I’ve read today one of the best articles about tablets written in a while: the first impressions after Nielsen got the chance to play for a few weeks with the new iPad. If you don’t know, Jakob Nielsen is ‘the guru’ when it comes to usability testing of anything that has to do with web. The article is quite long but worth reading if you think Apple did all the right things with the iPad. Contrary to its success, the iPad is a step backward when it comes to usability, setting the bar too low by missing on things we got used to in a long time since graphical user interfaces have shown up.

    I won’t give you all the details Nielsen has come up to after testing the iPad on 7 persons and will just tell you that in an year or so he will be back with a more detailed study. Till then here’s what Nielsen found out about iPad’s usability:

    • the UI shouldn’t be a scaled up version of the iPad’s
    • typical raised buttons are not used to give the user an idea on what elements can be touched
    • many apps are not using the same actions for the same buttons, so you’ll learn very hard to adjust to typical actions
    • too much next-prev article situations when web is all about possibilities to go wherever you want, not just back and forth

    If you got the time read the article and let me know what you think.