The more "higher level" thought processes required just to operate the basics of your device (e.g., basic navigation, app launching, scrolling, etc) the more mental effort (and thus, frustration and cognitive load) it takes from the user.
As an extension to this, the less brain power you have to devote to basic, fundamental interactions with the machine, the more bandwidth you have to dedicate towards other things (e.g., if the calculator is hard to use, you're spending more effort wrangling the calculator instead of solving math problems).
I'm not sure that always applies. I find myself much more productive on an RPN calculator, once I learned to use it, than on standard calculators, even though the learning curve was higher. I also find that with window managers, tiling WMs were harder to learn, but are a lot better now that I know how to use them.
I really like the calculator example. Imagine a buttonless calculator that just took dictation in plain english and gave the result for really complex equations.
Not sure I would want one. ".... over two plus three. No move the plus three out of the fraction. The other one. Don't put the fraction plus three in parentheses. Ah... just let me use the keyboard!" Non-trivial math expressions are very hard to dictate.
thing is we tend to complicate things unnecessarily when things are simplified down to an instinctual intuitive process the experience becomes more enjoyable.
It's amazing how fast she grasps the concept of the UI. Either she has some experience with an iPhone, or we have gotten to a point where interface design has become so intuitive that 3-year olds grasp software immediately. I think the first is the case, but impressive nonetheless ;-)
I'm sure she's had a little experience, but the touch interface is really intuitive.
My daughter was less than a year old when we watched her unlock my wife's iPhone and start playing with it. It wasn't taught to her, it was just natural "mommy did this, then this, so I will too and it works".
You think that's bad...I tried to click a hyperlink in a book the other evening. OK, it was 2am and I'd been looking up supplementary material online to complement my page reading for several hours, but still.
Almost everyone that picks up my kindle for the first time touches the screen before anything else. When I say it isn't touch screen they just kind of shrug and mumble.
:) At 2 I've been told that I could find out the Print-Shop-Pro disk, put it in the Apple Mac Plus and do my own drawings. I'd then save my work and wait for mummy/daddy to wake up so I could print - I wasn't able to line up the paper properly in the printer.
Moral of the Story: Kids are smarter than you think. (And they don' have a phobia of technology so they are willing to try anything)
"And they don' have a phobia of technology so they are willing to try anything"
Heard it suggested once that the reason older people are reluctant to explore and experiment with computers is that in their day, experimenting with the machinery of the time could mean a severed finger or lost limb.
I've noticed that older folk are reluctant to explore/experiment because they're afraid they'll irreparably break it, which I suppose fits in the confines of mechanical machinery. Experimenting with your car may in fact break it in very, very messy/expensive ways.
There doesn't seem to be a clear understanding that short of taking a hammer to your computer, it's almost impossible to break...
Part of this is our fault also - we've allowed decades of software with bad defaults, no-warning data deletions, etc, and now people are afraid that a single stray button click will nuke their precious work.
A girlfriend in high school had extracurricular choir practice, which took place at a nearby elementary school. I'd usually walk her over and wait for her to finish. At the time, the entire school district had just purchased new computers, one for every classroom (for teacher use), and the first-grade teacher across the hall had a shiny new Pentium Pro 233.
She refused to touch it. She did what she had been explicitly told to do, but nothing else.
One day I was there waiting, and she asked if I knew anything about computers; I told her I did, and at her request helped her out with a few things. In return, she let me play around on the internet (over their shiny new ISDN line) while I was waiting. I'd take the opportunity twice a week to show her neat things, or answer her questions, and so on, and she seemed to be enjoying it.
One day, as the final choir practice was drawing near, she told me that she was having a lot of fun with her computer, and learning quite a lot. She had always been afraid to break it, and to have IT or the principal or whoever yell at her (well, not really, but you know). After playing around, she understood that not only was it not going to just break on its own, but also if it did, she could just ask me and I'd fix it, and no one would know.
By the end of the season, she had become the person everyone else in the school came to for help, not because she was better with computers, but because she was less afraid of them, and understood that it was a simple causal relationship - you do something, the computer responds. She began teaching the other teachers how to do things, giving mini-lessons or fixing their problems.
