Archive Page 2

iPad, You Pad, We All Pad…

03Jun10

Apple's iPad

Apple’s iPad

I just got back from one of our local Apple Stores and the iPads on dis­play had quite a throng around them.  I didn’t check, but sus­pect that they are prob­a­bly  sold out for today. My visit got me think­ing about how to explain why I think the iPad is both so suc­cess­ful (and this is not just a belief, it’s a fact: Apple has already sold a mil­lion of them, and this past Fri­day they first went on sale in the rest of the world, (includ­ing here in Canada), and why Apple has once again filled a need that peo­ple didn’t know they had in the first place.

First, How to Define It

In describ­ing what the iPad is, it’s easy to get caught up in what it doesn’t have, since that may be what strikes one at first; There’s no key­board, no mouse or track­pad, no mon­i­tor stand, and all of the rest of that stuff that goes along with the expe­ri­ence of using a com­puter or con­nect­ing to the Inter­net.  That also includes a desk or table, chair, mouse pad (or with the advent of opti­cal mice, at least a sur­face for mov­ing the mouse on) or the var­i­ous power, video and net­work cabling, exter­nal hard drive or opti­cal (DVD) drive. There’s also a lot of upkeep and main­te­nance that has been taken away from the iPad;  there’s no anti-virus pack­age that you might be reminded to get shortly after start­ing it up, no place to get soft­ware except the built-in iTunes store. You don’t have to worry about defrag­ment­ing a hard disk (there is none — it’s solid state mem­ory) or even emp­ty­ing a trash can on the screen to free up disk space. While all of this does get one closer to the unique­ness of the iPad, it cir­cles around the issue some­what, which I’ll get into in a bit.

It’s also com­mon to define the iPad as just a large iPod Touch or iPhone, since those are devices we are already famil­iar with. The fact that Apple chose to use a very sim­i­lar oper­at­ing sys­tem and launch­ing screen to the one on those devices only serves to bol­ster the opin­ion that the iPad is merely a larger ver­sion of these other gad­gets, some­thing I’ve heard espe­cially from peo­ple already famil­iar with those exist­ing prod­ucts. I think this is an incor­rect assess­ment, sim­ply because there are activ­i­ties and media that are obvi­ously far more suited to the larger form fac­tor (like watch­ing movies) than the smaller ones. A wall clock is not merely a large wrist­watch. It’s a com­pletely dif­fer­ent, but related time­keep­ing object. But again, I think this is look­ing at the wrong thing.

To para­phrase the philoso­pher Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, don’t look for the word, look for the use. Rather than try and define the iPad by what it is lack­ing or what it appears to be based on, define it by how it’s used. It’s here, I think, that you get to the really inter­est­ing and excit­ing thing about the iPad, which is the user model, or the total­ity of the expe­ri­ence under which it’s used.

Many of the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­no­log­i­cal advances are ones that embrace a new user model. Wi Fi and lap­tops freed peo­ple from being teth­ered to a sin­gle office or desk. The new 3G net­works and hard­ware to con­nect to them on a Net­book allow one to be con­nected to the Inter­net not just in a Café with a local wi fi access point but per­haps sit­ting out­side, by a bab­bling brook.

The iPhone’s size and weight meant that you didn’t have to be sit­ting down to use it. You could be wait­ing in line, walk­ing, or sit­ting  in a seat on the bus or a car. In fact, the iPad is the first com­puter  that is almost intended to be used while slouch­ing. It’s not a desk­top or lap­top;  it’s a lounge­top! The idea that a com­puter is not nec­es­sar­ily for work (the Desk­top and Lap­top com­put­ers are osten­si­bly for that pur­pose) or for com­mu­ni­ca­tion (all of the above plus the smart­phone or PDA  - Per­sonal Dig­i­tal Assis­tant, a term coined by another Apple CEO —  plus phone) leaves the iPad a com­puter for casual use, mainly media-consumption with some email and web surf­ing. One could cer­tainly do work on an iPad, and no doubt, some peo­ple will ded­i­cate them­selves to using it for their work tasks, but the iPad is first and fore­most, the first com­puter designed to be used while a user is sit­ting back com­fort­ably. That’s prob­a­bly the big (if not one of the biggest) deal, in my opinion.

