My son started in a new charter school which is tech savvy in many ways. But they arm each kid with a well-designed paper planner, which supports a clean and simple classroom process for assigning homework and tracking student progress, day by day and week by week. One version of the truth, instant access, no password, ready for student (or parent) to consult and quickly see what’s going on.
As the teachers went over this, it struck me how much I prefer this system to last year’s school, where there was an a standard planner book, an online homework wiki, and online report card, plus a variety of verbal assignments and paper handouts. Multiple logins and passwords, data out of date and often in conflict, resulting in a great deal of time and effort flipping between screens and paperwork to reach an often ambiguous result. And way too many family dramas resulted, about what was what and why.
There’s a fair bit of debate going the impact of iPad on software design – about how far software design should go towards mimicking familiar devices (e.g., animated page flips in a reader). Here’s a good example, an argument for ignoring the analog version: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669879/can-we-please-move-past-apples-silly-faux-real-uis
But lost in this discussion, it seems to me, is the value of an intuitive, single purpose design, vs. a more flexible multi-purpose tool, with more choices, parameters, buttons and dials to fiddle with.
Everyone in my family understands our stereo, for example. But try them out on our new Sonos system, which has a well-designed iPhone app that drives music from a digital library to wireless points around the house, and they’re flummoxed. How do I ungroup two rooms? Clear the old play list? Is the index up to date or should I update it? Why isn’t it working, or why can’t I turn it off? (followed by I give up, or I’ll just unplug it). It just does too much, offers too many choices. Maybe it needs a lite version? But the full model takes some getting used to, even if you’re familiar with iTunes etc.
I think this is why the iDevice app paradigm is so compelling, why my favorite apps do one or two things very well rather than a bunch not so well. When is the next bus? What constellation is that?
As consumers get used to this, I have to believe that the expectations of business people (same guys) will continue to rise, pressuring business tools to keep up. The trend in business apps, from MS office to ERP and packaged business solutions seems to be going the other way, with more configurability and flexibility in the user’s face and daily experience.
How much longer will we have to put up with tools that are so complex and feature rich that they require training or lots of practice?