This is why I feel the iPad is going to be a hit. It lets you do quite a lot of what the typical person does on the internet, but at the same time, you CAN'T damage it, except physically. You can't break the OS, you can't get a virus, and you can't do most of the things I see computer users have problems with. You'll never 'lose' an app because a shortcut disappeared, you'll never lose a document because the 'Save As' dialog opened up somewhere new that one time, you'll never download the 64-bit version of an app on a 32-bit OS, or install a 32-bit OS on 64-bit hardware.
When users aren't intimidated by the computer, they can do great things. That's what I feel the iPad will excel at - being accessible and comprehensible to the average user.
My daughter learned to do all of the basic iPhone interaction --scroll between home screens, launching, and quitting apps-- at around 19 months. Launching apps was the most difficult part, as it took her awhile to learn to touch only one part of the screen. It seems to me a brilliant testament to great UX design.
While on the subject of judging things by the reactions of small children, the first brand she recognized consistently is Google's - that includes the Google logo, GMail, and a GTUG t-shirt [1] (although she calls them all "Googool"). It's probably because the sound is easy to pronounce, and because of the distinct coloring, but it's still a little freaky, for a year and a half old toddler.
And it's fast. Everyone complains it doesn't have multitasking, but is there really a better way to switch apps that would be any faster than that even with multitasking?
The card interface used on the new Palms works pretty well for that. You can basically see it in the way MobileSafari handles tabs, which is about as close to multitasking as you can get on an i$Device.
A couple of weeks ago everyone in the administration of the school my mom works at got Android phones.
Only about 2-3 people understood anything the phone had to offer of about a dozen people. They recently had to take the entire administration through a full-day course on how to use the phone.
Do you think this 2 year old could understand the android platform as easily as she does iPhone OS?
Why not ? Seems like she's proficient in using the iPad because she already was iPhone savvy, as mentioned by the blogpost.
Given some time with an Android device, I think she would do just as well sampling apps on Android as she did on iPhone OS. Her way of launching an app, playing around and then pressing the Home button would work on Android just as fine.
I also believe there's quite a difference between a 2.5 year old playing around with an OS, and adults who may not be tech-savvy using a smartphone in a meaningful way.
Or to phrase it as a question, do you think those people would have as much trouble understanding the iPhone OS as they did the Android OS ?
I haven't actually tried out the Android OS that extensively. Aside from testing it now and then on friends phones I've never really used it. Hence my question. Though my own experience with the iPhone is that a two-year-old could actually start using it right away, and that's not the feeling I get from Android.
aphyr makes a brilliant point that simplicity and power often compete with each other and maybe Apple is trying to target the less tech-savvy user.
Since I interpreted aphyrs comment as saying the Android app-switching method was easier, I was genuinely curious as to wether he thought the Android platform was overall as easy as the iPhone platform.
Familiarity and learnability are not the only rubrics for UI design.
While it's good to make products understandable by two-year-olds, there are other important considerations in UI. Can it help you accomplish the task efficiently? Reliably? Happily? Vim, for example would never stand up to the two-year-old test, but is nonetheless an extraordinarily capable and efficient text editor--which qualifies it, in my opinion, for "good UI".
I don't mean to imply Android is as readily cognizable to toddlers as the iPhone. What I mean to say is that streaming quickly from activity to activity through various stateless apps, each of which can plug into each other for various intents, is a more efficient way to accomplish tasks than quitting and re-opening apps from the home screen.
People want multi-tasking for non-interactive tasks. They want to compose email while streaming music, or browse the web while chatting on IRC. So switching doesn't matter much; that's easy with or without multitasking.
No, the iPad are maracas, that can transform themselves in a tambourine, or bongo drums, or in a scientific calculator, or in document editor, or in 500,000 other things.
Whoa, I didn't know there were 500,000 apps in the app store. I would posit that there aren't even that many potentially different apps that are possible, even considering monkeys on typewriters with an infinite amount of time.
A good list of things which require skill to use. Is the iPad the closest we've gotten to a computer which does not require skill to use? Other examples?
You had me thinking there for a few minutes. Why exactly do I appreciate the ease of use of a iPad but would most certainly not appreciate the ease of use of a violin where you just tap a few times on a touchscreen and which then plays for you?
