Sample page from Designing Mobile Interfaces

We're all the way to QC1, which means Quality Check, as I get it. I think there's a QC2 in a couple more weeks. It's tedious work, but also thrilling to see it not in Word, or on the web, but actually in a book format. Enjoy: And don't forget to pre-order before it comes out in November. Now 560 pages, but Amazon shows much less than that. I suspect you will not be able to get it for $30 when it comes out.

What the iPad is not quite doing (yet)

Every designer I work with seems to think that the iPad is ubiquitous. It's not. No one in my neighborhood has one. My doctor does, but they keep it at home, as the living room convenience device. Of course, something like half the people in the department I work in (as well as my previous co-workers, who I still keep in touch with) have an iPad, Galaxy Tab and/or eReader. Traveling through airports and spending time on planes, I see a lot more of them. And I've started seeing trends.
When the iPad was first rumored in it's final guise, there were numerous comparisons to the Star Trek PADD, or Alan Kay's Dynabook for the more learned and differently-nerdy. These comparisons seemed apt at the time, and I still see them. But watching the use of the various tablety devices, Media Tablets and especially the iPad is not a paper notepad replacement. And it's not apparently even about to be.
Earlier last week, I was in an all hands meeting. About 200 people (and seriously at least 50 have tablets of some sort). Those that were even brought, were in bags, or under chairs. They were with the laptops, as something unsuitable to be used in a meeting. And don't think this means that everyone was paying attention. Most people took notes. They just did it by pulling out a paper notebook or notepad, and writing with pen and paper. Over the rest of the week I kept my head up more, and looked for other behaviors. Indeed, tablets are used in spare moments alone, or in small rooms. They are used a bit as ambient devices, are used to consume content or look things up when the main computer is occupied. A few people here use them as their primary email computer when they come to visit our team room. But they are never kept out during a meeting when the laptops go away. I asked a few people why. Frankly, most of these people are /huge/ Apple fanbois. You can't ask them anything about the device and get a useful response. The first good one was from the person on our team with a Galaxy Tab. She was using it in the meeting... and she was just doing email. She said that typing with the virtual keyboard is too slow to take notes. I reluctantly got a few iPad owners to say the same thing. I had been pulled into that meeting with minimal warning, so didn't have my tablet, or even a notepad. So I took notes on my phone. The hardware keyboard was the killer app here; I have failed to use my previous mobile handset, with an on-screen-only keyboard to do this. But in other meetings I have used my clunky tablet PC to great effect. Handwriting recognition is approaching handwriting speeds, and if you don't live-convert, it's even faster. There's no page flipping, etc. and you just write and draw what you want.
Apple might agree with this assessment. Over the weekend, a patent was found for a stylus for iPads and presumably other capacitive devices they come out with. I think the implementation looks dumb, and maybe is just to get the patent fairy on their side; an inductive tablet pickup (from Wacom could be easily fit behind the screen, and add pressure sensitivity to boot. But I digress. Even Apple has, at least in the back of their head, a concern that the iPad can reach a broader customer base, and be a creation tool, not just the oft-argued consumption tool it seems to be, despite arguments to the contrary.
There also seems to be something about the size and glowing-ness of the iPad that discourages use as attention of the outside world goes up. A fun observation I've made is waiting to board the airplane. There are a lot of people for any single flight, and pretty much all of them have computers, and a lot have tablets. What I'm seeing is:

Condition	In use or in-hand
No employees at the gate	Headsets	Laptop	iPad	eReader	Mobile	-
Gate agent arrives	-	Laptop	iPad	eReader	Mobile	-
Gate agent announces boarding soon	-	-	iPad	eReader	Mobile	-
Previous flight is unloading	-	-	-	eReader	Mobile	-
Waiting for your zone	-	-	-	-	Mobile	Boarding pass
Waiting to get your boarding pass scanned	-	-	-	-	-	Boarding pass

No. No one uses paper books or magazines, except on the plane itself. Anyway, there seems to be a general worry that the iPad is too distracting, and too fragile. It gets put away not much after laptops. The relatively fewer Galaxy Tabs and Archos things I see are not much better. They last only another minute and a half. There also /seems/ to be something about the standby nature of eReaders. I never see the idle screens on those; they are pulled out of bags with a page displayed, the people read them, flip pages, continue reading and just shove them away. Not enough data here, but I suspect there's something to be learned with this as well.
So, lest you say I am just anti-Apple (and I do get accused of that when I ask these question), I am not really. I just don't think that any device is perfect, cannot be improved upon, and cannot be competed with. Were I hired to build a media tablet, or software for one, my competition would be Moleskine, and other trendy notebooks. Everything else is converging into mobile devices, one way or another, so I find it hard to believe that paper is not on our near horizon. The iPad, or Playbook or Xoom or anything else that's not just me-too can easily do a lot of this. I eagerly away the near future.

