6 ms·
A 2.5 Year-Old Has A First Encounter with An iPad
- thomasreggi 17y agoSo easy a child can do it? I really think testing a user interface on a child is key to good design.
- pclark 17y agoreally? why?
- potatolicious 17y agoThe more "higher level" thought processes required just to operate the basics of your device (e.g., basic navigation, app launching, scrolling, etc) the more mental effort (and thus, frustration and cognitive load) it takes from the user. As an extension to this, the less brain power you have to devote to basic, fundamental interactions with the machine, the more bandwidth you have to dedicate towards other things (e.g., if the calculator is hard to use, you're spending more effort wrangling the calculator instead of solving math problems).
- _delirium 17y agoI'm not sure that always applies. I find myself much more productive on an RPN calculator, once I learned to use it, than on standard calculators, even though the learning curve was higher. I also find that with window managers, tiling WMs were harder to learn, but are a lot better now that I know how to use them.
- thomasreggi 17y agoI really like the calculator example. Imagine a buttonless calculator that just took dictation in plain english and gave the result for really complex equations.
- viraptor 17y agoNot sure I would want one. ".... over two plus three. No move the plus three out of the fraction. The other one. Don't put the fraction plus three in parentheses. Ah... just let me use the keyboard!" Non-trivial math expressions are very hard to dictate.
- thomasreggi 17y agothing is we tend to complicate things unnecessarily when things are simplified down to an instinctual intuitive process the experience becomes more enjoyable.
- tzs 17y ago"So easy a child can do it?" But is it so easy a caveman can do it?
- thomasreggi 17y agoI'm a sucker for good slogans...
- edo 17y agoThe grandmother test is a few gazillion times harder to pass. Beat that one, and you conquer the world!
- thomasreggi 17y agototally thinking about this while I was watching
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- edo 17y agoIt's amazing how fast she grasps the concept of the UI. Either she has some experience with an iPhone, or we have gotten to a point where interface design has become so intuitive that 3-year olds grasp software immediately. I think the first is the case, but impressive nonetheless ;-)
- jey 17y agoThe video's description says she has iPhone experience, but still very interesting to watch her just start poking around and exploring right away.
- indy 17y agoIn the video description he mentions that his daughter likes playing on his iPhone
- kalid 17y agoI think the description mentioned she had used an iPhone before. But still, it's amazingly intuitive.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- yish 17y agoShe has used an iPhone before and played with many of these apps on the iPhone.
- jgerman 17y agoI'm sure she's had a little experience, but the touch interface is really intuitive. My daughter was less than a year old when we watched her unlock my wife's iPhone and start playing with it. It wasn't taught to her, it was just natural "mommy did this, then this, so I will too and it works".
- nooneelse 17y agoThe word for that is "imitation", not "intuition".
- andreyf 17y agoMy daughter learned to do all of the basic iPhone interaction --scroll between home screens, launching, and quitting apps-- at around 19 months. Launching apps was the most difficult part, as it took her awhile to learn to touch only one part of the screen. It seems to me a brilliant testament to great UX design. While on the subject of judging things by the reactions of small children, the first brand she recognized consistently is Google's - that includes the Google logo, GMail, and a GTUG t-shirt [1] (although she calls them all "Googool"). It's probably because the sound is easy to pronounce, and because of the distinct coloring, but it's still a little freaky, for a year and a half old toddler. 1. http://roman.nurik.net/images/designs/gtug.png http://roman.nurik.net/images/designs/gtug.png
- dsspence 17y agoQuick, get her reading Gogol.
- gojomo 17y agoShades of Neal Stephenson's A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. But also, from a friend who's had problems reclaiming his iPad from his 3-year-old son: shades of Ray Bradbury's The Veldt.
- mbrubeck 17y agoHere's the link to the father's blog post with some brief commentary: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1245661 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1245661
- hasanove 17y agoComments on video by its author: http://laughingsquid.com/a-2-5-year-old-uses-an-ipad-for-the-first-time/ http://laughingsquid.com/a-2-5-year-old-uses-an-ipad-for-the...
- frou_dh 17y agoThe physical home button for bailing out when problems or boredom strike certainly works well for her.
- sh1mmer 17y agoAnd for me!
- philwelch 17y agoAnd it's fast. Everyone complains it doesn't have multitasking, but is there really a better way to switch apps that would be any faster than that even with multitasking?
- pak 17y agoThe card interface used on the new Palms works pretty well for that. You can basically see it in the way MobileSafari handles tabs, which is about as close to multitasking as you can get on an i$Device.
- hackernews 17y agoIt is great on WebOS. The full swipe on the gesture area to flip through the cards is as easy as it gets. I don't see why they couldn't do it on the apple products, they have the bezel for it.
