How to design the ipad software with higher usability

Synopsis: The IPad software interface design lacks the unification, each kind of function is not easy to be discovered by the user, the user unintentional gesture also easily causes the mistake operation. In addition, the entire interface metaphor "Yi" too close to print, human-computer interaction is also very strange way, which will create further usability problems.

"Looks like a large iphone,". This is the first reaction we have heard when we asked the user to test the IPad. (What about the second reaction?) "Wow, it's so heavy. 」）

But from an interactive design perspective, the IPad's interface should not be just an enlarged version of the IPhone interface.

Indeed, our research suggests that the tabs at the bottom of the iPad are far less effective than the iPhone. On the IPhone's small screen, users can easily notice the tab bar at the bottom, even if they focus on the content in the center of the screen. But the IPad's big screen means that the user's view will stay away from the tab bar, and thus ignore (forget) the few buttons.

Another important difference between the ipad and the iPhone is that the average web site has a pretty good effect on the ipad. In our previous IPhone usability study , users thought that the experience of using native software was far better than accessing the Web directly. It's very painful to visit most websites on such a small screen. ( sites optimized for mobile devices are better, but even these pages are less user-friendly than native software.) ）

On the IPad's big screen, the ease of use of regular web pages is acceptable. Of course, the question of "finger hypertrophy" still exists--which is a problem for all touch screens--that users with thicker fingers cannot pinpoint smaller targets on the screen. The IPad has a "read/dot-by-size asymmetry" problem: text that is large enough to allow users to see clearly is not necessarily the right place for everyone. Therefore, for websites that want to attract iPad users, we strongly recommend using a larger dot area.

In addition, the IPAD software environment visual elements are simpler, the rules are relatively complete, most of the experience of the Web page is much more complex. When a user clicks a link in a native IPad software to jump to the browser, it may not fit.

For the past more than 10 years, whenever we ask people the first impressions of a Web page designed for desktop browsers, their most common words are "dazzling". The user's first impression of many IPad software is "pretty". This more enjoyable user experience is certainly good, especially for a device that is more inclined to a casual computer than a commercial computer. However, if the software is only beautiful, but not through the function and content to give users the actual benefits, it can not be said to be qualified.

Initial research

Our initial research into the usability of the ipad software was conducted a few weeks after Apple launched the ipad. We tested seven users, each with at least three months of experience with the IPhone, but only one of them used the iPad beforehand.

(This person only took a week--in the past, when we used usability testing, participants were usually required to have at least one year of experience with the device.) ）

The findings of this report are of course only preliminary. But we decided to release it because the ipad platform is special, and in the next few months we will see quite a lot of ipad software. It would be a pity if we had some understanding of the usability of the IPad software at the moment (no matter how elementary it was), but we didn't share it with the designers of the software.

We tested the following software and Web sites:

-ABC player
- Alice in Wonderland Lite
-AP News
-Art Authority
-BBC News
-Bloomberg
-Craigsphone (Craigslist)
-EBay (native software, and ebay.com website)
-The Elements (physics course software)
-Endless.com
-Epicurious
-ESPN Score Center
-ESPN.com
-Gap
-Gilt
-GQ
-GWR Lite (Guinness World Records)
-IBooks
-IMDb
-Iverse Comics
-Kayak (Kayak.com)
-Marvel Comics
-MLB.com
-Nike.com
-Now Playing
-NPR (American national Radio)
-The New York times Editors ' Choice
- Popular Science
-Time Magazine
- USA today
-Virginamerica.com
-WhiteHouse.gov
-Wolfram Alpha
-Yahoo! Entertainment

Strange interface.

The first IPad software was reminiscent of the 1993-year web design. At that time, Mosaic had just invented the "image hot zone" technique, which could be used to set any area of any picture as an interface element. So the graphic designer is swarming: anything that can be drawn can be used as an interface element, whether it's unreasonable or not.

The same is true of IPad software: Anything that can be displayed or touched can be used as an interface element. There is no standard to speak of, designers do not know what users expect.