My Tablet

Discussions of the best solution for any particular bit of technology all too often seem to center on what is the absolute best. Not what is conditionally best, best for an individual, or best now. I strongly believe that it depends, a lot. And that there's lots of room to improve on everything. There are a few mobile devices, for example, that I have suggested without qualification. I can still come up with things wrong about them. In one recent case, I've been paid to do so, and came up with about two dozen issues I'd want fixed before launching. Not that it happened, but that's what I wrote up. That's why I am seen as so cynical and griping about everything; there's always room to analyze and improve, or wish for improvement. I also think it validates old ideas. I got a couple comments about why I bought a Palm IIIc, last week (11 year old PDA). The reason is, it goes in this box: I have, for almost ten years now, been collecting everything I can in the mobile and small screen device arena. Sadly, I missed some good ones before I started formally collecting. And there are a lot of good ideas, or pure versions of design concepts that have become muddled over time. This also helps
But today, I want to talk about tablets. There are at least three things that can mean. I don't mean digitizer tablets (a la Wacom) though I use the hell out of those, and regularly have to demo and suggest them. But I do want to blur the lines between the other two, the PC Tablet and the Media Tablet. The Media Tablet is an iPad. And all things like it. I have some issues with the definition and don't think much of them owning the space when "like an iPad" is the defining characteristic. I'd rather see something more broken down by user needs, or as a device that solves those problems regardless of label, and open it up a bit. To me, this would conflate:

• eReaders
• Media Tablets
• PC Tablets

I'd love to include tablets with other OSs, and have even played with the ModBook but these are very, very small percentages, so I think I'll ignore them.
So, let's take my solution to this. It's not just a Tablet PC, but a quite thick and heavy one, an Itronix DuoTouch IX325. Oh, and I should stop and mention that though I do not own an iPad, Kindle, Nook, Galaxy Tab or anything else in this range, I have used a lot of them. eReaders especially, I have borrowed from the office for a weekend. I've played with pre-production hardware for some items. Yes, I've worked on some products involving these, and have done a bit of legitimate research. I really feel I have enough experience short of spending two years and $5000 toting them around to tell what I like and don't like. I went with the PC tablet mostly because I do not want to consume on a digital device nearly as much as I create or otherwise interact. And I certainly don't want to create with whatever nerdy little program, or crippled version of something I am eventually graced with. I like the ability to use the same old software, in much the same old way. Sure, it has other good features for my lifestyle, like that it's waterproof and relatively indestructible. And has a high quality GPS built in. I do things on the side like make maps, and that's useful. But carrying it around and using it as a sort of laptop/eReader/iPad replacement has led me to find some things that it does which I find to be really, really good. First, it's not perfect by a damned sight. The bad:

• It's thick. Yes, like five times thicker than an iPad. Or is it? It doesn't need a case. Really, I carry it around loose, so even with the feet and hand strap it's only about twice as thick as an iPad it the case. And /everyone/carries their iPad in a case.
• It's heavy. Again, about twice as heavy.
• It should be expensive. I got mine off eBay and finagled to get it to work. But retail is around $4000. Sure, it's rugged, but that matters. Not sure what price point you could reach for a rugged device, but it has to be cheaper than this.
• Battery is so so. They didn't go as far as they could with this. It's just a laptop really, so some mobile-phone designer input would have helped with power management. I can squeeze a bit over 4 hours out if I carefully turn down backlight all the time, but it's just at 2 hours without any care. This is not quite enough to be convenient.
• Windows is not a mobile OS. Even with the precision of the pen, sometimes it's a bit hard to hit a tiny, desktop-like target. This is a constant reminder of how mobile is not just "cellphone" and how you need to change interfaces for mobile users.
• It's still not a mobile OS. The input panel, and a few other bits and pieces are nice. But it has no quick and easy notification system. The lock screen is in no way an idle screen, so I can't tell battery or time, much less see anything else. It's everything that's bad about the non-contextuality of desktop computers.

But I am still carrying it around, happily, so why?

