“Click the Yellow Dog...”

In her post “Aussie Rules”, Lessien becomes one of the few people to argue, in a positive rather than pejorative sense, that the iPad is a toy, by which she clarifies it “just works” without intimidating users with blue screens of death and what not.

I want to take a step back from the iPad as a singular product, and look at the whole touch interface that’s evolving rapidly from science fiction to almost toy. I’m no expert, but I’m interested in this because, as a former childrens’ “educational” game developer, and now parent, I have some direct experience with how children interact with digital interfaces.

I’ve seen both my 5YO and 3YO at daycare play with exactly the kind of CD-ROM games I worked on a decade ago (yes yes, I don’t have a single computer so old that it can run them, so there’s your digital archiving strategy right there). I remember speaking with some designers at a, shall we say, mousey studio about a game for 18 month olds, which staggered me at the time, because really, what can an 18mo (I have arbitrarily decided that, like kb and MB, mo and YO are the correct casings) do with a mouse and a cursor? Not much, but you guessed that. But with a touch screen (and again, I don’t mean Apple/iOS specifically, although unlike Bill Gates’ kids, those’re what mine have access to) things are quite different.

But let’s look at an older example, something we’d probably agree wasn’t a toy, certainly not at the prices they cost:

If you’re around my age, you’re old, sorry, but you might also be the first generation who could program a VCR without reading a manual, setting the time while Dad was still futzing with the remote control. Or not, and maybe that box blinked “12:00” for years. Let’s say that was in the mid 80s.

Up until this spring, this is what the camera I used looked like:

So for over 20 years, the state of user interface design remained remarkably lousy. For adults. Small, meaningless icons and symbols and difficult to navigate menus were the standard. And, I’ll go out on a limb, used with the same confidence as the buttons and widgets on the VCR. (You may recognize your feature phone in this example set too, I know I do.) Which is to say, probably not very much.

Confidence is a key word in usability: does the user have confidence in the system, have confidence that things aren’t going to break, have confidence in pushing that button or selecting this item? This is particularly easy/amusing/distressing to observe in small children, who don’t, at the best of times, hide their feelings of frustration, especially when holding delicate and expensive electronic equipment.

I’ve watched them use a mouse and a keyboard, and push the limits of the built-in help system I’d convinced myself ten years ago was insanely, annoyingly redundant and overkill (“Try clicking the yellow dog. The yellow dog. The YELLOW DOG. CLICK THE FUCKING DOG ALREADY!”). I’ve seen them stare at the screen and have an idea of what they wanted to do, but not been able to keep their eye on the screen and move the mouse in the right direction. They point and click at things that obviously aren’t clickable to the person who built the thing, and when nothing happens, they lose the ability to predict, with confidence, what is clickable and what isn’t. And when they can’t predict what behaviour is expected of them or will reward them, they get angry.

And here’s the funny thing: the things they’re playing with on touch screens are far more sophisticated than anything they tried with a “traditional” computer; those were kids’ games, and really simple ones too. Maybe not the best (okay, definitely not the best), but simple. Now they’re Garage Band-ing, and Carcassonning, and Angry Birdsing. And watching videos. (And knowing if something is a Movie, TV Show, or Music Video, and I’m pretty sure without being able to read.) And inviting people to play games on Game Center. And deleting my apps and emails (note to Apple: user accounts, please). These are games and amusements that are ostensibly for adults, but they can get right in, and move their hands around, and if something happens that they didn’t expect, or something they did expect doesn’t happen, they try something else. Almost everything is tappable or swipable, so everything gives them some feedback, and there are almost no buttons, because the screen is the button.

None of this is to say that touch screen apps are innately superior, of course; there’s lots of room for bad design and interaction there, as evidenced by this post on Subtraction. But what the touch screen, and iOS in particular, have done is raise the bar on not allowing users to do anything stupid: there’s no persistent keyboard, and no persistent menu, so there’s no Undo on iOS. This forces the good app designer to take these limits into account, and try to make sure you’re never in a situation where you need undo. So you can proceed with confidence.

We may no longer be kids, but what works for kids will work for adults, and what works in toys can work in other interactive forms as well. (Dad note here, but when you find an app or website as carefully considered as the average LEGO brick, well, you let me know.) Much like the original Mac used a one-button mouse and ensured everything was accessible via menu, so the new touch interface is asking extra discipline of the app designer, with the payoff that users are happier, more exploratory, more confident. We expect the experience to be robust like a good quality toy, that it can take a throw or two against the wall without breaking. We hope the design and interface will make it as self-explanatory as a good board game, the kind that doesn’t need an instruction manual, because the board, pieces, colours and shapes tell you how to play the game already.

Now, I just need two more so I can get mine back.