developers can get right to work. We invite other Sugar developers to use these icons in their applications to represent categories of public domain books, and we will be improving the collection in the future – including giving developers an outlet for feedback so we can improve the set. This will also be explained in our documentation. Stay tuned!

Hello! After a brief respite to organize a phenomenal art show and enjoy the changing seasons, we are back in action for the latest work from the Rural Design Collective! We learned from our demos that we gave at our Launch Party and have been ironing out a few bugs based on feedback.

After much deliberation, we have decided to package our previous summer work into a new tool called the “Collection Interface Generator” (genCollectionInterface), a python application developed by Scotty Auble. We think it is exciting in that it works on the XO plus it is accessible to any person interested in creating a localized collection of public domain books. For a sneak peek, you can check out the ongoing work we are doing in the UI Lab. The pages were generated using the program which made it easy to create of custom collection based on our UI work. The metadata for the tooltips came from a .csv metadata file that Steven McKenzie created using Internet Archive advanced search, and the covers were downloaded using the Open Library API. It is a work in progress – we will be tweaking the navigation and other UI details – but we think it is really starting to come together. Our release in October will be accompanied by documentation to explain the Collection Interface Generator, as well as additional information behind our overall concept and method which has developed over time during the 2009 Summer Mentoring Program.

Levi’s work on the icon collection is outstanding – he has developed a versatile set of pictographs that work in a broad range of visual settings. This is the hallmark of a strong icon set, and a great basis of images to release into the public domain. This will be documented along with our code.

The primary usability issue that we are encountering is how to load the DjVu books into the XO Journal as fluidly as possible. There is an interstitial step when the DjVu file is loaded onto the XO and transferred to the Journal that needs to be populated with metadata in order not to disrupt the user experience (you can see this screen here from the GIAB activity). One solution we are exploring is using the embeddable bookreader from the Internet Archive. This version of the bookreader works well on the XO and enables us to emphasize collections which is central to our theme – the only drawback is that it uses JPEG2 files which was not the format we agreed upon for the SoaS solution. We can provide links to the books at the Archive as an alternative format, however, for users with an Internet connection. We will be solving that problem in the weeks ahead – Stay tuned!

Hello! Busy times at the RDC. Our Launch Party deadline is swiftly approaching, so we are working to have the best demo possible for the event. It will take place over Labor Day Weekend, September 4-7, and will coincide with an art show at Point B Studio entitled “Find Way.” This art show is the first in a three-part series, “Art in the Information Age”, and will feature artists who have elevated information visualization to an art form in their chosen medium. It is an exciting series that will build over the course of the next year, so please add us to your bookmarks!

In the Lab, we are coding a few new bits and pieces of the user interface. We decided to eliminate the top navigation bar on the collection navigation to get more content on the screen (and we will most likely eliminate it entirely so it feels more like a Sugar application). This led to the clever solution of making a touchpad widget for the icons that Levi has been working so diligently on. This builds on the constructs and motifs already established in the Sugar environment (pulldown menus, intuitive icons, icon docks), while introducing new possibilities. We think it works! There is a bit of a challenge to ensure it is not obscured by the icon dock frame that is native to Sugar, but we have taken that into account and are designing accordingly.

Scotty and Steven will use this as a template to programmatically generate the pages for the collection that will be distributed on the sticks. There are still a few details to hash out before we get to that point, but when Levi and I get there, Scotty and Steven will be ready to take it the rest of the way (Teamwork!). For our demo next week, we will most likely go with a simple HTML list just to illustrate our concept.

As I mentioned before, we plan to extend our work into October, bearing in mind that each of us has other work to do and the changing of the seasons brings on a new tempo. We are all pretty detail-oriented (and plus we just like working together), so we agree that there is more work to do before we are ready for production. This has been an amazing mentoring season, and we have grown and gained knowledge from each other by having this opportunity to create beautiful and meaningful things.

We officially declare the 2009 Rural Design Collective Summer Mentoring Season a resounding success! w00t!

Greetings! It is Saturday, and I finally have time to write the blog post for Wednesday (so much for Internet Time . It is becoming somewhat of an RDC tradition to tweak the details and let the ideas percolate a bit before posting to the web, which suits me fine. The best work takes time to develop.

