It seems the clothing industry is experiencing a boom in demand for fingerless gloves fuelled by the iPad.
Apparently graphic designers using the iPad have realised that wearing fingerless gloves is ideal for drawing on the iPad screen when using a stylus.
To do any accurate drawing work you need a decent sized stylus and be able to rest your wrist to give you some further element of control. But of course if you rest your wrist on the iPad screen you will only be drawing bits of your wrist or side of your hand – in abstract form.
But with the fingerless glove approach the iPad doesnt detect your skin – only the stylus.
This technique works very well on the London Underground apparently.
So if you see flocks of arty types wandering around Shoreditch or Farringdon wearing fingerless gloves in the middle of the day you can be pretty sure they are arty iPad people.
It is not known if David Hockney has bought a pair yet.
Although a lot of nonsense is talked about UX it is almost always those who espouse some new social media strategy who talk the most nonsense.
A colleague showed me this site which automatically generates your social media strategy for you.
Budding account directors please note that the output from this site is of the same quality as most social media strategies in circulation.
I wish I could draw.
I don’t mean the diagrams and schematics I create on a daily basis for clients and design teams.
I mean to be able to draw and sketch with artistic flair, to not just represent the world but to interpret it.
However despite having artistic parents I can’t draw for toffee. Fortunately I am quite handy with a camera.
But I have been doodling and scrawling on my iPad, usually just conceptual stuff. Even with a stylus my doodles are pretty rubbish, but as I think visually it’s a good way to brain dump ideas for later.
So I was more than a little impressed to discover that the great David Hockney is an iPad enthusiast.
I would love to see the work he does within the limits of the iPad. There will be an exhibition of his iPad work in Paris next year apparently.
If the iPad is good enough for David Hockney it’s good enough for the rest of us.
A simple but fundamental error to make in the consumer experience design process is to only consider the experience in isolation.
Consumers come to any website or mobile application or gaming console with baggage, some good, some bad. Every time they interact with a digital media system they revise and enhance their attitude to not just that specific system but all systems they have used in the past and those they will interact with in future.
Irrespective of whether the experience is good or bad they will expect more from the next system they use. Unlike the digital media industry they do not neatly segment what they use into different clearly defined categories.
If they become irritated with an automotive site then impressed by a ecommerce site both those experiences will influence their next visit to iTunes or the way their interactive TV service works.
The digital consumer is constantly comparing apples and oranges because to them they are all just fruit.
A news item in The Guardian mentions this almost obliquely in reporting on the consumer experience problems encountered by those who use the 4,127 NHS websites.
Yes, 4,127.
“Experts say the problem is that user experiences of the web are shaped by buying air tickets, booking seats at the theatre or ordering from their supermarkets.”
So having consumed a (possibly) juicy orange when booking an air ticket online they then bite into a NHS apple and find half a worm. Yeuk.
Apparently the Department of Health (DoH) is to launch an information strategy later this year. That’s them stuffed then.
To save the DoH some money here’s the strategy.
“Every patient should be able to order a repeat prescription online and collect their medication from the chemist of their choice.”
OK, it might need to be a little more comprehensive than that, but as a consumer of the NHS – of which I am also a fierce and loyal supporter – I want to be able to do the routine things easily.
I have to take medication for an old injury twice a day every day and will probably need to do so for the rest of my life. So being able to do the online clicky thing once a month instead of having to wander around with bits of paper to two different places would be handy.
But let’s not rush to blame the NHS with its 4,127 websites as being the only organisation guilty of still serving up dodgy consumer experiences. Many commercial companies still consider the management of their digital experiences as an annoying detail, not a fundamental part of their business strategy.
When a global brand with substantial resources can’t be bothered to treat digital consumers correctly why should we expect better of the NHS?
4,127? I love that number.
I have to admit that I have never been a huge fan of Jakob Nielsen.
Yes he has had a formative role in creating the user experience market, and yes most of what he has to say is very true, but for me it’s all a little too purist sometimes.