• It has buttons. Kind of a lot of them. Modifiers cuts them down, so there's no dedicated volume or brightness, though I can get to them without a software panel. But what do I use most? Enter, then the scroll keys. I find myself using them very much like I do a desktop, which isn't bad. Type, select, etc. then whack the enter key to commit. No need for a simple, often-used control to require fussy precision to hit.
• Retro-reflective. The screen works in sunlight. Not with brightness, but with a reflective backplane. The two input screens obscure it some, but pick up a very old phone and check it out. They could work in full sun with NO backlight. We need to get back to that, in all devices.
• Touch AND pen. This one has a button combination to switch, but I like the digitizers that are clever enough to turn on touch when the pen is not present. Anyway, gives a great flexibility. Just poke with your finger for lots of typical uses, get the pen out for precision. And the pen is a pressure pen. Much better for handwriting, and it works with graphics programs.
• Handwriting wins. The input panel is damned neat. Manual switch from writing, to letter entry, to a virtual keyboard. I use, about 99% of the time, the straight up handwriting recognition. In slow, clunky windows, this is so good I cannot believe it. I have written a fair bit of the book on it. It's fast, it can be done standing and walking, and it's not much more error prone than typing. I did some un-scientific studies, and really it's about as bad as when I just type. The difference is just in how easy it is to correct errors. A bit clunkier on the tablet, but that's a pure interaction design solution; I can think of a few ways to improve it with very little technical effort.
• Its walkable. In several ways. It would be better if it was lighter, but the overall layout, the bezel shape, and this neat handle/strap thing on the back mean you can carry it with one hand and write with the other. And I mean, reliably, with no worry about dropping it. I went for a 2 mile run with it once, just holding by this handle. Sure, anyone could make an add-on strap like this. They should.
• Rugged. Most of all, I cannot tell you how freeing this is, compared to the relative fragility of most of our electronics. My tablet has a handle, and nothing else. I just pick it up and carry it around. If it bumps into something, so what? I have been walking through the airport with my luggage, and one finger on the handle for the tablet while the device dangles away. Not everything needs to have a hard drive heater, or meet a milspec for water proofness, but /some/ ruggedness would be very nice for these devices we carry around all the time.

Some of these, like the carry straps and handles, could be done by third parties. Some are software; why not a handwriting panel for an Android tablet? Some are harder (rugged devices). But nothing is insurmountable. One of the biggest surprises was how much a second computer-sized device has been nice. I had previously used it as a living room slouching machine, for some specialized woodsy stuff, etc. But now that I travel, it's my other screen. I use at least two computers, a TV and a phone at home. This fills some of those, surprisingly well. Yes, a Media Tablet could do much of this, and the wife gets by with an iPod Touch (and a Clearspot, in a cradle I sewed) for watching Netflix at the gym. But generally, another screen does have a place. Huh. I don't really want everyone to start carrying around Windows Tablet PCs. It's got a downside for sure. But there's a lot more to the world than beating the top-dog in what is perceived to be the market space. What's slowly killing the old-school iPod? Mobiles (and a lot of Apple's other products, good for them). I tend to believe that an n-killer is always the wrong approach, and getting back to principles is the right one. The iPad killer will, or at least could be, be something fairly different from the current flat-glass tablet in some important way. What else could a tablet could be? Almost anything.

That comfort is important

“ ... The iPad bursts into life, its backlight on, the blinking “slide to unlock” label hinting at the direction of the motion it wants you to make. That rich, vibrant screen craves attention... It’s glowing rectangles all the way down: those backlit screens that suck your attention...
Perhaps the Kindle’s comfort is down to its single-use nature. After all, it knows it already has your attention – when you come to it, you pick it up with the act of reading already in mind.
That comfort is important to the Kindle’s intended purpose, though. This is a device that always seems content with itself. Just sitting there, not caring if you pick it up or not. Like a book. ”

Tom Armitage of Berg, on the difference between the iPad and the Kindle and their Asleep & Awake performance. This is Ubicomp to me.

The Worst Idea I've Heard of This Year

I've seen some dumb apps, but replacing rarely-used, possibly-emergency paper has got to take the cake:

"It just might be the world's first paperless car: Hyundai Motor America will include an iPad - loaded with a digital version of the thick owner's manual - with the luxury sedan it plans to launch this fall..."

Read the rest of the rather short story. The story continues to say this is "aimed to tap into the hype" over iPads, but wouldn't an actually useful solution be a good idea? Now, I like PDFs, for example. I have several hundred manuals (my hobbies are technical) on my computer. But when I need to make sure I know how to use one in the dark and snow at 1am, I bring a paper copy. Many cars, and I am sure this one, have digital displays built in. Many have mobile links. Providing the manual on this screen (when stopped, or only visible to the passenger) is totally reasonable. I can think of more interesting things than scheduling service appointments, but the concept of connecting to the home office, or otherwise tying to the outside world is solid. This makes me insane, though. It looks precarious as hell, and tell me why on-screen help isn't a better solution? Or, maybe just fixing the interface so you don't need so much help. I wonder how many fatalities this will cause. (Yeah, I noticed they are such boneheads they couldn't even load up a screenshot of the app for the promo shots, either. Just pretend). I'd be fine with going so far as to just dock the hype machine to the car and using COTS hardware like an iPad as the in-car screen. But three years from now, when the car breaks down, and you are trying to figure out the fuse panel in the middle of the night, what are the chances your iPad is charged? Is even in the car? After an accident (when, yes, tow truck operators sometimes need information on how to unlock the transmission) what are the chances that the screen is not smashed? Etc. An owners manual is, apparently, perceived as an extension of the purchase process, and something every person will sit and happily read when they get home. In fact, this is a massive failure of understanding users, use cases and context. In the US, owners manuals are help lines. Referred to like you call customer care when your bill is confusing. And that doesn't exactly scream "free iPad for everyone" to me.