The lack of all of those other items (key­board, mouse, exter­nal drive, cabling) meant that there is less to dis­tract the user from the touch­screen and the con­tent dis­played on it. Peo­ple often describe the expe­ri­ence of using an iPad as qual­i­ta­tively dif­fer­ent; that there is no longer ‘some­thing’ in the way, between them and the Inter­net. While the day has not yet arrived where we ‘jack in’ directly to the Inter­net, the iPad comes a step closer to that con­sen­sual hal­lu­ci­na­tion.

The iPad as Har­bin­ger of a new Age of Human Con­trol Interfaces

It’s even more inter­est­ing to take note of the fact that Steve Jobs con­ceived of the iPad first, and then real­ized that they could use a smaller ver­sion, with some of the scrolling behav­ior, as a way of build­ing a tele­phone and inter­net device/iPod. The pure idea, that of a sim­ple, flat, sheet of glass that dis­plays con­tent and inter­acts with the user was the orig­i­nal idea. You could put that foun­da­tion under any other gad­get. Peo­ple will now expect the iPad/iPhone touch­screen inter­face with it’s com­bi­na­tion of mim­icry of phys­i­cal scrolls and eas­ily changed col­lec­tion of but­tons or con­trols depend­ing on the con­text as the default user inter­face for any num­ber of other tech­nolo­gies. Your car will have a small iPad screen built into the dash (some­one has already installed one, accord­ing to one of the tech blogs). You’ll set your ther­mo­stat or fade your lights with one of these glass inter­faces, and you’ll pro­gram your microwave, dish­washer, or even toaster with one, once the tech­nol­ogy becomes cheap enough to use every­where.
By jet­ti­son­ing the clut­ter and encum­brances of com­put­ing, the iPad pulls the rest of the world into an intel­li­gent and software-driven set of con­trols. Phys­i­cal knobs, along with raised phys­i­cal but­tons, will only be used where absolutely nec­es­sary. As for the rest, we all Pad.

Filed under Computers, Gadgets, Industrial Design and User Interface.  |0 Comments

UXCamp Vancouver Nearly Here

02Dec09

I was going to blog ear­lier this week about the upcom­ing User Expe­ri­ence Camp Van­cou­ver, which Karen Parker and I are orga­niz­ing and hold­ing at the Van­cou­ver Film school this Sat­ur­day, but the event sold out nearly imme­di­ately, and I fear that writ­ing about it here will be frus­trat­ing to so many who can’t get in. The venue is a good one, but it only holds a lit­tle over 100 peo­ple, and we hit that num­ber within a week and half of announc­ing it in a few online areas.

At any rate, my take­aways, even before UXCam­p­Van­cou­ver starts are:

  1. There is clearly a desire here to have a con­fer­ence where local User Expe­ri­ence peo­ple (that includes Infor­ma­tion Archi­tects, User Inter­face Design­ers, Web Devel­op­ers, User Testers and Researchers, Soft­ware Entre­pre­neurs, etc.) can meet and share infor­ma­tion and opinions.
  2. We may need a big­ger venue if we do it again
  3. Being free doesn’t hurt either. After all, a chance to talk about this stuff, plus some cof­fee and treats, comfy chairs and Wi-Fi is a good way to spend a late fall Sat­ur­day in Van­cou­ver, wet and rainy or not.

At any rate, if you do want to get on the Wait­ing list, there is still a chance, although remote, that some­one who has signed up for a slot will bow out, so give it a shot, and hope­fully I’ll get to see you on Saturday.

Filed under Events, General, Lectures and Presentations.  |0 Comments

Eek!

08Nov09

For decades there was a reli­gious war regard­ing what com­puter users should be doing with their hands when they weren’t typ­ing. No, not that reli­gious war (you cheeky mon­key!), the one about the point­ing device, which would allow a user to make ges­tures on the screen, and address parts of a graphic user inter­face. Before I even started using a com­puter, I imag­ined that I’d be using some sort of ‘light pen’ to do Music Nota­tion on the screen, since I’d once seen some­one using that kind of a device on a doc­u­men­tary (and wasn’t it used in the movie The Androm­eda Strain)?  Then, when I was just return­ing to the US from school in Eng­land, a fel­low stu­dent (who was Cana­dian) said I should look into using ‘A Moose’. No, I mis­heard his Toronto accent. He wasn’t talk­ing about the Cana­dian ani­mal, but the Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie of Robert Burns fame A Mouse. The orig­i­nal, first com­puter mouse, invented by Dou­glas Engle­bart in 1963 had this draw­ing in the patent:
Original Mouse Patent Engineering Drawing

