Sunday, June 17, 2012

Tablet Isn't Mobile ... But Neither Is Mobile

I've noticed that tablet (iPad) is very often being lumped in with mobile (iPhone) in consideration of alternative methods of customer interaction - but the mistake is that they are considered to be essentially the same, so developing a single application for tablet and mobile channels seems completely misguided.

Specifically, the tablet is not a mobile platform: I haven't seen anyone attempting to use a tablet computer while they were walking - the device demands too much attention to be used in an intermittent fashion. Most often, a tablet device is carried in a purse or satchel. When the user wishes to employ the device, they stop moving, find a place to sit down near a table-like surface, lay the device down, and use it. When they are finished, they pack it up and move on. This is not mobile computing, but portable computing - more like a small notebook computer than a mobile device.

My first inclination was to say that "this is not the way that people interact with a mobile device" ... but as a matter of fact, it often is. While I don't see many people seeking a flat surface on which to place the device, I do see them stopping completely to use mobile. Very often, you'll see individuals standing like a cow in the middle of a busy sidewalk or standing on the brake after the light has turned green because they are interacting with their device ... and given the staggering statistics on driving while distracted, perhaps that's for the best.

However, the point remains that even mobile devices are not mobile computing - they can be used in the field, certainly, but the way in which they are employed requires the user to stop being mobile and interact with the device, giving it their full attention and the use of both hands, as a result of poor design.

Ironically enough, usability experiments that are meant to guide designers to practices that are suitable to the mobile channel compel test subjects to use mobile devices in a stationary manner: the device is placed on a flat surface and the user must interact with it using both hands. When they attempt to pick the device up, the proctor instructs them to put it back on the table so that the camera can capture their interaction. That is, they are forced to use the device in a non-mobile way, and the results of the test are skewed.

That's not to mention that the inherent problem with a laboratory test, which is being confined to a lab environment, prevents the user from interacting with a mobile device in the mobile manner. It's particularly dysfunctional in that usability is meant to inform design, and where usability experiments are so obviously flawed, they end up misinforming design, such that applications are designed to compel users to adopt the same awkward means of interaction when the final application is released to the wild.

That opens up an entirely different can of worms (how bad usability testing encourages bad products) - but it does suggest a cause-and-effect relationship that ends up in a vicious circle: because the applications we use are poorly designed, we change our behavior, and because this becomes taken as "the way people use" a given device, it becomes ingrained in the design process.

But to lurch back to the original point: the tablet isn't a mobile device, nor is it a laptop computer - it is a thing unto itself - and until it is considered as such, design practices will be misguided. If ever we are going to progress toward the prediction that mobile and tablet will surpass the computer as the channel of preference for consumers, we must design to suit the way in which users interact via those channels, rather than assume they are analogous.

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