And who hasn’t encountered a bright eyed account director who has been to a Nielsen conference somewhere hot (Barcelona usually) and has shaken the hand of Nielsen! By this brief pressing of flesh most if not all of Mr Nielsen’s vast amount of knowledge has been instantly transferred to the account director who believes – quite rightly in my opinion – to be a consumer experience expert.
Yeah, right.
But if you are interested in the consumer experience issues relating to the iPad and all things digital tablet, then you should pop over to the Nielsen site at www.useit.com and download a free copy of his report on the Usability of iPad Apps and Websites.
Very interesting reading. For example:
“The first crop of iPad user apps revived memories of Web designs from 1993, when Mosaic first introduced the image map that made it possible for any part of any picture to become a UI element. As a result, graphic designers went wild: anything could draw could be a UI, whether it made sense or not.
It’s the same with iPad apps: anything you can show and touch be a UI on this device. There are no standards and no expectations.”
Ah, Mosaic! Now there’s a distant but fond memory!
From my so far brief tour of iPad apps I have to wholeheartedly agree with Mr N. It seems that the majority of iPad designers have completely abandoned anything they had learnt about designing web sites (remember those?) and just decided to forget about that whole user experience nonsense.
I am sure we can now look forward to a revival of the revolving logo and perhaps maybe more marquee style news tickers at the top of our apps. What fun.
On one iPad app I had very high hopes for you needed a two fingered swipe to turn a page whereas virtually every other app only needs one finger. Why two fingers? Virtual page too heavy for one?
And more than once I have found myself stabbing (only one finger needed for a good stab I have found) the screen of my iPad at random as I slowly abandoned hope of working out how the app was supposed to work.
I intend to start writing some reviews of the consumer experience of some iPad apps soon, I just need to develop some extra stabbing strength in my index finger before I get down to work.
It’s been widely reported that News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch is a big fan of the iPad.
In fact several news sources quote Mr Murdoch as saying that the iPad is “a perfect platform” for up to date news content. Although I can only find quotes of quotes and can’t be bothered to ring Rupert up to double check.
He is probably right, although my review of reviews of The Times iPad application might indicate that News Corp still has to tweak its delivery on the new tablet device a little.
There again this is the same man who bought MySpace for a couple of bob ($580m) in 2005 only to be a little disappointed with it.
MySpace is a social networking site apparently.
Or eBooks. Whatever.
Now I have to say from the outset that the idea of an electronic book does not appeal to me. Yes I can see the huge benefit of having lots of books in digital format when you are on your hols, but for me the book is a fundamental part of my life, which no digital gadget will ever replace.
Books aren’t just books. They can be markers in your life in exactly the same way as the folded page corner.
And don’t get me started on my love of magazines!
Tablet devices are fun and funky but I don’t think any sane person would become emotionally attached to one.
But their digital publishing opportunities intrigue me and so I thought it was time I dipped my toes into the iBook water. If that’s physically, or even metaphorically, possible.
So off I hopped to the iBook store to see what I could see. This was after hopping around the App Store for quite some time wondering where all the books where… Never have that problem in Foyles.
Choosing a non-fiction title pretty much at random I installed the title and started reading.
Now this particular book had two or three maps just after the contents page. Where they tend to be in a normal book.
And because the book was all about a specific event at a specific location in a large city the maps would come in handy.
When reading a normal book of similar content I find myself flipping back between text and maps in order to make the most sense of the narrative. Slightly annoying.
You can see where this is going can’t you?
In a digital book with a map that is fundamental to the rest of the content I want a button on every page labelled ‘Map’. So whenever I want I can read the text and look at the map at the same time. A nice little modal window would do the job.
Doesn’t have to be a big button. But I do want one.
But from this digital book there wasn’t one. Not even a small one. The rest of the navigation and functionality was good and well designed, the text easy to read.
But every time I wanted to check the map I had to flip to the front. Just like a real book.
And because I couldn’t jam my finger in between the pages it was fractionally slower to return to the text from the map.
