A couple of months ago, I wrote an article about mobile context and its role in designing for mobile. In a few words, I say that the mobile context has its own peculiarities and corresponds to a new layer of the experience.
Since the iPad launch I have been interested in understanding what context it has been designed for. On one side, I can think of a desk where my computer is positioned. On the other, there is iPhone and the roads, transportation, and temporary places. Where is the iPad supposed to be in the continuum between “static” and the “mobile”?
A lot of us use our laptop as a desktop pc, and a laptop is probably the most similar digital device to iPad in terms of context. In fact, it can be placed on the home desk and live there for years. But it can also be dragged around on the sofa while watching a movie or in the kitchen to check the recipe’s next step.
But a laptop can also be carried around and opened to edit the slide show presentation while you are on your way to the venue. And if I have all these contexts pretty filled with these devices (laptops, desktop PCs, smartphones), what the heck is an iPad supposed to fill?
iPad will probably replace laptops in contexts that are more likely to accept new interactions and are more flexible to adopt it.
The real answer however will probably be clear once we’ll start using it. I think that the opportunities iPad opens up are numerous. However, in the first years I think that all the developers out there will be eager to have something on the iPad. The result will be a huge number of “adapted” apps: application designed for the iPhone that are simply zoomed to be used on the iPad. And this could probably cause disappointment for the device.
It looks like most of people don’t want to understand that iPad is not a bigger iPhone. It is bigger, true. But its size classifies it as something that will be neither used nor carried around like the iPhone. As designers, we need to think of it as a new horizon of interfacing information and people.
- It has multitouch capabilities (and this is something that we know pretty well now) but it has also a 9,7’’ display that probably implies a different usage of views and transitions. It will allow, in fact, to have different kind of information in the same view, well ordered and placed. We can build paths and structures that are understandable at a glance, not hidden behind taps.
- Users will be more likely to interact with more than two fingers and this gives room to different ways of multitouching: hands can work together in a bigger real estate.
- Even if it’s younger, iPad looks like the iPhone’s big brother and it relates to it in a server-client manner. I am not thinking only of the virtualization that can be done on it, I refer to the chance of developing applications that let iPhone(s) and iPad work together. I can think of business running that or table board games with interactive controllers.
iPad truly deserves proper consideration and this is the kind of reflection we are pursuing at Mobisle.org, the company I have co-founded and that is focused on designing and developing mobile in its entirety. Let’s look ahead.
