The IPad User Experience I

James Keller at Mobile Portland: 4.26.10

The Mobile Portland group and this meeting would not have been on my radar if not for recent interest in my workplace in developing a program to prepare folks for a career in the field of application development as well as discussion in how the IPad is going to fit into all of this. This is the second program Portland Mobile has had this year with the IPod as a primary topic. A video and a summary of the February meeting were posted. That meeting w deas filled with speculation on what the IPad was and what its impact would be. The April presentation was more like early returns on election day if the pundits were usability designers.

James Keller works at Small Society, a Portland company that creates mobile application. She (no typo here, James is a woman) presented her assessment of what the IPad and its application have done right so far in regards to the user experience. She began by emphasizing that we are all still learning what the IPad is. She cited Lev Grossman's Time Magazine article of April 1, Do We Need the iPad? as helping to contribute to that discussion of definition. "Apple took a computer, chopped off the keyboard and squashed it flat...let's just say its somewhere between a IPhone and a netbook--towards the netbook end" Keller also mentioned that Steve Jobs has described Apple as a mobile device company. Grossman talks about how tablet computers and digital music players were developed by major companies long before IPad and IPod. "Jobs likes nothing better than frolicking in the graveyard of other companies' dead products."

But because it is Apple building on the IPhone revolution says Grossman with resources like great engineering, display and multitouch display, the time is now where it wasn't for Bill Gates when he touted tablets as being a next wave at Comdex 2000. Grossman sees its portability becoming the first home computer, a peripatetic whose location will move from room to room, becoming almost a member of the household. In Keller's presentation she showed how her cat used as a place for napping and how the cat could also serve as providing just the right angle to serve as a display stand for the device.



Keller's analysis studied how well the device (so far) is successful or is inventing itself among five areas: reading, play, learning, travel, and work. The results were mixed, intriguing, even more so as I write up this dispatch after having opportunity to download apps and explore one for myself. The questions that Keller and lots of folks looking at the impact and influence may have (as Apple has had in past with its three major prior i products of mac, pod, and phone.) Were the Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook rehearsals for the way the Mac will revolutionize ebooks? Will the IPad replace laptops for work and travel?

The She-James says that for her the IPad is not yet a laptop killer. Her company this out a recent business trip by leaving laptops behind (mostly.) Traveling with the IPad underscores its primary role as a network device. You can't stream a movie on a plane. I don't recall her ecstatic about iWork for the IPad, but if Dan Miller's April 1 Business Week article is any indication, there are still iterations to go and promises to keep. Getting files on and off the device, according to Keller is still a real challenge. Still it should be noted that she did give her presentation on an iPad using Keynote

Keller saw a lot more accomplishments and headway in reading. She feels the iBook app has some definite advantages over Kindle for looking and feeling more like a book. One simple feature is that Apple has left the pages blank between chapters if a work is organized that way. She talked about the need to lock the orientation so it doesn't get fussy between landscape and
And speaking of the IPad in bed, she referred to this April 24 Los Angeles Times article about how our sleep habits may be impacted by bringing the device to bed.

She weighed in on the user experience of the first wave of reading apps. She had problem with messy display on NY Times contact and questioned the business decision by the Times well designed Whitman sampler of news, NY Times Review. She liked how USA Today preserved the notion of a fold in their design. She thought reading blogs in Safari was a good experience. I am so far impressed with the way that comics display and can be navigated in the IPad and would like to see what Keller would say about that. She did talk about the way that her reading experience of Winnie the Pooh where words were highlighted as it was read which must be likely seen as a great teaching learning opportunity for a mother with young children

Gaming is another area that Keller was very enthusiastic about, especially where social gaming is concerned. She is very positive about We Rule, as many are. Godfinger and Words With Friends, a multi-player scrabble game also got high marks.

Overall, Keller had praise for the simplicity, contextual control and rich design of the IPad. She doesn't know how the design work with physical metaphors needs to play out and that it is a concern that a support for universal binaries are not utilized yet, and the constant switching of the devices orientation is a kind of madness. She still wonders about its value when it is offline, and has concerns about the obfuscatory file management experience of the device. As a prediction she feels the contextual controls will get better, she believes that the Chrome browser environment could make an impact when it comes to the IPad. But, probably, most notably, it has passed the nightstand test as a device that one bonds with and has a need to have close by.

Darin Richardson, a partner with Refresh Media, took another approach focusing on the Apple Developer guidelines which I will expand into another post because if you are reading this on an IPad, your fingers must be getting a bit cramped from scrolling down.