Author: Jakob Nielsen Presenter: Chloe Kyung

Introduction The iPad has now been on the market for about a year and a half and sold almost 30 million units. It is a great device for mobile entertainment and checking . However, iPad applications and websites designed for the iPad have their issues with usability, such as:  Read-tap asymmetry  Touchable areas  Accidental activation  Low discoverability  Dislike of Typing  Splash Screens  Swipe ambiguity

Read-Tap Asymmetry  Many websites that the iPad connects to features content that is large enough to read but not large enough to tap.  There are a few websites that feature entire pictures that you may click instead of much smaller areas represented by radio buttons.

Touchable Areas  Various apps and websites featured touchable content that was just too small to tap  Many apps and websites also had touchable content that was to close to other touchable content.

Accidental Activation  Many users suffered problems with accidental activation due to unintended touches.  The unintended touches are often caused by applications not including a back button

Low Discoverability  Many apps featured areas that were touchable but were overlooked because they didn’t look touchable.

Dislike of Typing  Users of many apps and websites on the iPad had a tendency to forego registering because of a dislike of typing on the iPad.

Splash Screens  Several new iPad apps feature long introductory screens that might be okay at first but tend to get annoying after the tenth time viewing

Swipe Ambiguity  Users often had trouble when multiple items on a screen could be swiped.  Users also had trouble finding the correct place to swipe were fast to conclude that the app was broken.

Conclusion  When compared to it’s tablet clones the iPad features a simple and easier to use interface. However, after a year and a half it still has quite a bit of usability issues to work out  Questions?