I find the awe over kids drawing paper laptops as design inspiration surprising and ironic. (You can find more photos of the kid’s “laptop club” in this interview.)
The article says we should pay attention to how these schoolchildren are designing their pretend laptops:
The kids have seen and used computer keyboards. Their designs are partly their own memory of what computer keys they’ve seen, party keys they would like to see, and partly keys they feel ought to be. It is this aspirational aspect of design that I think is most telling. Why shouldn’t our keyboard have a button that evokes “best friend”?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m a firm believer that kids are way more sensible than adults. And the world needs more articles like it.
But the phenomenon is not new. We’ve all gone through that phase when we build our castles, (flying!) cars, and spaceships with pencil and paper. (I tried really hard to draw my dream car before. The dashboard was especially tricky since I realized the possibilities were endless; it was, after all, my dream car.) Then build ’em with LEGO. Then build ’em with hard-earned cash and/or sheer will.
I hope that by then cars could fly.