Stanford University’s Evan Doll, who teaches a class on iThing design, has a great slideshow on Slideshare about designing for the iPad. Take a look at it; it’s a lot smarter than what I can say here, but there are a few things he said that resonated with me from my time with eMprint.
Here are some takeaways for me from his slideshow:
* Computers are still too complicated. The example he uses is that the /System/Library folder on a Mac has about 90,000 items which a typical user will never see/touch/interact with.
* Laptops and iPhones are antisocial. An iPad is shareable. (How many times have you tried to hand a friend your laptop to look at something? It’s hard.)
* Use the interface to help the user build a mental map of your app. (We found with eMprint that users often didn’t understand they could click on a summary to read an entire story.)
* Don’t abuse the screen size by making it look like Windows.
BTW, Doll and Alan Cannistraro’s class is available via iTunes (Link will open iTunes)
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