iPAD EARLY THOUGHTS

We got our hands on some iPads and will be doing user testing of a bunch of sites and apps next week. Hopefully we can present some usability findings in two weeks, at the Chicago Usability Week seminars on Content Usability and Mobile Apps:
> http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/content_2.html
> http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/mobile_apps.html

For now, based on our testing of *iPhone* apps, I think it will be a mistake to use the bigger screen to cram in all the features that will fit. Touch screen interactions are more awkward than using a “full” computer with optimized I/O devices: you can point much more precisely with a mouse.

As a rough, *preliminary* guideline, use the screen space as follows: The iPad has 5 times as many pixels as the iPhone, so you can have twice as feature-rich sites/apps as you would on the phone, making each feature 2.5 times bigger (thus easier to operate using fat fingers).

Pundits have criticized the lack of multitasking. While it’s certainly useful to run several apps, it’s also distracting. Monotasking may be as much of a feature as a bug. It will emphasize a more immersive user experience, with more focused attention to a smaller number of things than when browsing the desktop Web. Bye, bye surfing.

Emphasizing immersion over distractions supports charging for content, because deeper info has higher value-add than the superficial in-and-out hits that characterize most Web use.

A compromise between single- and multi-tasking: when users exit and then re-enter an app, resume at the point they left, rather than starting from the beginning.

(These comments are made *without* any data from usability studies, so take them with a big grain of salt. I may well change my mind once I observe our upcoming research.)