XO Laptop (from the One Laptop per Child project), 2005
Quanta, Taiwan

Designer
Yves Behar

Material
PC/ABS plastic, rubber

Dimensions
W 24.1 cm, H 2.9 cm, D 22.9 cm

Education means a chance for a better life. But for the majority of the children in the developing world, access to education remains difficult.

Nicholas Negroponte created the One Laptop Per Child foundation and worked with many designers, including Yves Behar, to create a low-cost laptop specifically adapted to children and their environment. Behar's Fuseproject provided strategic solutions to the making of the XO (also dubbed the $100 laptop), which led to the unique configuration and innovations that make the XO a true industry game changer.

The design intent was to make the XO immediately recognizable as a child's product, but not like a toy: the XO's look and feel is of a high-quality tool for education. Specific friendly design elements such as the soft edges, rubber keyboard, or turning the burdensome collaborative Wi-Fi antennas into whimsical rabbit ears, adds a childlike feel to the laptop.

Fuseproject also designed the XO icon with it's color permutations that allows for 400 easily recognizable versions of the product, and permeated both product and user interface. The shared vision between Fuseproject and OLPC resulted in close to a million laptops ordered and headed for the hands of children worldwide.