Self-centered Design

Well, the rumor mill certainly helped frame our expectations. But remember, Apple designers aren’t concerned with our expectations. They don’t do user testing. They don’t think about the faceless “us” when designing. They design for themselves, the only people whose opinions they can really know. Until we develop telepathy, this approach to design can be pretty powerful. And risky. So here we see the risk in self-centered innovation: you are not going to meet other people’s expectations, and likely not meet them in a big way.

But that’s not what makes Apple tic. I know that Apple is doing the right thing when people describe the experience of using their products not as “it does everything I want it to do”, but rather that when they pick it up and start using it–to do the stuff it was designed to do–”it just works”. If I pick up an iPad and I don’t have that experience, then I’ll call Apple out on that. But I don’t think this is the case from what I’ve seen so far.

The touch screen revolution crystallized this intuitive experience for me. The first time I got my fingers on an iPhone, I didn’t read user manuals, I didn’t watch video tutorials. I just started trying to make it do stuff. I downloaded enough apps from the app store to fill up my home screen. No one told me I could organize my apps on multiple screens. It just made sense for me to flick my fingers in a gesture that meant “slide this thing out of the way”, and I got to the thing underneath (a new, blank screen). Then, I wondered how I could move my apps around. When I pressed and held my finger on an app, it started dancing around, as if saying “Ok, I’m ready to be moved!” I knew exactly what to do next to get my apps onto their new screen. When that kind of symbiosis between user and interface happens–when I try something and it just works–it is so satisfying that I wonder why everyone doesn’t design stuff like this. I had no conscious expectation, it was all unconscious intuition.

I think we should judge the iPad not on our conscious expectations, but on whether or not it is a useful device with a great experience. With that in mind, here are some thoughts on the initial criticisms of this device.

No multi-tasking.

The mobile environment on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad can only run one app at a time. On Mac OS X, I can leave many apps open and doing things in the background while I flick back and forth and complete other tasks while tasks that take a long time complete. But multi-tasking isn’t needed all the time. There are certain things that by their very nature are not useful when running in the background. Those are the tasks that these mobile devices designed by Apple are meant to target.

There’s no need to keep my email app running when I’m not using it. It isn’t going to do anything unless I’m actively interacting with it. The same goes for a web browser. Am I sad that the interwebs can’t be doing fun stuff in the background without me? Not really. Unless I am actively browsing web pages, there’s absolutely no reason to leave the browser running. If I’m watching a video, I certainly don’t want it to continue to run while I go check my email. I’d miss the video, so I always pause it. Yes, I could run it in a tiny window on my laptop to the right of my email window, and flick my eyes back and forth. But with screen sizes in the mobile/handheld market, that kind of experience would be disappointing.

On a regular computer, yes, it seems more efficient to leave all of your apps running so you don’t have to wait for them to start up each time you want to use them. But notice how the makers of these new smart/mobile devices have made each thing start up immediately without delay. They did that to remove the one reason why people leave tasks running that do not require multi-tasking.

If you examine the list of tasks that Apple targeted with the iPad, you’ll see that all of them fail to require a multi-tasking environment.

No Flash support

HTML5 native video support is going to make this moot for viewing videos on the web, and Flash graphical objects (e.g., games) are either A) used in places that they shouldn’t be (navigation), or B) not well-suited to a touch-based interface since they often rely on the mouse “hover” coordinates, which do not exist for a touch screen (it can only react if you have made contact with the screen). Give me the screen that I don’t have to touch to interact with, and we’ll talk.

No phone or camera

If I wanted a phone that big, I would have stuck with my mom’s bagphone. And there’s no way I’d be making all of my calls on speakerphone, or holding an iPad up to my ear. So the obvious choice is a Bluetooth headset and VoIP apps like Skype. However, if Apple’s relationship with AT&T prevents them from letting me use VoIP telephony on the iPad, I will be ticked off.

I’ll admit at first glance the lack of a camera is astounding. But not because I want to take pictures with something that big. I love the idea of me holding this thing in my hand and video conferencing with someone over the internet. However, its size and weight doesn’t seem like it would be a very steady video feed–what with my shaky hands–so perhaps I am not that surprised at the lack of a camera. But lo! the docking station turns this into a steady screen. The iPad seems like it could have been the coolest video conferencing appliance ever made. I mean, I’m sitting there looking at it, it’s looking at me. But I’m thinking Apple couldn’t hit their $499 target with a video camera, not with a first-gen product. I hope to see the addition of a video camera on the next version of the iPad.

Will I buy one?

I don’t know yet. I’m a pretty heavy computer user, so my “sweet spot” is likely going to remain in the laptop world. But the moment that Apple gives me a version of their MacBook where the screen rotates around and folds down backwards (with full touch-screen capability), you’d better believe I’d buy that tablet.

If I were a business person who traveled a lot, or someone who only used the internet for email and browsing, or a professional musician/photographer/videographer who wanted to review/organize their work on location, then I expect the iPad to be the absolute best product for me. Since I’m not one of those, I’m not going to be a first-in-line buyer for this. However, the moment I find myself with enough spare money to finally jump into the eBook community, I would definitely go for an iPad over a Kindle or nook because I feel like I’d be getting so much more than an eBook reader. It would be the best place to spend my dollars. And who knows what kind of new features and experiences app developers are going to discover in this new medium?

All that said, even I have to admit the latest Hitler reacts to…” video is pretty damn hilarious.

Please strip down your iPhone app to just data entry.

Here’s the deal: The iPhone is a handheld device with a camera and Bluetooth.

