iPad Usability: 10 design rules that improve iPad user adoption

iPad Usability:

• With Frank Spillers, MS
• Date: April 18th, 2012
• Time: 10:00 AM PST
• Length: 60 minutes
• Cost: Free
• Format: Live web seminar
• Register to attend this seminar

iPad Usability: 10 design rules that improve iPad user adoption

How do you make sure you aren’t making these iPad design mistakes?

Designing for the iPad requires an intimate understanding of how users navigate and interact with iPads, iPad apps and the content offered on the device. User adoption of iPad apps is as important as winning approval and acceptance from iPhone app users. iPad usability has evolved over two years and usability guidelines are finally emerging. Yet many iPad apps are full of usability ‘gotchas’ which often makes navigation, swiping and interacting with app content less than desirable. Worse, only a handful of iPad apps manage to break through the creative opportunity and usability challenge that confronts the iPad app designer and developer.

Topic: 
Users love the iPad--iPad currently dominates 96% of all tablet traffic (ComScore 9/11). iPad offers a dynamic platform to take your mobile and tablet user experience to the next level. The design challenge for iPad is understanding context of use and new iPad usability best practices. As app developers and designers migrate from iPhone app design to iPad, more problems are being ‘imported’ into the design then innovations. The larger screen resolution offers opportunities but also constraints. The trick is to provide desirable and usable iPad design innovations, while adhering to user expectations and intuitions. Understanding how users use the iPad is key.

As with any new technology, designers and developers are ‘inventing’ un-tested and un-proven ways to interact with iPad apps and content. The result is confusion or short circuiting of delight, leaving users shy on adoption of your app or content. Prior user adoption experience has taught us: if your users are not in synch with your iPad user experience, they are less likely to keep the app or make it a part of their habitual iPad usage.

This seminar we will explore iPad usability guidelines and best practices. We will review the iPad design opportunities as well as the 10 usability rules of iPad user adoption. This seminar will explore iPad context of use, usability do’s and don'ts of iPad interaction design and what you should do to improve your user adoption on iPad apps and content.

The insights from this seminar are applicable to other tablet contexts (Android Honeycomb tablets and the new Kindle Fire) but will be primarily focused in iPad 2.

For more in-depth mobile UX training, also see Mobile UX training.

Agenda

1. iPad usability: Dissecting the iPad app User Experience
2. Usability Rules of the iPad: 10 things you need to know
3. Tips for designing Consumer apps and content vs. Productivity and business apps
4. Common mistakes in Designing for iPad and tablets generally
5. Q & A

Who should attend: 
Product managers, mobile marketers, designers, developers, anyone working on mobile or tablet apps or experiences.

Frank Spillers is a web and software usability expert and has been recognized by the U.S. Dept. of Labor as a subject matter expert. Frank holds a Masters of Science in Cognitive Science from Birmingham University (UK) and has 12 years of practical experience with usability and user centered design techniques. He is a lead usability consultant with Experience Dynamics, a user centered design and usability consultancy based in Portland, Oregon USA. Frank has worked internationally with clients including Hewlett-Packard, Key Bank, Daimler-Chrysler, Intel, BankOne, IBM, Four Seasons, The Vanguard Group, Verizon and others.