I think it has something to do with abstractions. There are no abstractions when playing a violin. You move the bow which causes strings to vibrate and that’s it. User Interfaces are built on abstractions. CLIs, mouse interfaces, touch interfaces, all are abstractions because nobody would want to edit a photo without those.
Just because the iPad uses different abstractions doesn’t mean it’s the computer version of my phony easy to use violin. I honestly think there are ways to improve our abstractions and the iPad might be a step in that direction. I also see no reason why a 2.5 year old shouldn’t be able to pick up at least some of those abstractions which are also fitting for grown-ups.
(I actually think that it’s possible to build better versions of that one example you mentioned that also uses abstractions: graphing calculators. Most graphing calculator level math is certainly too hard for 2.5 year olds, but when it comes to inputting stuff many graphing calculators suck. Incidentally, there is not a single great graphing calculator available for the iPhone. I really wanted one.)
It might also have something to do with the pride you take in (or the appreciation you have of) the skill required to paly the the violin. Plenty of people appreciate guitar hero, for instance, which is far easier to play than a guitar (has a higher layer of abstraction in the terms above, if I understand them correctly). On the other hand, true "masters" of gh love it also because anybody can do something with it, but few can do what they do.
Every one of those things you've listed have a _horrible_ user interface. My ability to make music, calculate complex equations, play the drums, and create art is seriously hampered by my inability to use those devices.
As a result, I am neither a musician, complex-equation-calculator, drummer, or painter.
It would probably have the same effect as giving the iPad to a 2.5 year old with no iPhone experience. The movie basically shows that the big screen works almost the same as the small screen and even kids don't get confused. It tells absolutely nothing about iPad itself imho.
So yeah - try giving a "laptop with Windows"-savvy 2.5 year old a netbook with windows...
That 2.5 yr old can spell already which many kinder-gardeners twice the age can't, and same toddler is _clearly_ already familiar with the interface as in swiping to scroll and hitting the home button to go back to the app menu. It was not a "new" toy, just a bigger version of a toy (s)he's already very familiar with
If it had a touch screen it might be just fine. It's the mouse and keyboard which add a layer of abstraction, rather than the operating platform itself.
I do feel that such comparisons are akin to saying 'you are not a good horse breeder because I have just invented the bicycle'. Owning a horse for your transport needs is no longer a sensible choice for most people, but that hardly obviates all use cases.
This really can't be overemphasized. I have a child about the same age (two-and-a-half) and he's been playing with my iPod Touch since I got it December 2008. He's proficient with it, just like her - able to easily navigate between the different pages of apps, launch new apps, use the navigation within apps, etc.
But obviously, it wasn't like that when he first used it. It took time. For example, it took forever to teach him that if the hand that is holding it is touching the screen a little bit, then it won't properly register new touch events from the other hand. Eventually he just learned this, but it took a long time.
The other thing to note is that children actually learn how to use computers far more rapidly than you might think. It's not just devices like this, where people will assume that it is the multi-touch and intuitive interface that makes it easy for them to learn it. This helps, sure, but I was shocked when, after a mere two hours or so of usage, my two-year-old had learned how to navigate Flash games in a browser using the mouse. I was about to restart the game he was playing by clicking through the menus but no, he grabbed the mouse and did it himself, to my amazement.
Bottom-line: although I sense that many people will assume it is Apple's superior design that is responsible for this child's proficiency, I think that the combination of prior experience, plus the very quick learning abilities of young children, is a more important factor.
It's weird, my twins are almost 3 and they have yet to play with a computer except the couple of times I had some Elmo episodes up on Youtube. Most of their play comes with the old fashioned puzzles and dolls and other assorted toys. I figured they wouldn't know what to do with a computer, but clearly I need to revisit that. What kind of things can a 3 year old do with a computer? I admit I haven't the foggiest idea of how to introduce a child to a computer.
Well, for starters, it needs to be a computer you're okay with a kid being on. Mine doesn't get near the Macbook Pro, but I've got a desktop set up in such a way that only the monitor, keyboard and mouse are accessible, so I'm okay with that.