The Microvision ROV Scanner is–get this–a handheld device with a “camera” (laser) and Bluetooth.

I don’t expect the Microvision product to tell me Amazon prices and reviews. Why on earth would I expect my iPhone app to do the same (ok, so I would–it’s a freakin’ internet device and is in my hand when I am in a bookstore and would make Amazon so much more money each time I am reminded that it’s cheaper to buy on Amazon 60% of the time, but that’s another story).

What if the DL iPhone app just allowed me to scan barcodes to grab ISBN’s and then automatically imported those ISBN’s into my DL desktop app via Bluetooth? I don’t need to see the amazon.com info on my iPhone. There would be no distribution of Amazon product information on my mobile device. I would only access that information via the DL desktop app, a process that is already approved. My mobile device would simply be a data collection engine. The only place I want to see the full details of a book including the Amazon info is inside the DL desktop app. Period.

The Amazon information is only helpful if I want to purchase a book (pricing, reviews, etc.). But the main reason I purchased DL is to inventory my home library, not to make decisions on which books to purchase. The fact that Amazon’s policies are impacting the future of DL is completely out of proportion to the value of the Amazon product data to me and my primary usage of DL.

I just expect an iPhone app to make it possible to get my hundreds of books into DL before I am eligible for Medicare. Making obeisance in front of my laptop until it deigns to recognize it just doesn’t work for that initial push of a home library into DL (though it’s a great feature for new books, one or two at a time). And now that I have a barcode scanner already purchased (I mean, now that I have an iPhone), I’d really rather not spend another $300 on another barcode scanner (no offense to Microvision, that’s a great product).

If you gave me an app that allowed me to get ISBN numbers into DL by scanning with my barcode scan… I mean, iPhone, you’d double the usefulness of DL as a whole.

However, you could go even further. FLB made an excellent point:

Yes, the dream of standing in a bookstore and checking out reviews or prices of a book is great (and it blows my mind Amazon doesn’t want to get in on that kind of feed into their revenue stream), but again, not the reason I bought DL.

However, the dream of being in a bookstore and scanning a book to see if I already scanned it into DL (and thus helping me remember which books I’ve already purchased or read) is completely do-able without the assistance of Amazon. Yes, this dream requires there to be some sort of general book information on my iPhone inside the DL app. But there is no reason that information has to be the Amazon product information.

What would be awesome is if DL used two ISBN databases. First, an open-source ISBN database for general non-purchasing-related book information, the kind of information that I need to match a DL record to the book I have in my library (title, author, date of copyright… the stuff you can find on the inside cover of any book). Second, amazon.com for product information (pricing, reviews, etc.). If I’m using the DL desktop app, then make two database queries for each book. If I’m using the DL iPhone app, only query and display information from an open-source ISBN recordset. No harm. No foul. And DL is forever protected against the ridiculous, misguided, and short-sighted terms of use of an Internet giant who forgot where it got its start.

I beseech thee on behalf of your quite devoted customer base. You can easily deliver an app that Amazon couldn’t block in court since they have already approved the use of their data inside the desktop app, and that is where their data would remain.

All my best,

daniel

EDIT: Just found out that the second half of the talk never got recorded. Bummer. But that means that I get to say that the second part of my presentation was the most exciting thing ever seen.

content management systems – wordpress from daniel spillers on Vimeo.

For those who can’t get past 1998, universal design is about building things that everyone can use, no matter their level of capability. It is this simple:

“In terms of curriculum, universal design implies a design of instructional materials and activities that allows learning goals to be attainable by individuals with wide differences in their abilities to see, hear, speak, move, read, write, understand English, attend, organize, engage, and remember. Such a flexible, yet challenging, curriculum gives teachers the ability to provide each student access to the subject area without having to adapt the curriculum repeatedly to meet special needs.” ~ Curriculum Access and Universal Design for Learning

For goodness sake, universal design is trying to reduce the workload and number of special requests. That has to be positive, right?

The same goes for web sites. Good web designers/developers make an effort to create very well formed, semantic and progressively enhanced web sites. Not only does this approach help organize content in a cleaner, more reusable fashion, but paying attention to standards up front means that my web site is usable by everyone. I don’t have to go back and create a segregate site that is specifically accessible to certain people. Instead, I get to manage a single site that provides complete content to all users. With progressive enhancement (rooted in universal design principles), that content can be experienced by users with a broad range of capabilities.

People who don’t get UD feel that if they can’t have their Flash-only website, they are limited in some manner. I’ve found that web sites that follow a progressive enhancement model (build it first so it works for everyone, then add layers of the “whizz-bang” so you get the final product you want) end up more powerful and more robust. You have to work smarter on the front end, but there’s a kind of gestalt that happens when you do it well instead of just doing it with the latest/greatest technology (or the way you’ve always done it).

UD is meant to be an approach that takes the segregation out of accessibility efforts. Instead of accommodating after the fact, we are simply designing better content. If you do it right, you are not creating curriculum for the lowest common denominator. You are creating curriculum that can be consumed by the widest range of students possible. You are creating web sites that reach the widest possible audience. To attempt otherwise is to stick with the idea that all students (and web site visitors) are alike. We know they are not, and we know their learning/interaction styles are not the same (disability or no). Even if disabilities were not at issue here, universal design would still be the best way to create curricula, web sites, buildings, sidewalks, etc., because universal design recognizes that worthwhile learning and interaction cannot be homogeneous.

Pony up your stale curricula and inaccessible web sites, academia, and build something that works for each unique student or site visitor instead of something that works only for people with the same capabilities as you.