- jonah 17y agoProSwitcher for your jailbroken iPhone does this nicely. http://tinyurl.com/proswitcher http://tinyurl.com/proswitcher
- aphyr 17y agoYes. Coming from android, the ipad app-switching interface feels cumbersome.
- 17y ago
- swombat 17y agoNow try giving that 2.5 year old a Netbook with Windows on it and see how well that works.
- kalid 17y agoExactly. So many people miss the fundamental UI shift that's happening here. We don't want a desktop in another form factor.
- leviathant 17y agoNow try giving that 2.5 year old a violin and see how well that works. Now try giving that 2.5 year old a graphing calculator and see how well that works. Now try giving that 2.5 year old a drum kit and see how well that works. Now try giving that 2.5 year old canvas with a palette of oil paints and see how well that works.
- kalid 17y agoThose are great examples. Regular PCs are like giving people drum kits because it satisfies all the "requirements". The iPad is like giving you maracas, a tambourine, or bongo drums. Same functionality? No. Vastly more fun for beginners? Yes.
- leviathant 17y agoI realize we're stretching the analogy thin, but maracas, bongos, and tambourines can all be had for $3-$20 each.
- kalid 17y agoVery true, but are we considering cost or usability?
- davidedicillo 17y agoNo, the iPad are maracas, that can transform themselves in a tambourine, or bongo drums, or in a scientific calculator, or in document editor, or in 500,000 other things.
- krainboltgreene 17y agoI'm getting one for my 3 year old daughter. She's never used a touch UI. She has played some with my old laptop. I'll record the first interactions.
- ssn 17y agoClearly her previous iPhone experience was paramount.
- adriand 17y agoThis really can't be overemphasized. I have a child about the same age (two-and-a-half) and he's been playing with my iPod Touch since I got it December 2008. He's proficient with it, just like her - able to easily navigate between the different pages of apps, launch new apps, use the navigation within apps, etc. But obviously, it wasn't like that when he first used it. It took time. For example, it took forever to teach him that if the hand that is holding it is touching the screen a little bit, then it won't properly register new touch events from the other hand. Eventually he just learned this, but it took a long time. The other thing to note is that children actually learn how to use computers far more rapidly than you might think. It's not just devices like this, where people will assume that it is the multi-touch and intuitive interface that makes it easy for them to learn it. This helps, sure, but I was shocked when, after a mere two hours or so of usage, my two-year-old had learned how to navigate Flash games in a browser using the mouse. I was about to restart the game he was playing by clicking through the menus but no, he grabbed the mouse and did it himself, to my amazement. Bottom-line: although I sense that many people will assume it is Apple's superior design that is responsible for this child's proficiency, I think that the combination of prior experience, plus the very quick learning abilities of young children, is a more important factor.
- stuff4ben 17y agoIt's weird, my twins are almost 3 and they have yet to play with a computer except the couple of times I had some Elmo episodes up on Youtube. Most of their play comes with the old fashioned puzzles and dolls and other assorted toys. I figured they wouldn't know what to do with a computer, but clearly I need to revisit that. What kind of things can a 3 year old do with a computer? I admit I haven't the foggiest idea of how to introduce a child to a computer.
- adriand 17y ago
- chrislloyd 17y agoThe best bit of this video is where she hands it to her father and asks him to try. I'm guessing, but that gesture wouldn't have come quite so naturally on a traditional computer.
- gizmo 17y agoStray observations: 1. kids are awesome 2. she only got frustrated once, and that was when she couldn't get back to the home screen. With the hint "press the button; the big button" she felt in control (and happy). 3. By this point I'm thinking how I would simulate her investigative behavior in software. It's not systematic, but it's oh so efficient. 4. the confidence with which she dragged the letters to the "learn a word" app. First hesitantly, a moment later she fully expected the scrabble block under her finger to move along. You can spot the difference because she stopped checking whether the letter would follow her finger, she knew it would. 5. Confusion when she put her left hand on the edge of the iPad. This is where the immersion breaks and she needed a hint to get back on track. In fairness, most adults who try an iPhone for the first time make the same mistake, if you can even call it that. 6. The confidence with which the dad goes "Yup", knowing that she can't possibly do any damage to the device. 7. How she immediately goes into "piano mode" when a keyboard app appears on screen. 8 . It surprises me that she makes the same mistakes most adults do when trying a iPhone/iPad for the first time. So much for my stray observations. Fascinating stuff.
- DougBTX 17y agoI was about to comment on point 2, when I saw you covered it in point 5. I imagine that the resting touch problem could be solved with software, the iPhone keyboard for exams supports resting a finger on one key while you touch the next. I was surprised that it didn't work on the home screen, eg, ignore the touches from a resting hand.