Secondly, there's probably all sorts of great educational stuff for them to check out but all I've really done is put him on some simple Flash games. Examples:
Open up notepad. Maximize the window. Change the font to 72. Turn on caps lock. Let them have free reign on the keyboard and tell them what letter they are holding down. After about two months of this they are pretty proficient at the keyboard and at their letters.
For mouse skills fullscreen Microsoft Paint. Same results.
My 2 year old loves my ipod touch. The best thing I have for it is a drawing program called doodle buddy. She loves to scribble with it or do stamps. On the PC there is a great opensource paint program called tux paint - but she can't work the mouse so its a more of a ask Daddy what stamps she wants type thing.
What kind of things can a 3 year old do with a computer?
An actual computer? Check out the games on pbskids.org - esp. the Curious George ones. For under <3s, you will probably need to "drive" the mouse while the kids tell you what to do.
The iPhone has a myriad of kid-friendly apps suitable for the toddler set. Try AnimalSNAP, Scribble, PreSchool Playground, Matches, and Wild Animals jigsaw. While obviously the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad is not a substitute for real play, it has certain advantages, such as encouraging seriously fine motor control, a level of abstraction, and being a compact source of amusement for plane rides.
Also check out the kids books "with synchronised images" from audible.com. It allows the iPod to pretend to read books to your child. Again, not a substitute for you doing this, but a good tool for your emergency arsenal.
I have to say though, that the most educational thing on the internet for the preschooler is youtube. There is nothing like, say, talking to your kid about the instruments of the orchestra and then being able to pull up somebody playing the tuba right there and then. Indispensable.
That said, get your timing right. I kept my kid away from the TV till she was two, and away from gadgets till she was three. I think the level of engagement you get by introducing things at the right time is much higher than if you expose too early.
How about a similar experiment about 20 years ago? Has anyone watched a young child try to navigate a command prompt? I mean changing directories, and maybe eventually learning a basic understanding of the filesystem and what files are.
I always tell people I learned how to navigate MS-DOS when I was five from watching my cousin do it. I wanted to get on the computer and play games, and I just remembered what he’d typed. I actually have no idea how true this memory is. But I wonder if CLI can feel just as natural to young children.
I was running my families DOS computer when I was 6 or 7 and I don't remember having much problems learning how to stick the disk in (ah, the good ol days), type cd B: and then execute the right program. My brother and I would play tons of old school games that way.
I learned DOS when I was about that age by watching the commands from autoexec.bat flash by when the computer was booting (the guy who built my parents' first computer didn't put @echo off at the beginning, which probably led to my becoming a computer programmer :). I thought I was king of the world when, at 6 years old or whatever, I exited the Direct Access menu system, typed "prompt SpSg", and actually made the computer do something I told it to do (it took me a few reboots ro realize that it was $p$g, not SpSg).
The best bit of this video is where she hands it to her father and asks him to try. I'm guessing, but that gesture wouldn't have come quite so naturally on a traditional computer.
2. she only got frustrated once, and that was when she couldn't get back to the home screen. With the hint "press the button; the big button" she felt in control (and happy).
3. By this point I'm thinking how I would simulate her investigative behavior in software. It's not systematic, but it's oh so efficient.
4. the confidence with which she dragged the letters to the "learn a word" app. First hesitantly, a moment later she fully expected the scrabble block under her finger to move along. You can spot the difference because she stopped checking whether the letter would follow her finger, she knew it would.
5. Confusion when she put her left hand on the edge of the iPad. This is where the immersion breaks and she needed a hint to get back on track. In fairness, most adults who try an iPhone for the first time make the same mistake, if you can even call it that.
6. The confidence with which the dad goes "Yup", knowing that she can't possibly do any damage to the device.
7. How she immediately goes into "piano mode" when a keyboard app appears on screen.
8 . It surprises me that she makes the same mistakes most adults do when trying a iPhone/iPad for the first time.
So much for my stray observations. Fascinating stuff.
I was about to comment on point 2, when I saw you covered it in point 5. I imagine that the resting touch problem could be solved with software, the iPhone keyboard for exams supports resting a finger on one key while you touch the next. I was surprised that it didn't work on the home screen, eg, ignore the touches from a resting hand.
The glib answer is this: You have a problem. You solve it with heuristics. Now you have two problems.
