Touch Interaction at Casual Scale - iPads and Tablets
We’ve had a good chunk of time to ponder the iPad now, and there are many opinions about it. Some think that it represents the very future of interaction design, building highly visual, highly touchable interfaces for a larger form factor. Others believe it is a waste of resources, not worth development time.
My personal opinion hovers somewhere towards the middle ground. Essentially, the iPad is a stepping stone towards the future of human-computer interaction. It is not the Grail that people see it to be, but neither is it a failure. To get to where we should be, progress must first be made on the iPad, where certain principles of interface design begin to take shape.
The first of which is building touch interaction on a device larger than a mobile platform such as the iPhone. So far the only devices that attempt to accomplish this are tablets that run Windows 7, the HP TouchSmart (also Windows 7) and the iPad.
To drive touch interaction at home and in the workplace, devices like the iPad must be instantly accessible, helpful and have an infinite number of use cases. Devices that hit this target are what I refer to as Casual Scale, meaning they are computers which literally anyone can pick up and interact with, much like they would with a newspaper or a good book.
Tablets or indeed any touch computer powered by Windows 7 are a false start. Windows was not designed to function as a multitouch OS, that function has merely been tacked on with some clever features and some basic support. When interaction changes from the single point of a mouse to the ten points of human hands, old UI conventions can no longer apply. It is for this very reason that Apple did not wedge OS X onto the iPad. iPhone OS has been built from scratch for multitouch, and makes a perfect foundation for the iPad.
The mere fact that the iPad runs on a version unavailable for the iPhone becomes a sensible reasoning for the use of iPhone OS as a foundation for multitouch devices in multiple form factors. Eventually a change of name would be helpful, perhaps iOS as some developers are suggesting.
From there, the apps themselves. iPad applications are part of an entirely different series of interaction conventions, separate from the iPhone. Whereas the iPhone was centered on quick, widget-like experiences, the iPad is a more enriched multimedia experience capable of holding user interest for more extended periods of time. The larger form factor sets expectation for a greater wealth of information and detail, not only within the content but also the interface.
Some apps for the iPhone are simply not complex or dense enough to feel at home on the iPad, case in point being the exclusion of former Dashboard widgets such as Weather, Stocks and Clock. In order to port over in a reasonable fashion, such apps need to develop more visual creativity and more content.
The Stocks app is perhaps the easiest to make this transition, capable of tracking stocks for multiple companies over the span of years. Clock is much simpler and thus much harder to convert. A possible solution may be condensing the tabs and creating the visual of a digital alarm clock on a bedside table.
In this current market we have reached almost total saturation for mutltitouch technology and the idea that “there’s an app for that”. We have no choice but to continue down this path and build increasingly more complex programs for multitouch. On April 4th, you can run a word processor, presentation manager and spreadsheet builder on the iPad. This is merely the beginning for the steady symbiosis between mobile and desktop as they blur their own lines and start to look very similar to the average consumer. At the time of writing, the iPad is capable of replacing 80% of average daily computer use. You can count on future versions or products increasing that number.
The moment has arrived where we have to decide how we wish to continue with our technology. Will we forever remain slaves to file systems and file formats, or will we move on, towards computers that so-called nerds would scarcely recognize? Imagine a computer that handles books and movies rather than .ePub, .pdf and .mp4. What would that look like? Would there be an endless list of what you’ve stored, or a visual catalog? The iPad attempts to answer at least some of these questions. Apple could be wrong, but their track record gives them a darn good chance.
Touch Interaction at Casual Scale - iPads and Tablets
We’ve had a good chunk of time to ponder the iPad now, and there are many opinions about it. Some think that it represents the very future of interaction design, building highly visual, highly touchable interfaces for a larger form factor. Others believe it is a waste of resources, not worth development time.
My personal opinion hovers somewhere towards the middle ground. Essentially, the iPad is a stepping stone towards the future of human-computer interaction. It is not the Grail that people see it to be, but neither is it a failure. To get to where we should be, progress must first be made on the iPad, where certain principles of interface design begin to take shape.
The first of which is building touch interaction on a device larger than a mobile platform such as the iPhone. So far the only devices that attempt to accomplish this are tablets that run Windows 7, the HP TouchSmart (also Windows 7) and the iPad.
To drive touch interaction at home and in the workplace, devices like the iPad must be instantly accessible, helpful and have an infinite number of use cases. Devices that hit this target are what I refer to as Casual Scale, meaning they are computers which literally anyone can pick up and interact with, much like they would with a newspaper or a good book.
Tablets or indeed any touch computer powered by Windows 7 are a false start. Windows was not designed to function as a multitouch OS, that function has merely been tacked on with some clever features and some basic support. When interaction changes from the single point of a mouse to the ten points of human hands, old UI conventions can no longer apply. It is for this very reason that Apple did not wedge OS X onto the iPad. iPhone OS has been built from scratch for multitouch, and makes a perfect foundation for the iPad.
The mere fact that the iPad runs on a version unavailable for the iPhone becomes a sensible reasoning for the use of iPhone OS as a foundation for multitouch devices in multiple form factors. Eventually a change of name would be helpful, perhaps iOS as some developers are suggesting.
From there, the apps themselves. iPad applications are part of an entirely different series of interaction conventions, separate from the iPhone. Whereas the iPhone was centered on quick, widget-like experiences, the iPad is a more enriched multimedia experience capable of holding user interest for more extended periods of time. The larger form factor sets expectation for a greater wealth of information and detail, not only within the content but also the interface.
Some apps for the iPhone are simply not complex or dense enough to feel at home on the iPad, case in point being the exclusion of former Dashboard widgets such as Weather, Stocks and Clock. In order to port over in a reasonable fashion, such apps need to develop more visual creativity and more content.
The Stocks app is perhaps the easiest to make this transition, capable of tracking stocks for multiple companies over the span of years. Clock is much simpler and thus much harder to convert. A possible solution may be condensing the tabs and creating the visual of a digital alarm clock on a bedside table.
In this current market we have reached almost total saturation for mutltitouch technology and the idea that “there’s an app for that”. We have no choice but to continue down this path and build increasingly more complex programs for multitouch. On April 4th, you can run a word processor, presentation manager and spreadsheet builder on the iPad. This is merely the beginning for the steady symbiosis between mobile and desktop as they blur their own lines and start to look very similar to the average consumer. At the time of writing, the iPad is capable of replacing 80% of average daily computer use. You can count on future versions or products increasing that number.
The moment has arrived where we have to decide how we wish to continue with our technology. Will we forever remain slaves to file systems and file formats, or will we move on, towards computers that so-called nerds would scarcely recognize? Imagine a computer that handles books and movies rather than .ePub, .pdf and .mp4. What would that look like? Would there be an endless list of what you’ve stored, or a visual catalog? The iPad attempts to answer at least some of these questions. Apple could be wrong, but their track record gives them a darn good chance.
Posted 2 years ago Notes
