Innocence lost is not easily regained.
Recently I was at a retail store playing with some tablets and I discovered that by not using a tablet very often or almost at all that it allows me to experience how it feels to use new technology as someone who would receive such a tablet as a gift.
While I’ve played with devices that are touchscreens - such a smart phones, tablets aren’t exactly the same to their non-tablet counterpart (android devices mainly). Now if I weren’t a designer & if I had received a tablet as a gift I might have been frustrated with the learning curve but since I was just playing with the tablet and wasn’t going to buy it I took a step back and would ask questions such as - what am I suppose to do now?
Is it on?
How many times have you had to help someone with their computer problems to discover it’s not even on. While I moved on from tablet to tablet I noticed I had difficulty turning the tablet on. Without looking directly at the button, I would push the top button on a tablet - nothing. So I moved on to the side buttons, push - nothing. I looked at one tablet and it’s power button was clearly on the top but was so small that I think the only way I could turn it on was if I pushed it with a pen. I went back to the first tablet which I couldn’t turn on by pushing the top and side buttons, looked at them and couldn’t find any symbols that would explain what the buttons did. I can only assume that the two side buttons next to each other controlled the volume but who knows what the top button did. Turns out the power button was located in the back - Next to the area which it mounted to the display.
First, the power button was placed away from a clear sight, now if the power button was placed closer to the edge behind it, it might not be much of an issue - however it’s still away from clear sight. Another factor is not only was it out of sight, but it was close to the area where all the other tablets were mounted; now everyday people aren’t going to mounting their tablets on a display but taking account that this product will be sold in a retail environment that means that it’s one of the places people will first use the product and if they can’t find how to turn it on, what makes you think someone will purchase it?
Lock Screen
Moving along, after finally turning on the tablet I was greeted with the lock screen - which is good from a security stand point and support. So presented with this lock screen I asked myself - How do I unlock this tablet? I saw an icon of a unlocked lock so I pressed it - the lock changed positions and had a larger circle around it. [For those wondering it was a motorola zoom tablet] Now did the lock move because I preformed an incorrect action? Am I suppose to place my finger on the lock and move it in the motion of the circle that’s presented? Am I suppose to press the lock again? All questions I asked myself.
I pressed the lock and it unlocked itself. I later walked back to it once it locked again and saw what happened if I pressed my finger in the circle but not near the lock icon. It unlocked itself. Which seems odd because if you press the unlock area the first time you are prompted (sort of - you aren’t really prompted) to press within an area which was close to the original area and even larger - However my thought would be if you are going to use the second action as a confirm that you want to unlock this device you would think it would be a larger circle first and a bit of a smaller circle to confirm. However the circle itself led to some confusion because I thought that I might have to press the lock icon and move it within the circle.
I found my observation interesting because as I use tablets more my innocence will be lost - but by being aware that I am new to this device and taking note to what I ask and how I preform actions it would allow me to have something to look back at in the event I ever have to design an application or device even such as a tablet.
