Macadamian Blog

User Interaction and the iPad

Interacting with the iPad is different than interacting with other devices.

Think about other technology for a minute: your computer has a keyboard and a mouse, each of which has many buttons. Your TV has several buttons on the TV itself, in addition to a remote with even more buttons. Your car has a wheel, several pedals, various knobs and buttons on the dashboard, and a variety of handles and switches. I could go on, but my point is that most of today’s gadgets have many single-purpose controls. Each device has a lot of buttons, and for the most part, each of those buttons perform one specific action.

What makes the iPad special is that it relies heavily on the exact opposite: one multi-purpose control. Almost all of the user’s interaction with the device is done through a single multi-touch screen that does all sorts of different things. While there are a variety of gestures the user can perform, it’s always the one screen that is used as the input channel.

Everyone is a designer

There is a new buzzphrase that has emerged. Apparently, we are entering the age of experience. The future will tell if this, like many other things, will pass or stick. However, one thing is certain, people that build products and offer services are becoming more and more aware of the need to provide the user with an experience that matches their expectations.

The deeper trend that this reveals is that there will be more demand for products to be designed instead of just being put together haphazardly. The corollary to this is that more and more people will be put in a position to make design decisions. And many of these people will not be professional designers.

Computers for Communities

At Macadamian, we celebrate causes that foster kids' interest in technology, design, and engineering. Things like the Ottawa High School Technology Program. We believe that a nation's long-term health and wealth is directly related to the number of engineering and design graduates - the innovators of tomorrow - and we're worried about the declining numbers of graduates, so we try to do something about it. Recently, we got a note from one of our favorite causes, Computers For Communities, to let us know that the systems we donated were already put to use in workshops at the local Boys and Girls clubs. If you aren't already aware of Computers for Communities, go check them out. As technology companies, we're all upgrading and buying new systems every few years, and discarding systems that, while not useful to us, are worth gold to the local community. Not only is it better for the environment, but you'll be helping foster a new generation of future engineers and designers.

Avoid Half-baked Project Planning

It can be difficult to explain to your customer why cutting half of the features doesn't cut half of the time and cost. Every software project has fixed costs that often get overlooked in project planning--setting up development environments, ramp-up, building frameworks, and setting up configuration management to name a few.

Read my article on StickyMinds.com for some ideas on how you can position this with your customer.