Now this is not a huge deal and to many it will not be any issue at all.
But it does raise questions for publishers who wish to convert a real book into a digital equivalent. How much digital value do they add? There is always a cost issue of course but a little more deliberation by the publisher over the digital experience the user will encounter could make the whole ebook experiment much more fruitful.
Many ebooks will not be able to benefit from value added by the addition of photographs, video or interactive graphics. But that will not matter when the original text is still the focus of the experience.
Being as easily persuaded by advertising as the next person I noticed a print ad (remember those?) for the latest release of the iPad app version of The Times in today’s edition of it’s sister title The Sunday Times. And sponsored by IBM no less.
So I thought I would maybe give it a go and report back.
Now one difference I have noticed between buying an iPad app and a iPhone app is that the iPad app reviews are usually worth reading before you buy, this tendency probably linked to the fact that a lot of the ‘higher end’ – and i use that term very loosely – iPad apps tend to cost a tenner or so.
And, unlike buying a book on the iBook store, there is no way of having a preview or sample of the app before you buy. Why not?
The screen grabs did not look inspiring. Was this another publisher who had hit the ‘Export as Adobe PDF’ button then slapped on a thin veneer or user experience with their special digital brushes? Nah. This is The Times mate. Quality, innit?
Thought I would read the user reviews. Which proved interesting.
The first review of The Times app was short, sharp and to the point. In fact I only needed to read the review title – “As reliable as a Sky box with an expired warranty”.
Ouch!
Of course I should point out that in my experience a Sky box is very reliable indeed. Very.
The next review title was slightly more polite: “Not up to scratch for the money”.
Ooh!
Hoping for better I scrolled (fingered? slid? smeared?) down.
“Pants”
“Rubbish”
“Very poorly done app”
By this time I was having a good laugh. Dare I look at the next reviews?
Hey why not!?
“Great news”
At last! A positive sounding title! Let’s see the detail…
“Well it was all working well till the last update and now it crashes my iPad everyday when loading. I very much hope that the head of IT at The Times is looking for a new job…!”
Not such good news then? Maybe just one more review? Yes? Sure? Well, ok then.
“Was good is no longer”, is the title from Spikelops, who continues “It was okay, then it wasn’t, then it got okay again, but now it is just not very good. Crashes iPad, fails to load, navigation keys are variable.”
Spikelops makes the point that as he has forked out £10 for a month’s issues he doesn’t consider himself a beta tester.
£10 a month? So people are expected to pay £120 a year for this? Blimey.
Of course the Head of Dodgy iPad Apps at The Times would argue that this is a bargain against the cost of the printed version.
But then paper never crashes.
Now I am sure the Head of IT at The Times is not really looking for a new job because he is busy beating the people (external digital agency by any chance?) who did develop this app around the head with a rolled up copy of The Times.
Now try doing that with an iPad! (The rolling up thing, not the beating head thing, I think that’s called attempted murder).
So I would just like to say a big thank you to Spikelops, Prendoza, SW@Home and all the other people who did pay a tenner for The Times app then wrote a review so my ten pounds can stay firmly in my pocket.
I’m a Guardian reader anyway.
Here’s another review of The Time iPad application over at Mobile Industry Review. As opposed to a review of the reviews. Which is what this is. I think the Mobile Industry Review is of the previous version. Which the latest version fixes. Or not.
Excellent article in UX Magazine, ‘What’s in a name?’ about the different terms that different people in the UX design process use.
In the past I have had to draw diagrams to explain to a banking development team what a template is. Honestly.
On another project the travel industry backend programmers refused to use the term ‘wireframes’. Wireframes were ‘graylines’ apparently. The senior PM running the project then made the fatal mistake of allowing the programmers to take control of the wireframes (sorry, graylines). Which meant that the wireframes/graylines were a programmers delight but a users nightmare.
If Andrew Marr is converted to the iPad then I think the rest of the world may not be far behind. Me, I still like the feel of print in my hands. And the pleasure of browsing in a real shop for real magazines.