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A couple of weeks ago everyone in the administration of the school my mom works at got Android phones. Only about 2-3 people understood anything the phone had

by ique 17y ago

A couple of weeks ago everyone in the administration of the school my mom works at got Android phones. Only about 2-3 people understood anything the phone had to offer of about a dozen people. They recently had to take the entire administration through a full-day course on how to use the phone. Do you think this 2 year old could understand the android platform as easily as she does iPhone OS?

anigbrowl 17y ago
I think this tells us more about education administrators than cellphones :-/
div 17y ago
Why not ? Seems like she's proficient in using the iPad because she already was iPhone savvy, as mentioned by the blogpost. Given some time with an Android device, I think she would do just as well sampling apps on Android as she did on iPhone OS. Her way of launching an app, playing around and then pressing the Home button would work on Android just as fine. I also believe there's quite a difference between a 2.5 year old playing around with an OS, and adults who may not be tech-savvy using a smartphone in a meaningful way. Or to phrase it as a question, do you think those people would have as much trouble understanding the iPhone OS as they did the Android OS ?
- ique 17y ago
  I haven't actually tried out the Android OS that extensively. Aside from testing it now and then on friends phones I've never really used it. Hence my question. Though my own experience with the iPhone is that a two-year-old could actually start using it right away, and that's not the feeling I get from Android. aphyr makes a brilliant point that simplicity and power often compete with each other and maybe Apple is trying to target the less tech-savvy user. Since I interpreted aphyrs comment as saying the Android app-switching method was easier, I was genuinely curious as to wether he thought the Android platform was overall as easy as the iPhone platform.
aphyr 17y ago
Familiarity and learnability are not the only rubrics for UI design. While it's good to make products understandable by two-year-olds, there are other important considerations in UI. Can it help you accomplish the task efficiently? Reliably? Happily? Vim, for example would never stand up to the two-year-old test, but is nonetheless an extraordinarily capable and efficient text editor--which qualifies it, in my opinion, for "good UI". I don't mean to imply Android is as readily cognizable to toddlers as the iPhone. What I mean to say is that streaming quickly from activity to activity through various stateless apps, each of which can plug into each other for various intents, is a more efficient way to accomplish tasks than quitting and re-opening apps from the home screen.

by ique 17y ago

anigbrowl 17y ago

I think this tells us more about education administrators than cellphones :-/

div 17y ago

Why not ? Seems like she's proficient in using the iPad because she already was iPhone savvy, as mentioned by the blogpost. Given some time with an Android device, I think she would do just as well sampling apps on Android as she did on iPhone OS. Her way of launching an app, playing around and then pressing the Home button would work on Android just as fine. I also believe there's quite a difference between a 2.5 year old playing around with an OS, and adults who may not be tech-savvy using a smartphone in a meaningful way. Or to phrase it as a question, do you think those people would have as much trouble understanding the iPhone OS as they did the Android OS ?

ique 17y ago
I haven't actually tried out the Android OS that extensively. Aside from testing it now and then on friends phones I've never really used it. Hence my question. Though my own experience with the iPhone is that a two-year-old could actually start using it right away, and that's not the feeling I get from Android. aphyr makes a brilliant point that simplicity and power often compete with each other and maybe Apple is trying to target the less tech-savvy user. Since I interpreted aphyrs comment as saying the Android app-switching method was easier, I was genuinely curious as to wether he thought the Android platform was overall as easy as the iPhone platform.

aphyr 17y ago

Familiarity and learnability are not the only rubrics for UI design. While it's good to make products understandable by two-year-olds, there are other important considerations in UI. Can it help you accomplish the task efficiently? Reliably? Happily? Vim, for example would never stand up to the two-year-old test, but is nonetheless an extraordinarily capable and efficient text editor--which qualifies it, in my opinion, for "good UI". I don't mean to imply Android is as readily cognizable to toddlers as the iPhone. What I mean to say is that streaming quickly from activity to activity through various stateless apps, each of which can plug into each other for various intents, is a more efficient way to accomplish tasks than quitting and re-opening apps from the home screen.