We have an office iPad and this weekend was my turn to play with it. Being an interaction designer, I had a lot of expectations about the device and its interface, based on information from the web, from colleagues and from seeing the device a couple of times 'in the wild'. But what I was very curious about, was seeing how people without previous experience or preconceptions would use the device.
Therefore, I placed the iPad in front of my mother and gave her a couple of 'tasks' to complete. I tried to make these tasks as relevant to her as possible and observed her and tried not to interfere. Of course, when needed I helped her out a bit. My mom is 65 yrs old, and uses a computer about once a week. She reads emails, browses the web a little bit and watches pictures on it. She does so most often with my dad hovering over & behind her, influencing her and generally making her more uncomfortable to make her own decisions. I therefore held my dad back when letting mom play with the iPad.
Mom using iPad for the first time
Starting up
She had heard of the device on TV, and read something in the newspaper about it. The first thing that struck me was that she was not surprised that there was no keyboard (although she later remarked "but you can't type on this thing, can you?"). She looked around for the on/off switch, and found the one button on the front of the iPad, so she switched it on. It took her a while to see that you had to 'slide to unlock', and just as she tried, the screen went black. She immediately clicked the home button again, and managed to unlock the iPad.
Browsing pictures
The first task was to browse the pictures of her granddaughter. She looked around the screen and quickly noticed the 'Photos' icon on the bottom. Without any problems, she managed to open the right album and then open a random photo in there. The second surprise for me was that she instinctively swiped to the next photo. This is an interaction she is not used to, but it somehow came naturally (or she'd seen this on TV, she wasn't sure). Even so, going back and forth through the pictures was effortless!
What's on TV?
I then asked her to see what was on TV that night. I'd installed a Dutch TV guide (Veronica), and was wondering whether she could find it and understand it's interface. Finding it took some time. First, going back to the home screen required some experimentation. She was looking for a 'close' button, which is not available. I'm still wondering why it's not there, especially when the iPad will support multitasking in the near future, so closing apps becomes more relevant.
After she used the home button, she discovered that there were more screens with icons/applications. She had to read every one to find the guide, remarking that the names were hard to read. She then opened the TV guide and understood the initial screen. However, scrolling through the different channels did not work. In this TV guide, you have to use TWO fingers to swipe. Although I know that this is a normal way of doing it, fact is that on the home screens and in the photo app, you can swipe with just one finger. I'm not sure if mom would have ever found the two-fingered swipe in that app! She did really like the TV guide, the way it would show trailers for movies and the information for other shows.
Using gestures on the iPad
Google Maps
The last task I had for her was playing around with Google Maps, to see if the 'pinch-to-zoom' interaction made sense. I asked her to zoom out of our current location, she looked around the screen how to do so, but failed. I told her to use two fingers. She then showed me a new way of zooming out: just tapping with two fingers zooms out, an interaction I was previously unaware of. I then showed her to use the pinch, but this felt a little uncomfortable for her.
Observations
In the end, I have to say I was surprised with how easily my mom could find her way around different apps on this new device, with all its new interaction paradigms. There are still a few things she'd need to learn to be able to interact with most apps, but in general the interaction was clear. This cannot be said for some of the menus. The menus that show up at the bottom of the screen, when clicked, are not clear enough. It's not clear when they show up, and they are way too small to read for my mother. Therefore, she did not appreciate the more complex apps and magazines as much.
Positive observations:
My mom
- quickly understood the working of the home button
- quickly understood the swipe interaction
- quickly understood multiple home screens
She actually remarked that she would love a device like this. That remarks came after seeing the pictures of her granddaughter, so I take this remarks with quite a bit of salt. But she really did enjoy interacting with the device.
Negative observations:
These were point my mom had difficulty with:
- There is no clear indication how to enter text
- Entering text (virtual keyboard) is awkward, lots of mistypes
- The lack of cursor keys makes changing text difficult
- The multi-finger gestures did not come naturally (as opposed to the single finger swipe)
- Different gestures (one finger vs. two finger swipe) for similar interactions is not intuitive
- The small menus (bottom of screen) are not found and are hard to read