The Nielsen Norman group just released there latest study findings on the usability of iPad Apps and Websites, which gives some very interesting points regarding the design of iPad apps, but also which types of websites can be seen as “tablet friendly”. The study was released last year, and many of the findings tend to replicate in this year’s version – but its interesting to see how user interfaces have improved over time.

The major difference between the previous study and this one is that the developers in the 2010 version were still under a cloak of secrecy from Apple, and best-practice ideas was not clear yet because the iPad was only out for two months.

Examples of bad application and web navigation ideas which have become clear recently include: (more…)

If you play around with the Apple iPad at the moment it becomes pretty clear that the apps dont follow some type of guidelines on usability. Sure, the button sizes are correct, but some apps have very strange operating methods. For example, the Guiness Book of Records uses a different paging techniques than say, Wired’s page flipping method. At present, image link areas are also too large or small in some apps. This leads to some usability issues with current range of apps. It reminds me somewhat of the early days of CD-ROM – every app had a more creative, but not necessarily better way to navigate or operate.

With the iPhone, the screensize limited new or unique gesture methods. But with the iPad’s bigger screen developers are free to play around with new gestures, like three or four fingers swipes. While this is fine, there needs to be some user conventions that will hopefully happen over time.Just watching someone who is used to the iPhone will show this pretty quickly – you often see them repeating gestures with small adjustments in either speed, motion, etc. As Nielsen mentions:

“iPad apps are inconsistent and have low feature discoverability, with frequent user errors due to accidental gestures. An overly strong print metaphor and weird interaction styles cause further usability problems.”

This does not necessarily mean there is a problem with the platform, instead developers need to focus on certain aspects to ensure that their apps perform well on the iPad:

Even our limited initial user studies provide directions for making iPad designs more usable:
• Add dimensionality and better define individual interactive areas to increase discoverability through perceived affordances of what users can do where.
• To achieve these interactive benefits, loosen up the etched-glass aesthetic. Going beyond the flatland of iPad’s first-generation apps might create slightly less attractive screens, but designers can retain most of the good looks by making the GUI cues more subtle than the heavy-handed visuals used in the Macintosh-to-Windows-7 progression of GUI styles.
• Abandon the hope of value-add through weirdness. Better to use consistent interaction techniques that empower users to focus on your content instead of wondering how to get it.
• Support standard navigation, including a Back feature, search, clickable headlines, and a homepage for most apps.

If you want to go read the full 93 page usability report, you can find it here. This is a truly valuable resource if you are currently experimenting with touch interfaces.

Thanks to Albert for the pointer…

If you’ve visited Wikipedia recently, you may have noticed a few changes to the reading and editing interface. These changes form part of Wikipedia’s usability and user experience programme, and are the result of qualitative user research undertaken by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Here’s a rundown of the changes you can look out for:

• A new theme, called Vector
• Tabs at the top of each page to more clearly define whether you are viewing the page or discussion page, and whether you are reading or editing a page
• Improvements to the editing toolbar, making page-formatting simpler and more intuitive
• Link wizard, for easily adding links to other Wikipedia or Wikimedia pages, as well as links to external sites
• Improved search suggestions
• Table wizard for creating tables
• Find-and-replace feature to simplify page editing

Other changes planned for later this year include:

• A reduction in the amount of wiki code users see in the edit system
• Allowing users to change data in tables and information boxes through simple forms
• A new outline tool that will help users navigate long articles while editing
• Simplification of the search function
• An improved interface for uploading images and video, and searching the multimedia repository