Levi is making great progress with the icons. He has about a third of them completed, and I asked permission to post a few of them today to show the process. To give the icons uniformity, he is starting with a basic visual element – the circle – and building out from there. We are also using the Sugar icon set as a basic palette for look and feel (and eventually, color). As you can see, the set is beginning to work together on its own, and it looks spectacular on the XO.

Steven has gathered the metadata for the UI and made it available in a .CSV format. After brainstorming a bit, we decided to explore building out the web UI programmatically before we solve the puzzle of how to extract the metadata from the .CSV file into the Journal from the stick. We want to ensure that this collection will be accessible in other applications, such as GIAB (now in its 3rd revision) which solves the metadata issue, but does not work with local collections. We are always thinking about how to keep the architecture and data open so other people can use it and we can continue to improve it in the future.

We also conducted a few usability tests on the XO, and made some adjustments to our layout. The most notable change is that we decided to use a liquid layout as opposed to a fixed layout. Simply put, liquid layouts allow the user to have control over a very important personal aspect of their view: the amount of information that they see on-screen. Using our own layout as a basic example, if a user prefers to see more than five books in a row, all they have to do is resize the browser window (go ahead, try it! – you can see a similar design practice in the search result view of Open Library). This is important on both the web and the XO. On the XO, using a liquid layout means that the display refreshes automatically when a user physically flips the monitor from a horizontal to a vertical orientation. We like smart, elegant UI at the Rural Design Collective.

We have also tweaked our collection considerably in terms of categories, which is reflected here. We are still contemplating what the best approach is in regards to collection size and content in general – but that is a design solution for another day. In the meantime, enjoy your weekend!

This week, we started defining the toolkit for our user interface. Scotty and Steven are working on the technical details of gathering the necessary metadata. We ran through a few quick flow tests on the XO, and there are some intermediary steps to the process of transferring the book from the USB stick to the Journal that need to be considered to guarantee a seamless user experience. We want to make that transition as fluid as possible, and the metadata is a critical component in that process.

We also began building our graphical interface! Levi is developing an icon system to work with our categories (which we are still in the process of finalizing – much debate about that . It is not an easy task dealing with almost 20 categories of books that do not readily lend themselves to a symbol or pictograph. We developed a standard RDC cover in the meantime to give us a default image to use as the icons and user interface are developed and the collections are improved. We don’t want to rush this step in the process since building a visual language is such an important part of any user interface design and some of the categories or content may change. All is a work in progress and, ultimately, we will release the icon set and the user interface into the public domain (the books are already there .

We took a look at the basic design on the XO, and will have a few adjustments to make before we enter final production. We are considering usability within the current Sugar environment (i.e., using navigational methods already adopted as a best practice such as tooltips and dropdown menus) with the goal to make it accessible and friendly to children. Scotty and Steven are developing a plan to auto-generate the pages for the collection, and we are evaluating a couple of Ajax libraries to build out our final user interface. We are leaning towards script.aculo.us, simply because it plays nice with other JavaScript libraries on our web site.

Things should really start coming together over the next couple of weeks – we have a rollout plan, a deadline … Labor Day Weekend – The RDC Launch Party! … and will need to get busy soon writing our documentation and creating some necessary items to make it very simple to use our sticks with the XOs. Go RDC!

The big news this week – we are getting set up for our Second Annual Launch Party (which is essentially a fun way for us to demo all of the cool work we have been doing over the summer)! We will be demonstrating our work with digital books, plus creating a few analog specimens in the process. The event will take place at our headquarters on 246 Sixth Street in Port Orford, OR, over Labor Day Weekend. If you are in the area, please drop by. It will be fun!

The primary agenda item for this #rdc2009 Hacker Wednesday was syncing up on “The Sugar Solution.” As we reported last week, we were thinking that modifying the GIAB activity might be the best route to go – but as we delved deeper into the problem, we discovered that offering a straight-forward HTML/CSS solution in the XO default browser from the SoaS stick itself solved all manner of technical problems. For one thing, it does not overload the Journal with the entire index of the bundle. It also enables us to repurpose the design solutions that we are already addressing in our web user interface. Recycling is good, even on the web! We still think that the idea of building this into Sugar is a “Very Good Idea (TM)” and should be pursued … and we plan to look at it in the future.