- gizmo 17y agoThe glib answer is this: You have a problem. You solve it with heuristics. Now you have two problems. If I had to guess why Apple designed it this way? Here goes: Apple can't determine what a resting hand is as an abstraction, because sometimes a resting hand should do something (e.g. the pinch gesture; one static touch + one moving finger). So app developers would each have to implement their own heuristics to decide what's "probably" an accidental touch and what's "probably" a deliberate (but sloppy) tap. Result: you won't be able to predict anymore how the iPad will behave. That's far worse than having a predictable but imperfect system.
- dsspence 17y agoShe has the attention span of a 2.5 ye -- oh.
- lauken 17y agoCould this become a usability test? Take your app or device and observe the interaction; positive and negative to improve overall UX. Similar to the drunken user test.W ould the results be valid for business functions where the child does not have or understand the need or problem being solved?
- CoachRufus87 17y agoi can only imagine what kind of technology we'll be dealing with when she's reading HN
- hackermom 17y agoWhat I find striking is how intuitive it all seems. She just "knows" how to use the device. It is very interesting from a user interface and HID perspective.
- bm98 17y agoAs a father of a 1.5 year-old who loves the iPhone, this looks very familiar. But toddlers pick up on all kinds of new things incredibly fast, so I'm not sure this tells us much about the learnability of the iPad for computing novices of any other age group. It seems easier than the typical desktop/laptop, but there are many subtle interactions that have to be learned and practiced to use the iPad. I would like to see how well a 60+ year-old without prior computing experience interacts with it.
- cheald 17y agoMy 1.5 year-old knows how to use the mouse (he grasps the interaction between what's in his hand and what happens on screen), spinning the wheel while the mouse is over a window makes that window move up and down, and that the "media" button on my keyboard launches Foobar 2000. Kids are wicked smart, and learn shockingly fast. Needless to say, it's impossible to work with him in my lap.
- edo 17y agoFor people interested in interface design paired with kids new to UI's. The following link points to research performed in India, where computers were dropped in slums for children to use. They monitored their progress in understanding the interface, and in discovering the web. http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/kids.html#04 http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/kids.html#04
- EwanMacLeod 17y agoJust fantastic
- RevRal 17y agoAnyone else think this could have very well been a father teaching his child how to use current caveman technology? Like a bow and arrow. "It doesn't work when you hold your thumb there. Good. Now pull the arrow back and release."
- ecq 17y agoI have a 2 year old boy and he loves the iPad. There's an app called Doodle Buddy he really likes.
- jacquesm 17y agoFor the longest time the mantra in good user interface design has been 'make it so a three year old can use it'. This video so proves that to be a true thing. I always try to find people that have as little exposure to computers as possible when trying out new stuff, I never actually thought of taking that literally and employing toddlers as testers, but after this video I'm 100% convinced that's the way to go.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- skywalker 17y agoIsn't the radiation dangerous for small children? EDIT: whoa! I have been downvotted after asking if it is safe for children. So, here are some references. "Children have much thinner skull bones and their brains have a lot more fluid, so their brain tissues would likely absorb twice more radiation compared to an adult’s brain. But cellphone radiation standards set by the government remains the same for both groups." http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/tag/radiation/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/tag/radiation/ "If the notebook is sitting on a child’s lap, that child is exposed to radio emissions comparable to that of a mobile phone. If the notebook is 20 cm away, the child is subjected to exposure of just 1% to that of a mobile phone" http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/04/29/warning-keep-wi-fi-notebooks-away-from-childrens-laps/ http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/04/29/warning-keep... How about that?
- thejake 17y agoActually, Apple ended up going with the standard lithium ion batteries instead of the thermonuclear reactor for the iPad. Pretty weak if you ask me. Any money that the HP Slate will have a 50MW unit.
- viraptor 17y agoChildren are going to take your mobile phone, put their head near the microwave, suck antennas of your wifi router and do lots and lots of crazy things that will expose them to different kinds of radiation. (while you're not looking / least expecting of course) Can anyone really protect children from EM waves of various nature these days? There are probably more dangerous items in your environment than an iPad.
- yters 17y agoI propose a macrnews (MN) for posts like these, and all similar as new mac products are released and rumors dispersed.
- cracki 17y agoit's a giant ipod. of course the girl knows how to use it. her father probably let her play with an iphone when she was still in her mother's belly.
- sliverstorm 17y ago"The Apple iPad. So simple, your 2-year-old can do it." I can't decide whether most people would be affronted or happy. I know I would turn away from an ad like that, but on the other hand based on the explosion of IT'S SO EASY ads in every sector, I'm probably a minority.
- froo 17y agoVery cool vid. We haven't gotten these in Australia yet so I'm wondering what (if they exist) the parental controls are like for the iPad? I'd be curious about purchasing another one for a nephew.
- heyitsnick 17y agoNote at 2:54 how she naturally crosses her legs... What's was that link on HN the other day about ipad and seating posture?
- nooneelse 17y agoAsked for a camera, "I want the one the takes a picture." Too bad, kid.