If I had to guess why Apple designed it this way? Here goes: Apple can't determine what a resting hand is as an abstraction, because sometimes a resting hand should do something (e.g. the pinch gesture; one static touch + one moving finger). So app developers would each have to implement their own heuristics to decide what's "probably" an accidental touch and what's "probably" a deliberate (but sloppy) tap. Result: you won't be able to predict anymore how the iPad will behave. That's far worse than having a predictable but imperfect system.
A good number of laptops I've tried have palm detection on their touch pads, if the contact patch too big to be a finger, then it it is not a finger and it is not a touch.
Probably wouldn't help in the case of a toddler's hands, but, as mentioned, the hand-on-edge is something many have trouble with.
Agreed. There is an "ignore accidental trackpad input" option in my MacBook's system preferences that I turned off for the first time a couple months ago, thinking "I'm a pro with this thing, I'm sure I don't accidentally touch it."
Boy was I wrong, and I was really surprised at how sensitive the thing was. After a couple minutes of the pointer jumping all over the place, I turned it back on, impressed with the algorithm that had been ignoring those accidental touches all along.
It's surprising how sensitive the capacitive sensor in Macbook trackpads can be. I found an app once that gave a visual indication of where touch events were occurring on the trackpad, and it can detect your finger before you're actually touching the pad.
Of course, the software and hardware is calibrated to have a specific threshold, but the fact that technology is commonplace that can detect when something is near it is just amazing. A former roommate's Dell laptop did the same thing - the controls on the side lit up when your finger got near it, so you didn't have to fumble for the buttons OR deal with annoying LEDs all the time.
This is part of the reason the iPhone always felt so fluid to me. I can flick a list, barely even grazing the screen, and the list will spin like a slot machine. It gives you such an immediate sense of powerful, accurate control that it's very gratifying to use.
Could this become a usability test? Take your app or device and observe the interaction; positive and negative to improve overall UX. Similar to the drunken user test.W ould the results be valid for business functions where the child does not have or understand the need or problem being solved?
What I find striking is how intuitive it all seems. She just "knows" how to use the device. It is very interesting from a user interface and HID perspective.
As a father of a 1.5 year-old who loves the iPhone, this looks very familiar. But toddlers pick up on all kinds of new things incredibly fast, so I'm not sure this tells us much about the learnability of the iPad for computing novices of any other age group.
It seems easier than the typical desktop/laptop, but there are many subtle interactions that have to be learned and practiced to use the iPad. I would like to see how well a 60+ year-old without prior computing experience interacts with it.
My 1.5 year-old knows how to use the mouse (he grasps the interaction between what's in his hand and what happens on screen), spinning the wheel while the mouse is over a window makes that window move up and down, and that the "media" button on my keyboard launches Foobar 2000.
Kids are wicked smart, and learn shockingly fast. Needless to say, it's impossible to work with him in my lap.
For people interested in interface design paired with kids new to UI's. The following link points to research performed in India, where computers were dropped in slums for children to use. They monitored their progress in understanding the interface, and in discovering the web. http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/kids.html#04
For the longest time the mantra in good user interface design has been 'make it so a three year old can use it'. This video so proves that to be a true thing. I always try to find people that have as little exposure to computers as possible when trying out new stuff, I never actually thought of taking that literally and employing toddlers as testers, but after this video I'm 100% convinced that's the way to go.
EDIT: whoa! I have been downvotted after asking if it is safe for children.
So, here are some references.
"Children have much thinner skull bones and their brains have a lot more fluid, so their brain tissues would likely absorb twice more radiation compared to an adult’s brain. But cellphone radiation standards set by the government remains the same for both groups."
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/tag/radiation/
"If the notebook is sitting on a child’s lap, that child is exposed to radio emissions comparable to that of a mobile phone. If the notebook is 20 cm away, the child is subjected to exposure of just 1% to that of a mobile phone"
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/04/29/warning-keep...
Children are going to take your mobile phone, put their head near the microwave, suck antennas of your wifi router and do lots and lots of crazy things that will expose them to different kinds of radiation. (while you're not looking / least expecting of course) Can anyone really protect children from EM waves of various nature these days? There are probably more dangerous items in your environment than an iPad.
