So I’ve had an iPad for the last two weeks, the wifi 32GB model. Because we need the money for something much more worthy, I’ve decided to sell it, and because they are not generally available here yet in the Netherlands, making a few bucks on it will be easy.
I’ve enjoyed making great skype calls when I was abroad, there are a number of fun games, Harbor Master in particular I’ve found addicting. I’m a bit vain so I’ve enjoyed the looks I get from people when I pull the iPad out, and it’s especially fun to let people play with it. I thought the keyboard would suck, but honestly I was able to use it in short bursts and a fairly high speed without too much to learn. The WiFi reception is better than my 1st generation iPod touch, but not a lot, and not nearly as good as most laptops.
There seems to be a few things that stand out to me about the iPad and why I think it will have a decent amount of success: The User Experience (UX) of getting to the content you want to consume or create is fast, applications are so easy to get and buy, and there are a lot fewer problems of upkeep. There are a few problems though and a lot of that has to do with it’s size and form factor. Overall though it’s a win.
From though to action in seconds
From the moment that you think you may want to do something online to the time you are doing it is just a few seconds depending on how close at hand the iPad is. For those coming from a windows environment this is especially astounding and appreciated. How does it take your windows based laptop to start up from being closed (which means either sleep or hibernation as a state)? The fastest I’ve ever seen is 30 seconds. With most OS X products it’s 5 seconds or less. This is why smartphones are being used more and more for quick sips of internet content and certain content creation tasks that are fast and easy (like twitter), it’s just easier. Letting people do what they want to do quickly and easily is a key to a great user experience and has been a key tenet to usability for 20+ years. Apple has understood that, many others have not.
Yeah there’s an app for that
The app store makes it easy for people who see needs, both large and small, to be able to fill them and make money doing so. Creating the AppStore and demanding that you link your device to your itunes account in order to use the device (which I personally found very annoying) makes a tremendous amount of business sense. The experience of the user is seamless and easy. The experience of the developer is not so much so, but the rewards can be great so people are willing to do it, and once you’ve jumped through Apple’s hoops and given a third of the money to them you have the chance of having your app catch on like wildfire in your chosen market.
I hope my mom gets this
And my dad, and several of my friends who often look to me as tech support. There are fewer ways in which to do any kind of software damage to an iPad. Losing files is an impossibility, messing up the OS is really hard to do for most people, and malware and its ilk don’t yet exist and even when they do pop up eventually 95% of it will all be theoretical vulnerabilities. If all the worlds computing devices were like the iPad (not that I’m saying they should be) then I think we’d see a lot fewer tech support calls and a lot less frustration. For those concerned about user experience making the life of those who use your product easier because they have fewer problems with it is a big thing. The balance between the power user who has a certain list of demands and those who just want something to work has been played out many times and in many products. There have been countless technology oriented pundits who have predicted the failure of this device because of this. These are a certain brand of techies, geeks, and engineer. This device, by and large, is not for them. They will be happier with their android phone, the rumored android based tablets, and their netbooks.
But how do you hold it
I sat playing a game or two or checking my email for 20-45 minutes, constantly shifting the way I held the device or trying to balance it properly on my lap, on a pillow on my lap, on the table so it’s tilted in the right angle, or holding it in one hand and having it get tired and switching. If I had a cool keyboard this would solve some of the problems, but what about when I want to play a game for a while, and not just 3 minutes? What about when this is my main computing device for several days and I need to be productive (which generally means reading, writing, and email for me)? Reading is fine, it’s comfortable, but doing anything more than swiping pages or scrolling and after a short while you’ll get tired or uncomfortable. My wrists started hurting in strange places.
Thoughts for the UX designer
If you’ve identified, as Apple has, the three top tasks they think people will do (you can’t do user studies on a device that doesn’t exist) then you need to make that experience as pleasurable as possible. Apple thinks photos, email, and web browsing are the three big things. Making it fast to get to those things is key.
Email: I admittedly have not used the mail client because the custom iPad gmail interface made me not ever want to attempt that. Why? Because I need my archive button. Sure moving things into folders isn’t the best thing ever, but it’s still decent. In the past we would have talked about number of clicks to a page, now I’m talking time from pushing the power button to being in my email.
Photos: It’s really easy to imagine using this device in the house or in the office as a lightweight computing device that is kept on display as a photo frame, then you just grab it and do something. The button that turns the iPad into a handsome digital photo frame is prominent. Syncing to iPhoto is painless and with a fairly large storage, putting many if not all of your photos is very possible. Sorting through them and looking at them is fun and interesting. It connects people and puts your photos in a place where they are MUCH more accessible than your computer.
Browsing: Mobile Safari is no Firefox (which is not a compliment) and because it identifies itself as a mobile device and there is no way to turn that off, some sites may not show up as you would like them to. This is the techie in me speaking. I don’t think my mom would ever care that she couldn’t change options in google checkout and update her credit card for payment there. Windows phones have the option of turning this on and off, I would suggest the same here. Getting rid of tabs and having a palette of open windows seems like a good idea, but there are problems with this for the way I use the device. First is the button one uses to open other windows or a new one. It’s totally baffling. I struggled with it for a minute, pushing every button to see get it. Even after I knew which one it was I constantly had to remember it as the icon is SO generic and doesn’t indicate what it is. It’s also placed in an awkward position, and as far as I’m able to tell you can’t move it. There is also no visual indication of how many other windows are open. All of these relatively easy to fix problems are not the case on my iPod touch. I have to say that when I compare the experience to a “real” computer I find it lacking, when I compare it to my iPod, I don’t find it much better besides having more space on the screen. To me this is not “the best web browsing experience.” Add to this the fact that content creation is significantly harder in many cases and this becomes a major point of failure for the iPad.
Thoughts for User Researchers
Of course Apple doesn’t really do a whole lot of user research, or if they do it’s not publicized, but what if you were approached by a company launching a product that is really “blue ocean” creating a new market, and they wanted to know what they should do? It depends on which stage of the product development phase they were in, but let’s assume they have a working prototype. Do what Apple did: find what you think the top three things are and make those three things amazing. Post-launch pay A LOT of attention to the way people use the device. Set up expectations with both product managers and engineers that there will need to be a number of small incremental and very fast updates to the product once you see the device in action. User observation and studies will reveal a number of issues quickly. Find ways to funnel all of the feedback on the product back to you and those involved so it can be acted upon. Your role will be 30% curator/collector of that information and 70% interpreter and evangelist of that information.