We are also taking a look at our overall collection. We want to maximize the distribution of material throughout categories that may be of interest to kids. We currently have categories that have 800+ items that may (or may not) hold a child’s interest. We would prefer to have more categories available in this sample collection. We are not librarians (as we mentioned going into this), so we are going to invite some of our area experts to participate in possibly helping us polish the basic material. We also have had a very generous offer of over 600+ new digital books for our target collection that are not available in the IACL. We are working out the details, so more news on that as it develops. We will need to fold those books into our existing categories, and perhaps even add a few more to our existing collection. Everything will be available via the web, either through us or through the original source, but the stick has limitations. Our current limitations are 8G.

Ideally, we want to automate the process of creating customized bundles – but that is another challenge to be met on another day!

We had an incredibly productive week at RDC headquarters this week, working remotely and on-site. James Simmons, author of the View Slides 8 and Get Internet Archive Books 2 (GIAB) Activities for Sugar contributed his considerable knowledge and expertise in this area. Via email, we brainstormed the best approach for making these books accessible – what we are trying to do is unique, in that we are trying to provide a completely offline solution so that children without an Internet connection can enjoy these books. The GIAB program that Jim has written is the online equivalent of what we are trying to do. Ideally, we would like to author our own Activity, but it just makes sense to build on a good code base and tap into a knowledgeable resource. That is how the Internet and open source works.

We have learned that it is not feasible to create a content bundle with too many items because it simply overloads the memory of the XO when it attempts to load all of the contents of the index into the Journal. As a matter of fact, 5 – 20 MB is the recommended bundle size, which is ridiculous when you are dealing with the DjVu or PDF format (Epub, of course, is another kettle of fish – but we will get to that later). There could only be 1-2 books per bundle which (needless to say) would make browsing the collection quite difficult. So, we are looking into methods to either extract a single book from a bundle or store them on the stick as individual files using GIAB as the interface to navigate the collection. Jim even suggested that what we are creating aren’t technically bundles and should perhaps have a different name altogether – such as “Children’s Library Archive”. Jim created a branch for us on github and we will be taking a close look at his code to see what is possible.

We are also making great progress on the web user interface and that will begin to come together in the next week or so. Levi has been developing mockups for browsing the collections, and creating an icon set reflecting the different categories. We want to make it as easy as possible for a user to view the book online or download and install the book onto their XO. We are also looking at AJAX libraries and the best tool to collect the metadata – Open Library API versus Internet Archive Advanced Search.

We view all of this as a work in progress – and have created plenty of work to challenge us in mentoring programs to come!

This week, the RDC indulged a bit, and spent #rdc2009 Hacker Wednesday tinkering and upgrading our XOs to Sugar 8.2.0. We encountered a bit of difficulty upgrading directly to Sugar 8.2.1, but were successful with an earlier build (767). A couple of the laptops we delivered to the local area were two years old (part of the initial G1G1 campaign) and running the original version of Sugar, so they were definitely due an upgrade.

Two more local laptops were retrieved belonging to local families. Many thanks to Nathan Malamud and Vilma McCutcheon for contributing their laptops to our project. Nathan is our lead beta-tester and videographer for our 2009 summer program. Vilma is an original “Friend of the Rural Design Collective,” and was a Bookmobilista when the Internet Archive BookMobile made its maiden voyage to Oregon in 2007. We have a pretty cool announcement to make relating to that in the next week or so …

And speaking of “Friends of the Rural Design Collective,” we want to welcome Roy Rousseau to the club. Roy has kindly provided us with the funds to purchase our sticks for the Sugar-on-a-Stick part of the project. Thank you, Roy! We will be announcing more friends over the coming weeks.

In other news, Levi is working on the web interface for the IACL-4-OLPC collection (and we are currently brainstorming a better name for our bundle, so consider “IACL-4-OLPC” a code name), while Steven is going the extra mile on the upgrade front, and souping up a couple of the XOs so we can experiment with EPUB. This will require an upgrade to Read 7.0, which was just released this week by Sugar Labs. We can’t wait to give it a whirl!