112 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] threadAs an extension to this, the less brain power you have to devote to basic, fundamental interactions with the machine, the more bandwidth you have to dedicate towards other things (e.g., if the calculator is hard to use, you're spending more effort wrangling the calculator instead of solving math problems).
But is it so easy a caveman can do it?
My daughter was less than a year old when we watched her unlock my wife's iPhone and start playing with it. It wasn't taught to her, it was just natural "mommy did this, then this, so I will too and it works".
Moral of the Story: Kids are smarter than you think. (And they don' have a phobia of technology so they are willing to try anything)
Heard it suggested once that the reason older people are reluctant to explore and experiment with computers is that in their day, experimenting with the machinery of the time could mean a severed finger or lost limb.
There doesn't seem to be a clear understanding that short of taking a hammer to your computer, it's almost impossible to break...
Part of this is our fault also - we've allowed decades of software with bad defaults, no-warning data deletions, etc, and now people are afraid that a single stray button click will nuke their precious work.
She refused to touch it. She did what she had been explicitly told to do, but nothing else.
One day I was there waiting, and she asked if I knew anything about computers; I told her I did, and at her request helped her out with a few things. In return, she let me play around on the internet (over their shiny new ISDN line) while I was waiting. I'd take the opportunity twice a week to show her neat things, or answer her questions, and so on, and she seemed to be enjoying it.
One day, as the final choir practice was drawing near, she told me that she was having a lot of fun with her computer, and learning quite a lot. She had always been afraid to break it, and to have IT or the principal or whoever yell at her (well, not really, but you know). After playing around, she understood that not only was it not going to just break on its own, but also if it did, she could just ask me and I'd fix it, and no one would know.
By the end of the season, she had become the person everyone else in the school came to for help, not because she was better with computers, but because she was less afraid of them, and understood that it was a simple causal relationship - you do something, the computer responds. She began teaching the other teachers how to do things, giving mini-lessons or fixing their problems.
This is why I feel the iPad is going to be a hit. It lets you do quite a lot of what the typical person does on the internet, but at the same time, you CAN'T damage it, except physically. You can't break the OS, you can't get a virus, and you can't do most of the things I see computer users have problems with. You'll never 'lose' an app because a shortcut disappeared, you'll never lose a document because the 'Save As' dialog opened up somewhere new that one time, you'll never download the 64-bit version of an app on a 32-bit OS, or install a 32-bit OS on 64-bit hardware.
When users aren't intimidated by the computer, they can do great things. That's what I feel the iPad will excel at - being accessible and comprehensible to the average user.
While on the subject of judging things by the reactions of small children, the first brand she recognized consistently is Google's - that includes the Google logo, GMail, and a GTUG t-shirt [1] (although she calls them all "Googool"). It's probably because the sound is easy to pronounce, and because of the distinct coloring, but it's still a little freaky, for a year and a half old toddler.
1. http://roman.nurik.net/images/designs/gtug.png
But also, from a friend who's had problems reclaiming his iPad from his 3-year-old son: shades of Ray Bradbury's The Veldt.
I don't see why they couldn't do it on the apple products, they have the bezel for it.
Only about 2-3 people understood anything the phone had to offer of about a dozen people. They recently had to take the entire administration through a full-day course on how to use the phone.
Do you think this 2 year old could understand the android platform as easily as she does iPhone OS?
Given some time with an Android device, I think she would do just as well sampling apps on Android as she did on iPhone OS. Her way of launching an app, playing around and then pressing the Home button would work on Android just as fine.
I also believe there's quite a difference between a 2.5 year old playing around with an OS, and adults who may not be tech-savvy using a smartphone in a meaningful way.
Or to phrase it as a question, do you think those people would have as much trouble understanding the iPhone OS as they did the Android OS ?
aphyr makes a brilliant point that simplicity and power often compete with each other and maybe Apple is trying to target the less tech-savvy user.
Since I interpreted aphyrs comment as saying the Android app-switching method was easier, I was genuinely curious as to wether he thought the Android platform was overall as easy as the iPhone platform.
While it's good to make products understandable by two-year-olds, there are other important considerations in UI. Can it help you accomplish the task efficiently? Reliably? Happily? Vim, for example would never stand up to the two-year-old test, but is nonetheless an extraordinarily capable and efficient text editor--which qualifies it, in my opinion, for "good UI".
