Laptops Arena

At International Design Excellence Awards 2008, the already known Spark laptop concept occupies a special place in the top of the most innovative design concepts. It was created for Strategic News Service’s Project Inkwell including the K-12 learning platform, which provides new learning solutions for students from kindergarten through high school. Project Inkwell develops international standards for teaching and learning at the pre-university level, using the K-12 desktops.

IDEO partnered with Project Inkwell and revealed this innovative laptop prototype called Spark, which could be used as a free laptop for students, just like the XO laptop. It is a portable computer with multimedia support, educational software, wireless data transmission, networking and sharing capabilities.



It can be personalized with all the required components at lowest costs. The housing is made of a soft material and together with the keyboard part, can be replaced at any time. Inside it provides enough space for a Bluetooth wireless mouse and a hot-swappable battery.
The overall design created by Martin Bone, Paul Bradley, Michael Chung and Gregory Germe, is rugged, lightweight, and small, to be easy to use and carry even by children.

Other features of this laptop include an LCD display, fast boot-up times, low power consumption and word processing. It is supposed to be available in the future at a price of around $300.



IDEA describes Spark: “The Spark concept is a laptop-style computing device that will change the way K-12 students learn, collaborate and work. The design contains a special set of physical characteristics that facilitate its use by children and that allow parents and schools systems to support the platform. It was designed to help kids learn in any environment in a manner not possible with other media.”

The International Design Excellence Awards competition has been honoring best designs in products, ecodesign, interaction design, packaging, strategy, research and concepts, since 1980, with entries coming from students and companies worldwide.