Week 9 post
As a parent, I read van der Mere's "Dad's plea to developers of iPad apps for children" -- and looked at the screenshops of the apps he singled out-- with some degree of sheepish trepidation. How quickly we have capitulated to the inevitability of these devices in our children's lives-- and how little we know of what the end result will be! Yet we have all giggled at the sight of our little ones assuming that all the world's an interactive touchscreen... And, some years later, their puzzlement when we explain that they can't watch something right now because it's scheduled to air later. Scheduled? The on-demand expectations run very deep, and will have consequences we cannot yet foresee. It is also somewhat amusing, though true, that design principles of apps for children are basically the same as design principles of good apps for adults (in what other "art form" is this true?) as outlined in Nielson's article. This may be because, in children, we have no choice but to design based on close observation of user behavior, since children cannot articulate their preferences and frustrations in other ways. App design must be based on close observation of its use-- a somewhat interesting circular proposition. This means designers must do ample research well before they attempt to launch; app users make decisions quickly and are very unforgiving. (I recently canceled Hulu after 5 minutes of frustration in trying to navigate its interface on a Roku.) I enjoyed Nielson's analysis of what works in app designs-- as others have pointed out, i still see many of these errors, even almost 3 years later. I compared what he described as problems with the USA Today app with what I consider perhaps the great app available: the New York Times app. This app, with its impeccable affordability, subtle yet easy pagination, great features for sharing and saving material, and low-data demands (I can update it during brief Internet-access respites in stations on my daily commute) -- and of course world-class content-- will in my opinion single handedly save journalism. The only thing currently missing is access to comments, and comment-aggregating services are said to the next great wave of life on the mobile Internet.