To make matters worse, there is no universally accepted specification for how the various screen elements should react after a user click. The more common aesthetic style is the use of flattened images and visual elements to make the software look like it was etched on the iPad screen. There is no light model and there is no camouflage to imply that a visual element is "raised" or "sunk" (and thus can interact with it).

"The New York Times editor recommended" The IPad software is a typical so-called flat-flattened "etched glass" interface design. (Click to see the big picture in 1024x768)

In contrast, desktop software design has always been universally recognized graphical interface design specifications , such as the seemingly convex buttons can be clicked, scrollbars and other interactive elements in the visual and content must be clearly different.

The character of "separation of politics and religion" in traditional graphic interface design--the separation of content and function/instruction--was brought into the world of modern web design. The image-Hot zone of the 1993 has fallen out of favour, and any website that wants to do business on the internet will never be able to use that style anymore.

The "screen etching" style of the IPad software does look good. Without visual interference, there is no button that looks full of technical sense. But this attractiveness is at the expense of ease of use. Specifically, a usability problem that has vanished since the middle of the 1990 has re-emerged: Users don't know where to click.

The main problem with web usability research over the past 15 years is not that users don't know what options are, but that they don't know where to go and don't know which option to choose. The interface of the IPad software lets us go back to the original point.

Non-uniform interactive design

The problem is further exacerbated by the inability of users to reuse this usage in other IPad software after figuring out the interface usage. The interfaces that each software uses to implement similar functions are completely different.

For example, in different software, clicking a picture may result in the following five results:

-No results
-Images are magnified
-Enter a detailed page about this picture (hyperlink)
-The picture is flipped, showing the other pictures of the same place (the metaphor here is that the new picture is in the "Back" of the original picture)
-Popup Navigation Options

USA today uses the last design: If you click on the newspaper's logo, it pops up a navigation menu that contains sections of the newspaper. This is probably one of the most unexpected of the interactive designs we've tested, and none of the users thought that would be the case.

(Click to see the big picture in 1024x768)

Similarly, when a user reads to the bottom of the screen, if you want to continue reading, you may experience the following three different designs:

-Still stay on the same page and scroll down within the text area. The problem here is that you have to scroll within the text area, but the text area doesn't make a difference on the screen, so the user has to guess what text is scrolling.

-Slide the page with your hand to the left (this will sometimes take you to the next article, not the next page of the same article). But there are also problems with this gesture, for example, in the New York Times IPad version, when an area is blocked by ads, it doesn't matter if it slides left.

-Slide the page up with your hands.

If you slide the advertised area of the above image with your hand, there will be no result. (Click to see the big picture in 1024x768)

The IPad's interface element currently has three major problems that cause users to be confused:

-Difficult to find: under the visual aesthetics of "etched glass", the interface elements are hidden, and users do not know where to interact.

-Difficult to remember: different IPad software for interactive gesture design, will increase the difficulty of learning. It would be helpful if you could use more standard gestures.

-Easy to touch: the user accidentally presses somewhere, or a gesture inadvertently triggers a function.

By putting these three usability issues together, the user experience on the IPad tends to be "unaware of what's going on" or "Don't know what to do with the same results". To make things worse, users often don't know how to go back to their previous state because the IPad software does not have a unified undo function (similar to the "Back" button in the browser).

The IPad is not print.

Many content-oriented software uses the design of "slide the screen with your fingers to jump to the next article," which is an interface metaphor from print. This metaphor is so ingrained that the title of the article in the "cover page" of the software is not able to click to jump to the article itself. IPad software basically does not have the concept of the home page, but our test results show that users need similar features like the first page. (they often also need to search, which is also absent in many software.) ）

In electronic media, the concept of linear "next" is unreasonable. Readers are more likely to choose from a menu of interrelated items and decide what to look for next.

There is a strategic question about the IPAD's user experience Design: Should the user be empowered or should the author's authority be upheld? Some of the early designs were too restrictive. The long experience of using the World Wide Web has taught users to appreciate freedom and control, and it is hard to be satisfied with the experience of being too linear.

Content publishers want to add value to each publication by designing a separate software environment. In the same way, they want users to stop wandering around in countless pages and spend their time in a handful of software that would add value.