I don't mean to imply Android is as readily cognizable to toddlers as the iPhone. What I mean to say is that streaming quickly from activity to activity through various stateless apps, each of which can plug into each other for various intents, is a more efficient way to accomplish tasks than quitting and re-opening apps from the home screen.
"Backgrounding" seems much more descriptive of what is really desired by most iPhone OS users (and non-users) who say they want "multitasking".
Now try giving that 2.5 year old a graphing calculator and see how well that works.
Now try giving that 2.5 year old a drum kit and see how well that works.
Now try giving that 2.5 year old canvas with a palette of oil paints and see how well that works.
The iPad is like giving you maracas, a tambourine, or bongo drums. Same functionality? No. Vastly more fun for beginners? Yes.
I think it has something to do with abstractions. There are no abstractions when playing a violin. You move the bow which causes strings to vibrate and that’s it. User Interfaces are built on abstractions. CLIs, mouse interfaces, touch interfaces, all are abstractions because nobody would want to edit a photo without those.
Just because the iPad uses different abstractions doesn’t mean it’s the computer version of my phony easy to use violin. I honestly think there are ways to improve our abstractions and the iPad might be a step in that direction. I also see no reason why a 2.5 year old shouldn’t be able to pick up at least some of those abstractions which are also fitting for grown-ups.
(I actually think that it’s possible to build better versions of that one example you mentioned that also uses abstractions: graphing calculators. Most graphing calculator level math is certainly too hard for 2.5 year olds, but when it comes to inputting stuff many graphing calculators suck. Incidentally, there is not a single great graphing calculator available for the iPhone. I really wanted one.)
Every one of those things you've listed have a _horrible_ user interface. My ability to make music, calculate complex equations, play the drums, and create art is seriously hampered by my inability to use those devices.
As a result, I am neither a musician, complex-equation-calculator, drummer, or painter.
So yeah - try giving a "laptop with Windows"-savvy 2.5 year old a netbook with windows...
I do feel that such comparisons are akin to saying 'you are not a good horse breeder because I have just invented the bicycle'. Owning a horse for your transport needs is no longer a sensible choice for most people, but that hardly obviates all use cases.
But obviously, it wasn't like that when he first used it. It took time. For example, it took forever to teach him that if the hand that is holding it is touching the screen a little bit, then it won't properly register new touch events from the other hand. Eventually he just learned this, but it took a long time.
The other thing to note is that children actually learn how to use computers far more rapidly than you might think. It's not just devices like this, where people will assume that it is the multi-touch and intuitive interface that makes it easy for them to learn it. This helps, sure, but I was shocked when, after a mere two hours or so of usage, my two-year-old had learned how to navigate Flash games in a browser using the mouse. I was about to restart the game he was playing by clicking through the menus but no, he grabbed the mouse and did it himself, to my amazement.
Bottom-line: although I sense that many people will assume it is Apple's superior design that is responsible for this child's proficiency, I think that the combination of prior experience, plus the very quick learning abilities of young children, is a more important factor.
Secondly, there's probably all sorts of great educational stuff for them to check out but all I've really done is put him on some simple Flash games. Examples:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Teagames/tg-motocross-2
http://www.kongregate.com/games/light_bringer777/learn-to-fl...
http://www.kongregate.com/games/arawkins/dolphin-olympics
Open up notepad. Maximize the window. Change the font to 72. Turn on caps lock. Let them have free reign on the keyboard and tell them what letter they are holding down. After about two months of this they are pretty proficient at the keyboard and at their letters.
For mouse skills fullscreen Microsoft Paint. Same results.
An actual computer? Check out the games on pbskids.org - esp. the Curious George ones. For under <3s, you will probably need to "drive" the mouse while the kids tell you what to do.
The iPhone has a myriad of kid-friendly apps suitable for the toddler set. Try AnimalSNAP, Scribble, PreSchool Playground, Matches, and Wild Animals jigsaw. While obviously the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad is not a substitute for real play, it has certain advantages, such as encouraging seriously fine motor control, a level of abstraction, and being a compact source of amusement for plane rides.
