Recently, there has been a growing trend of using iPads and other tablets instead of computers, laptops, and smartphones, especially on long plane or train rides. Tablets provide almost all of the convenience of a small phone, and they also have a large enough screen so information can be easily read. The increase in usage of tablets prompted the Nielsen Norman group to conduct multiple studies of iPad users to see how usability would change over time. They made some very interesting findings about different applications and reasons for why some apps are better or more usable than others.

With a small sample size, it is hard to get an accurate representation on how a majority of people use their iPads, but it may still help in improving future applications and future devices.

The second edition of the study the Nielsen Norman group conducted involved only 16 people who had had an iPad for two months or more. With the number of people who are now using iPads regularly, turning away from laptops, I don’t think that this sample can possibly represent the population accurately. However, the length of each study (90 minutes) may still provide enough information for application designers to improve their apps and come up with useful new ones. The studies were very in depth and examined a large number of apps, across a wide range of areas.

Most users prefer to use a company’s website on their iPads, even though the apps should provide a more tablet friendly experience and are made specifically for that company.

The most surprising information that I got from this survey is that using apps for specific companies are not always the most effective way to accomplish a task. In this study, many users became frustrated when trying to use apps for different companies. Reasons for frustration included confusion over which graphics were “tappable” and which ones were not, and stemming from that problem, knowing how to get back to the previous page when an accidental tap occurred. Also, the apps had less content available than the actual website, which seems strange to me. I would think that companies would try their hardest to include everything in their applications because theoretically, people will try them before putting in the time to browse online.

A good amount of applications switch pages, remove progress, get rid of text or media, or display different information when the user turns the iPad.

Much confusion occurred during the survey due to information being lost when the user decided that it would be beneficial to switch the tablet’s orientation. Sometimes the subjects rotated the iPad, and the app they were in took them back to the home page, making it hard to get back to the previous page. There were plenty of navigation issues that were hard to replicate, especially inside apps the subjects were not familiar with. Also, a few graphics were in the report, showing how one picture was shown next to an article in landscape view and a different graphic was shown in portrait view.

The report gives plenty of advice to companies deciding whether or not to create an iPad app, including having a feature specific to the app that is not available on the website.

Many companies have to make a decision to make regarding creating an app or not. The consensus is that the application should differ in a good way from the main website. Too many apps have even less content than their website counterparts, creating no benefit or reason for users to download the app. A main example given for a possible benefit is to have larger text in the app, especially for recipes, which are usually read in the kitchen when the person’s hands are dirty.  In addition, a suggestion is that your app should not be more confusing or more difficult to make sense of than the actual website. Too many apps have nuances that make the overall experience more negative than going through the trouble of browsing the web.

Even with these small problems, the iPad still provides users with close to everything that both an iPhone and laptop provide, with the look and feel that attracts buyers.

While the report focuses on all of the negatives they could find about the device, the researchers had to dig deep to find subtle problems to talk about. The overall iPad experience is a positive one, and I think that the device will eventually become the main technology people use (other than cell phones), both on trips and in the house. The size is perfect, big enough to see everything on the page, but small enough to transport easily.