With all the fuzz surrounding the iPad, from here to Italy and a little everywhere, I was quite curious of interacting with this new tool. The first time I actually held one iPad was last quarter, for another class, so this one was my second time touching one. My very first response was “this is way heavier than I expected”: for some reason, considering its portability characteristics, I imagined it to be way lighter and easier to hold with my hands, almost closer to a phone than to a laptop. It is lighter than a portable computer, but it sure is far from a smartphone’s light weight and it therefore needs to be set on a table or laid in your lap for a comfortable use.
Right after this very “sensorial” response, I started playing with it and figuring out its main features. Browsing through the different applications came pretty instinctive to me, maybe because I’ve been around touch screen technology before, so I knew how to click on the icons, write text, turn pages, drag objects, zoom in and zoom out, and so on. Those movements are all pretty natural and, in my opinion, don’t involve a lot of thinking. The only action I remember being told about was the finger movement to scale an image up or down, by spreading or pinching, something I didn’t really figure out on my own when using a smartphone. And after having seen the “Touch Gesture Reference Guide” by lukew.com, I have found out there are way more movements than I thought there were, when dealing with touch screen technology.
While interacting with the iPad, I have been able to find a big flaw: there’s no back button. Or, to be more specific, the back button is not very easy to find: the only button located on the front of the iPad is placed on the bottom (if held vertical) or on the side (if held horizontal) of the tablet. This button brings you back to the desktop, taking you out of the open application. For some reason this button doesn’t seem very intuitive to me: the first time I saw it I asked someone what it was for. On the other hand, if you have an application open, and you just want to go back to the previous screen without closing the app, it’s quite hard to find a way to do so. Every app is different, so some do have a “back” link you can tap, but some don’t… and that’s exactly when, on a smartphone, you would click the phone’s back button. This important button is missing on the iPad, or maybe I haven’t found it yet… and if that’s the case, they should make it more visible.
Right after this very “sensorial” response, I started playing with it and figuring out its main features. Browsing through the different applications came pretty instinctive to me, maybe because I’ve been around touch screen technology before, so I knew how to click on the icons, write text, turn pages, drag objects, zoom in and zoom out, and so on. Those movements are all pretty natural and, in my opinion, don’t involve a lot of thinking. The only action I remember being told about was the finger movement to scale an image up or down, by spreading or pinching, something I didn’t really figure out on my own when using a smartphone. And after having seen the “Touch Gesture Reference Guide” by lukew.com, I have found out there are way more movements than I thought there were, when dealing with touch screen technology.
While interacting with the iPad, I have been able to find a big flaw: there’s no back button. Or, to be more specific, the back button is not very easy to find: the only button located on the front of the iPad is placed on the bottom (if held vertical) or on the side (if held horizontal) of the tablet. This button brings you back to the desktop, taking you out of the open application. For some reason this button doesn’t seem very intuitive to me: the first time I saw it I asked someone what it was for. On the other hand, if you have an application open, and you just want to go back to the previous screen without closing the app, it’s quite hard to find a way to do so. Every app is different, so some do have a “back” link you can tap, but some don’t… and that’s exactly when, on a smartphone, you would click the phone’s back button. This important button is missing on the iPad, or maybe I haven’t found it yet… and if that’s the case, they should make it more visible.
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