When a typical user uses a desktop browser, it can easily access 100 sites a week, most of which are only one to three pages. (for example, in a test, a total of 15 websites were visited by several business-to-business users , averaging 29 seconds for each page.) Most sites are accessed only once, because they are either inadvertently encountered by the user during the search process, or are links that users bump into from other sites or social media posts. In the absence of real user relationships, content sites are worthless, and 90% of the economic value of the time users spend online is taken up by search engines .

The current design strategy for the IPad software is undoubtedly directed towards creating an immersive experience that increases the stickiness of the user to individual information sources. This contradicts the revelation that the World Wide Web has given us. uneven polymorphism is the source of the power of the World Wide Web , and no web site can expect to capture the full attention of users. The user frequently jumps between the website and the website, impels the designer to follow the interface design the specification, creates the user not to learn (even does not have to look how) to use the site. If the IPad user really only locks on a few common software, then it will be a very different design idea.

"Card" and "Reel"

User interface Pioneer Jeff Laskin (Jef Raskin) used "cards" and "Scrolls" to differentiate between two distinct hypertext models:

The canvas size of the card is fixed. You can arrange information randomly in this two-dimensional space (you can achieve a nice layout), but you can't enlarge the size of the area. To see more information, users must jump to another card. HyperCard is the most famous example of a card model.

The scroll has enough space to hold any amount of information, because the canvas can be stretched freely. The user does not need to jump often, but the layout of the reel is usually less elaborate because the designer cannot control what the user can see at any point in time.

The World Wide Web is definitely a scroll-pie, especially today. scrolling pages are commonplace , and users sometimes view deep information at the bottom of long web pages. Even mobile software often uses a reel interface to render information that the small screen cannot accommodate.

By contrast, the card-pie design dominates the early IPad software design. ScrollBars also appear on the screen, but most software tries to display a fixed page layout on this beautiful screen.

It is not surprising that these two models coexist: The IPAD is the card-driven, and the desktop is dominated by reels (the phone is in between). But the combination of the two models is also possible, and the advantage of the reel interaction style may be that users expect the IPAD software to adopt it more.

How to improve the IPad's user experience

Although this initial user study has its limitations, it provides a way to design more easy-to-use IPad software:

-Add three-dimensional interface elements to better define individual interaction areas, allowing users to be aware of the functionality that this element might provide, thereby reducing the difficulty of discovering interactive elements.

-In order to achieve these interactive improvements, it is necessary to give a modest waiver of etched glass aesthetics. The first batch of IPad software uses flattened visual elements, and adding other visual elements on this basis may make the screen look less beautiful, but designers can make up for it by using a more subtle graphical interface. For example, the graphic interface style that Windows 7 inherits from Apple is too extensive.

-Do not attempt to add additional value through quirky design. A better approach is to maintain the uniformity of the interaction elements and let the user focus on the content itself, rather than worrying about how to find the content.

-Support standardized navigation, in most software to add "back", search, clickable article title, as well as the home page and other options.

Although our full report provides more detailed recommendations, it is clear that we have not yet worked out a complete set of design specifications.

There's an important question about a year later--after we've looked at people using the ipad on weekdays--that's the answer: will users ' activities on the IPad be dominated by a more immersive experience than desktop and mobile web? In other words, will people actually lock down a few software and use it in depth? Or is it a frequent jump between multiple software, each of which is a superficial one?

Perhaps people will choose to do more targeted activities on their desktops, such as conducting research on new subjects, or buying and managing things directly. The IPad is mainly about leisure, such as chasing news (whether it's "real" news or social networking sites) and consuming entertaining content. The answer to this question is not yet known, but it determines the extent to which the IPAD's current bizarre user interface needs to be improved.

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The so-called "metaphor" (metaphor) here refers to the mapping of objects in the real world that the graph faces. For example, the computer's "desktop" concept is the metaphor of the physical desk surface, used to represent the Recycle Bin is the solid garbage bucket metaphor, iBooks page effect is a solid paper book page effect metaphor, and so on.