Usability Shark

On the iPad and Tablet Computers

So, it has a silly name, but other than that, what is going on with Apple's proud new offering? The apple tablet has been a mythic object for years and years, with fanboys waiting with barely contained, or not contained, desperation. Apple was supposed to bring us a tablet that would change the world, like the iPhone before it. 

Firstly, I don't doubt for a second that 1. the iPad will be successful or that 2. it will end up being a game changer. The more pertinent question is whether it deserves to be a success and whether that changed world will be a better one. The iPad at first glance is an enlarged iPod touch. The form factor and user interface has all the same glitz, shine and attention to detail that went into the iPhone, so it will likely be a pleasure to use. Still, the iPhone OS is a notoriously closed platform, and the question has to be, is that something we want on a tablet?

I don't actually oppose closed platforms on principle like some folks out there. I'm a huge fan of my iPhone, and part of why it's such a flawlessly executed interface is because the platform is closed. That said, I don't use my iPhone to accomplish work. I use it to check wikipedia for facts on the fly, call my parents, IM with my friends and play games while waiting for a flight. It's a pocket device and so a lack of certain features has never struck me as an issue. I'm trading off flexibility and some functionality for superior design, which is fine by me.

However, once I've got a tablet in my hands I'm starting to expect something a little more. A tablet doesn't have to be a fully functioning high powered laptop, but even Apple themselves are billing this as something you can work on. They've built a custom version of their iWork platform just for the iPad. I'm sure it's a beautiful experience, but anyone who works with word documents and spreadsheets and in general, has a job, demands a little more flexibility from their on the go computer. Primarily, anyone trying to do real work is going to want a device that multitasks, which the iPad does not.

Imagine the frustration of working on your important spreadsheet and not being able to smoothly navigate between it, your data loaded up on a word document, and the web? Instead you'll have to shut down one App in order to view the other. It's clunky, and it simply seems shortsighted for a tablet computer. 

And what about Flash? Yea, maybe, in several years time Flash will be a thing of the past as HTML5 becomes dominate, but right now, Flash is a huge part of the web. I've seen a number of jokes across the web showing mockups of the iPad displaying popular websites with that little blue square plugin-missing icon where normally rich content would be displayed. It seems hard to argue that a device that doesn't support Flash could be the ultimate web browsing experience.

When I first heard about a potential Apple tablet, what I envisioned was a touchscreen optimized version of OS X. That's an operating system that features both fantastic usability and flexibility. Also it has flash and can multitask. A real winner in my book.

It is disappointing to me that Apple didn't deliver a device that would really be a useful netbook with the kind of excellent usability that we've come to expect from the Mac operating system. Instead we have a device that may be a Kindle-killer with it's low price point and new iBooks application, but is far from the powerful tablet computer a lot of tech geeks were hoping for. 

Maybe I'll be proved wrong. Maybe I'll pick up this device and fall in love and accept all these downsides while in the thrall of all it's shiny top notch industrial design. As one of my favorite bloggers and celebrities, Stephen Fry, said:

There are many issues you could have with the iPad. No multitasking, still no Flash. No camera, no GPS. They all fall away the minute you use it. I cannot emphasise enough this point: “Hold your judgment until you’ve spent five minutes with it”. No YouTube film, no promotional video, no keynote address, no list of features can even hint at the extraordinary feeling you get from actually using and interacting with one of these magical objects.
- Stephen Fry

I'll give it a chance one of these days, when I can wander into a bright white Apple store and fuss around with it myself. On that day, I shall surely let you know if my opinion has changed. 

On Mental Models, Multitasking and the iPhone

Amongst my software engineering friends the most frequent complaint I hear about the iPhone is that it does not multitask. That's a true statement, but what interests me about it is you don't hear complaints about that from the vast majority of iPhone users, only really, from engineers. That observation got me thinking a bit about the difference between what a user perceives as multitasking vs what a software engineer considers to be multitasking.

Upfront I will tell you this: none of my meandering thoughts on this have been researched.

What I suspect might be the case though is that a not insignificant portion of iPhone users don't actually know that their amazing little devices aren't multitasking. Why? Well, from their perspective they themselves are multitasking all the time with the device, especially if they have push notifications turned on. Consider the following use case:

A woman sits in the airport, a little bored waiting for a flight, so she pulls out her iPhone. She pops in her earbuds and fires up the iPod functionality before moving over to Safari for some web surfing. She runs across a video, which she clicks on which moves her over to the youtube application. When she's done she hops back over to Safari for more browsing. Along the way, she gets a phone call which is pushed to her attention. She answers it, chats, and goes right back to browsing.

From an engineering perspective, none of this is really multitasking. Each application, with the exception of the iPod which can run in the background, is loaded one at a time. Contrast this with the Palm Pre which can have all these applications running at the same time.

So why aren't more people annoyed that the iPhone works that way? Why aren't more people jumping on the Pre train for that tasty multitasking?

Short answer: that woman in the airport already IS multitasking from a user perspective. Her mental model of the phone and how it functions is completely independent of the engineering of the device. She sees herself as simultaneously listening to music, surfing the web, fielding phone calls, watching videos and monitoring her email. It doesn't get much more multitasky than that.

It's tempting for those of us who understand the guts of something to think that users ought to see things the same way. I've read through threads of conversations on this topic where critics of the iPhone call the users of said device flat out stupid for not seeing this particular limitation. But really, what's the problem? Does the user's mental model have to match up to the physical model for the device to be truly usable?

No. It merely has to closely approximate it in a way that is seamless for the user. The iPhone may not actually multitask, but it offers an illusion of multitasking that is good enough for the majority of its users and there is nothing wrong with that. 

Up until a point anyway. Enter Google Latitude.

Latitude, if you aren't familiar with it, is a web application that can track a user's physical location and publish it out to the user's various followers. A fine stalking application for those who want to be stalked. It's most useful when it can run in the background so the user does not have to take a particular action to trigger the application to do its thing.

When Google introduced the application for the iPhone they launched it as a web application (get it here) and at first that seemed ok. But, but, the iPhone doesn't multitask does it? That means Latitude can't run in the background while we go about our business of wandering off, checking email, playing Snood, and reading restaurant reviews on Yelp.

Google Latitude rather broke the delicate mental model that was keeping some users happy.

It won't surprise me to see more special cases like that start to arise. Eventually, Apple may well have to reinvestigate some of the decisions they've made with the iPhone's engineering. Maybe they'll even switch from faux multitasking to true blue multitasking. They've demonstrated that they listen to complaints about a number of things, so perhaps this too will get fixed if it truly does require fixing.