The Orig­i­nal Mouse Patent Engi­neer­ing Drawing

Though the draw­ing doesn’t show it, Englebart’s mouse, which was one small part of Engelbart’s a larger project, aimed at ‘aug­ment­ing human intel­lect’ had 1 but­ton. The draw­ing mainly shows how the block uses mul­ti­ple rollers, which sense which way the mouse is being moved in terms of X and Y coordinates.

When Apple shipped the first Lisa com­puter (and of course, the first Mac) , the com­mand­ment that ‘Thy mouse shall have but  1 but­ton’ was spo­ken to the masses. On the other side, the X-Window Sys­tem, and the IBM PC mouse had mul­ti­ple but­tons (2 or 3). The two to three camps dug in for years, each claim­ing the ergonomic, moral or prac­ti­cal high ground over the oth­ers. The antipa­thy between the 1 or many but­tons groups con­tin­ues to to this day, even if this divi­sion is no longer the case. Many peo­ple believe that Apple has stayed true to their gospel and only makes or sup­ports a 1 but­ton mouse, but the unforut­nately named ‘Mighty Mouse’, which shipped in 2005, sup­ports mul­ti­ple but­tons vir­tu­ally rather than phys­i­cally (you click on one side or other other to sim­u­late one or the other but­ton), and also has a roller ball and 2 phys­i­cal side but­tons, pro­vid­ing no fewer than 5 but­tons. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of mouse but­tons, some­times 2, some­times 3, some­times 5 or more, depends on the sys­tem and soft­ware one encoun­ters. Some track­ball devices have had 5 but­tons that effec­tively pro­vide even more con­trol mes­sages by allow­ing a dif­fer­ent kind of click from dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of those but­tons. Apple’s lat­est mouse (the even more unfor­tu­nately named ‘Magic Mouse’ — what group is com­ing up with these names?) even goes far­ther, mak­ing the entire mouse sur­face another con­trol sur­face in and of itself, like the track­pad on a lap­top. This, to me, is akin to attach­ing a steer­ing wheel to the top of a gearshift, or some other bizarre com­pos­ite, but I’ll have to with­hold judge­ment until I try one, even though it sounds like the Indus­trial Design equiv­a­lent of a Tur­ducken.

The point is, com­plex ges­tural move­ments, involv­ing more than a sim­ple click (or dou­ble click) on a point­ing device have pretty much been adopted by all com­puter mak­ers, with at least an accepted level of com­plex­ity, although for the most part, a user can work up to that com­plex­ity, by mov­ing from sim­ple ges­tures to more com­plex ones over time, hence the idea of a short cut to a func­tion instead of mak­ing  that func­tion only exe­cutable from a com­plex gesture.

As a friend of my par­ents puts it, ‘Any­thing worth doing is worth over­do­ing’. I shouldn’t be sur­prised by what I thought was cer­tainly a post on The Onion, but no, it was seri­ous, and it was the Open Office Con­sor­tium who was propos­ing this mouse:


The Open Office Mouse. Really. No, really.

Holy Roller, Bat­man! This thing is cer­tainly the other end of the spec­trum from the mice we’ve seen up until this point, at least for the gen­eral pub­lic. (More com­pli­cated mice like this one have shown up on engi­neer­ing sta­tions, imag­ing sys­tems, and count­less other ver­ti­cal appli­ca­tion machinery).

If you look care­fully (click on the photo to see it a bit larger), you’ll see that it has no fewer than 16 but­tons and a roller that are vis­i­ble. The descrip­tion actu­ally boasts that it has “18 pro­gram­ma­ble mouse but­tons with double-click func­tion­al­ity” and “Three dif­fer­ent but­ton modes: Key, Key­press, and Macro”.  They even show a com­par­i­son chart com­par­ing it to other mice on the market.

