Study: Many iPad apps are confusing users
A study from the Nielsen Norman Group found many iPad apps are clunky and confuse their users. They believe an iPad app shouldn’t expand on an iPhone UI and touch controls should be improved.
The authors discovered inconsistent controls for, say, touching a picture, which could do any of five different things (such as flipping to the next pic or enlarging the pic). Apps didn’t spell out which parts of a screen were tappable and which were not, and users couldn’t find a proper Back or Undo button, features commonly found on websites.
They also found a host of other problems: “Users disliked typing on the touchscreen and thus avoided the registration process,” the authors wrote, and “Several new iPad apps have long introductory segments that might be entertaining the first time, but soon wear out their welcome. Bad on sites, bad in apps. Don’t.”
The authors offer some advice, as Wired points out: “The appeal of an iPad app increased when it was more functional than the site in way geared towards regular users of the brand…and [the authors] concluded that not every company needs to have an iPad app, and that far too many companies are putting out suboptimal versions of their content, seemingly just to get in on the platform.”
The study looked at a group of 16 people interacting with iPads they’ve owned for two months would experience during use. The subjects were asked to do a variety of tasks on different apps and a few websites.
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