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For the love of iPad and iA’s Writer App
By admin | October 6, 2010
The iPad is very popular in my house… it was love-at-first-use, for kids and adults alike. I like to describe it as ‘any-way-up’ computing. It’s so portable and in such a simple format that it liberates you from being tied to desk, lap or TV…
The kids like nothing better than to lay on the floor playing their favourite games in the same animated dynamic as I used to play board games on the floor as a kid. It’s great for reading in bed without feeling like you’re ruining a lazy morning in the same way bringing a laptop into bed does. Also, it’s perfect for using those online recipes while cooking without having to print it out or take up valuable food preparation area!
At my recent leaving do down the pub I was rather hesitant about taking the iPad along when the audience was a clutch of ‘new media’ types, mac fans, programmers and tech-savvy business types. However, I had promised a usability challenge as well as beer and I had thought of something that involved the iPad. I needn’t have been worried, it didn’t lay idle and get beer spilt on it. In fact, it was a warmly received distraction, discrete and easy to handle around the pub table.
The usability challenge? Well, I had downloaded the well-received iA Writer app which boasts ‘Focus’ as it’s special sauce / point of difference / key selling point. Not only does it strip down and re-think word processing to it’s bare bones beautiful minimum with a writer’s take, but it has a ‘focus’ mode to help you… focus!
Anyway, the first time I used it I couldn’t for the life of me find the key feature that backed up the ‘focus’ promise… Yes, I was falling foul of Jakob’s assesment that the iPad suffered low feature discoverability. I thought this situation ironic and took the challenge down the pub to share with others in my field…
The result? Well, my peer UX architect was none the wiser (phew, not just me then!) and was rescued by a developer who’d clocked the last icon that had gone untouched. The die-hard mac fan was positively Italian in his flurry of arm movements and gestures to reveal the hidden feature and clearly had become accustomed to a world where a little more discoverability effort paid dividends. And what was the icon that hid the valuable ‘focus’ mode? A lock (opened) which is locked when in focus mode. All agreed it was unintuitive, our understanding of convention had told it was for something else. However, now we know what it means in this context…
Next post: Can you really touch type on the iPad?
Topics: IA/Usability/User Experience |