While I won’t com­ment on the odd­ness of an open soft­ware con­sor­tium design­ing hard­ware (or rather, hav­ing a designer design some for them), I have to admit that this ini­tial para­graph, on the page ‘About the OpenOf­fice­Mouse, caught my attention:

The OpenOf­fice­Mouse was designed with the goal of being the best and most use­ful mouse the dig­i­tal world has seen to date. Ini­tially inspired by the key­boards on the Treo smart­phones, it was designed by a game designer who was annoyed with the pal­try num­ber of but­tons avail­able on high-end gam­ing mice. Because gam­ing mice have his­tor­i­cally been designed pri­mar­ily for FPS¹ games, not MMO² and RTS³ games, they do not pos­sess suf­fi­cient but­tons for the dozens of com­mands, actions and spells that are required in games that make heavy use of icon bars and pull-down menus. After dis­cov­er­ing that the avail­able World of War­craft mice were noth­ing more than reg­u­lar two-button mice dec­o­rated with orcs, dwarves, and Night elves, the idea of the War­Mouse was born. After much exper­i­men­ta­tion, it was deter­mined that 16 but­tons divided into two 8-button halves were the max­i­mum num­ber of but­tons that could be effi­ciently used by feel alone. How­ever, in the process of design and devel­op­ment, it quickly became appar­ent that many non-gaming appli­ca­tions would also ben­e­fit from hav­ing dozens of com­mands acces­si­ble directly from the mouse, espe­cially appli­ca­tions with nested pull-down menus and hotkey com­bi­na­tions. OpenOffice.org was selected as the ideal appli­ca­tion suite around which to design this appli­ca­tion mouse because the usage track­ing fea­ture of OpenOffice.org 3.1 per­mit­ted the assign­ment of appli­ca­tion com­mands to mouse but­tons based on the data gath­ered from more than 600 mil­lion actual mouse and key­stroke com­mands enacted by users. The OpenOf­fice­Mouse team are advo­cates of Free and Open Source Soft­ware, which is why we are mem­bers of the OpenOffice.org com­mu­nity and have cre­ated cus­tom pro­files for other OSS appli­ca­tions such as Mozilla Fire­fox, Mozilla Thun­der­bird, The Bat­tle for Wes­noth, D-Fend Reloaded, and The Gnu Image Manip­u­la­tion Program.

So what we have here is a design for a gam­ing mouse, now re-purposed for gen­eral pur­pose appli­ca­tions (like brows­ing the web, email, and the Open/MS Office suite of word pro­cess­ing, spread­sheets and presentations).

Maybe it’s because I don’t do much gam­ing (and by ‘don’t do much’,  I mean hardly at all),  maybe it’s because I come from the ‘make it for a klutz’ school of UI design because I’m not very coor­di­nated, but I think that this approach to User Inter­face or Indus­trial Design will never have much of a fol­low­ing. It wasn’t lost on me that I had to look up some of those acronyms to pro­vide the foot­notes here. Sure, there will always be some small group of peo­ple who want more and more direct power over their work from their hard­ware, and they often buy the most baroque con­trol devices. For me, how­ever, the whole idea of tak­ing a piece of gam­ing hard­ware and repur­pos­ing it to work on every­day tasks is about as appeal­ing as using a flight sim­u­la­tor to do your bank­ing. Sure, you might get more fine maneu­ver­abil­ity dur­ing a funds trans­fer (if you could mas­ter the con­trols), but it hardly seems worth the effort. Maybe that’s the key here: Hav­ing a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage from  your hard­ware and your skill with it dur­ing a game is far more impor­tant and more likely to have you make that effort than being a whiz at mov­ing from cell to cell in your spread­sheet or even trig­ger­ing one of the 100 or so macros you’ve cre­ated for your word pro­cess­ing tasks.

So to the OpenOf­fice­Mouse folks, I say, good luck, but for­get about sell­ing one of those mice to me. Now, we start see­ing the ‘direct to brain’ con­trollers, where I don’t have involve my arms and fin­gers at all with typ­ing and ges­tur­ing on the screen but just think where I want to the cur­sor to go, I’ll be more inter­ested. That would be the 0 but­ton mouse, which I think I’m going to have to address in some future post.

¹first-person shooter
²mas­sively mul­ti­player online
³real-time strategy

Filed under Computers, Design, Desktop, Gadgets, Industrial Design, Usability and User Interface.  |0 Comments
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