Saturday’s WSJ had an article about the trouble Nicholas Negroponte has had gaining adoption (e.g. sales) of his brainchild, the OLPC (one laptop per child) initiative. For those not familiar, the OLPC idea is embodied by a product, the $100 laptop, that is intended to bring computing and enhanced teaching and learning to children in impoverished countries. The laptop was designed by the current darling design firm Fuseproject.

In contrast to Amazon’s Kindle, The OLPC laptop computer is a case study for when design can’t help you sell more products. Where the Kindle is likely to disappoint its maker because Amazon failed to make the design of the unit a priority, the OLPC laptop did make design a priority, but neglected to consider elements critical to customers. The OLPC laptop is well-designed with an attention to detail and well thought out features and usability. It even has its own graphical user interface and operating system based on Linux. The product is quite cute and has garnered an awful lot of media attention. Mr. Negroponte expected to sell over 100 million units right out of the gate in 2008. But he’s not. Not even close. And the reason why is one of the biggest challenges that design has in certain situations. The end user is not the customer.

The OLPC laptop was designed to delight, engage, and enable children to learn in ways their country’s infrastructure doesn’t currently support. But OLPC laptops aren’t purchased by the children. Or their parents. The laptops are purchased by governments. What do you think these large institutional customers care about? Price, yes, and OLPC has had a hard time meeting the $100 price point, due in part to not being able to produce the product in extremely large volumes. But these customers also care about important aspects of the “whole product” like service, teacher training, and future upgrades. Something OLPC cannot sufficiently address as a company with no track record. The customers also want one more important feature, a connection to an industry standard, the standard of developed nations. That standard, of course, is Windows.

The marketing issue that Mr. Negroponte ignored is considering the actual customer for the OLPC laptop and their needs, concerns and desires. Instead of thinking only of the kids, Mr. Negroponte might have realized that these developing countries don’t want to be treated as second-class citizens. The fact that Mr. Negroponte wants to provide something to these countries that is not used in the U.S. or other developed countries creates the impression that they are not being treated as worthy of the same computing “standard”. These developing countries want the same computers for the children in their schools that kids in developed countries have. That means Windows-based laptops.

As I see it, the only way for the OLPC laptop to succeed as designed, is if it is accepted as a standard teaching tool in developed countries, and then marketed to the developing countries as Mr. Negroponte intended. Only then will the developing countries feel as though they are giving their constituents similar experiences to developed nations. Otherwise, OLPC might want to consider adopting Windows.

The media popularity of the OLPC laptop idea also caught the attention of Intel. And Intel decided to create their own low-cost laptop for the same market, but featuring Windows. Intel is giving the customer what they want. The users may suffer slightly, but that is the reality of the marketplace when a product’s customers are not the end users. Mr. Negroponte (and designers, too) needs to study some Geoffrey Moore and Clayton Christensen.

The best designers act as advocates for the end user, working hard to create a simple, elegant, and enjoyable experience for them. That works well when the users and customers are one and the same. However, very often there are intermediary customers that must also be considered. Maybe that’s a little more marketing strategy than designers want to be accountable for, but ignoring the needs of the customer and solely focusing on the needs of the user can be a losing strategy. Designers need to keep that in mind just as much as marketers do.