Also check out the kids books "with synchronised images" from audible.com. It allows the iPod to pretend to read books to your child. Again, not a substitute for you doing this, but a good tool for your emergency arsenal.
I have to say though, that the most educational thing on the internet for the preschooler is youtube. There is nothing like, say, talking to your kid about the instruments of the orchestra and then being able to pull up somebody playing the tuba right there and then. Indispensable.
That said, get your timing right. I kept my kid away from the TV till she was two, and away from gadgets till she was three. I think the level of engagement you get by introducing things at the right time is much higher than if you expose too early.
I always tell people I learned how to navigate MS-DOS when I was five from watching my cousin do it. I wanted to get on the computer and play games, and I just remembered what he’d typed. I actually have no idea how true this memory is. But I wonder if CLI can feel just as natural to young children.
But if her previous experience had been with Windows 7, would she be similarly proficient on an HP Slate?
1. kids are awesome
2. she only got frustrated once, and that was when she couldn't get back to the home screen. With the hint "press the button; the big button" she felt in control (and happy).
3. By this point I'm thinking how I would simulate her investigative behavior in software. It's not systematic, but it's oh so efficient.
4. the confidence with which she dragged the letters to the "learn a word" app. First hesitantly, a moment later she fully expected the scrabble block under her finger to move along. You can spot the difference because she stopped checking whether the letter would follow her finger, she knew it would.
5. Confusion when she put her left hand on the edge of the iPad. This is where the immersion breaks and she needed a hint to get back on track. In fairness, most adults who try an iPhone for the first time make the same mistake, if you can even call it that.
6. The confidence with which the dad goes "Yup", knowing that she can't possibly do any damage to the device.
7. How she immediately goes into "piano mode" when a keyboard app appears on screen.
8 . It surprises me that she makes the same mistakes most adults do when trying a iPhone/iPad for the first time.
So much for my stray observations. Fascinating stuff.
If I had to guess why Apple designed it this way? Here goes: Apple can't determine what a resting hand is as an abstraction, because sometimes a resting hand should do something (e.g. the pinch gesture; one static touch + one moving finger). So app developers would each have to implement their own heuristics to decide what's "probably" an accidental touch and what's "probably" a deliberate (but sloppy) tap. Result: you won't be able to predict anymore how the iPad will behave. That's far worse than having a predictable but imperfect system.
Probably wouldn't help in the case of a toddler's hands, but, as mentioned, the hand-on-edge is something many have trouble with.
Boy was I wrong, and I was really surprised at how sensitive the thing was. After a couple minutes of the pointer jumping all over the place, I turned it back on, impressed with the algorithm that had been ignoring those accidental touches all along.
Of course, the software and hardware is calibrated to have a specific threshold, but the fact that technology is commonplace that can detect when something is near it is just amazing. A former roommate's Dell laptop did the same thing - the controls on the side lit up when your finger got near it, so you didn't have to fumble for the buttons OR deal with annoying LEDs all the time.
This is part of the reason the iPhone always felt so fluid to me. I can flick a list, barely even grazing the screen, and the list will spin like a slot machine. It gives you such an immediate sense of powerful, accurate control that it's very gratifying to use.
It seems easier than the typical desktop/laptop, but there are many subtle interactions that have to be learned and practiced to use the iPad. I would like to see how well a 60+ year-old without prior computing experience interacts with it.
Kids are wicked smart, and learn shockingly fast. Needless to say, it's impossible to work with him in my lap.
"It doesn't work when you hold your thumb there. Good. Now pull the arrow back and release."
EDIT: whoa! I have been downvotted after asking if it is safe for children.
So, here are some references.
"Children have much thinner skull bones and their brains have a lot more fluid, so their brain tissues would likely absorb twice more radiation compared to an adult’s brain. But cellphone radiation standards set by the government remains the same for both groups." http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/tag/radiation/
"If the notebook is sitting on a child’s lap, that child is exposed to radio emissions comparable to that of a mobile phone. If the notebook is 20 cm away, the child is subjected to exposure of just 1% to that of a mobile phone" http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/04/29/warning-keep...
How about that?
Pretty weak if you ask me. Any money that the HP Slate will have a 50MW unit.