Juan Sanchez

Ah, the Apple Genius Bar. You walk up, tell someone you have an appointment and that’s it. No number or anything. You just stand in a confused crowd trying to figure out where they need to stand so no one cuts in front of them. It doesn’t help that your name is flashing up on the “helping next” board and nothing is happening, so you think you’re gonna miss your appointment. All the while you’re looking around to see if other people that got there after you are being helped.

Then, magically, an associate walks up to you and knows you by name. I was totally confused, but then realized that the person I talked to initially had written down a description of me (“Green Coors shirt”) and that’s how I was found. It was all just really disorienting.

I’d love to have visibility into how they describe people. I’m sure it would make a very popular website.

WWDC 10 is over. I’m at Starbuck’s waiting to grab a cab to the airport and am reflecting on the last week. It was great learning about the new technology that was just skimmed at the keynote, but one thing is missing. It’s something a lot of people were hoping to hear about; an update to AppleTV. However, I think to a certain degree we’ve seen the components that could make Apple TV an entirely new TV experience. In the end, the TV may be the last screen Apple attempts to dominate and they may succeed. Let me explain.

Think about your current television. What’s great about it? Well, a great thing about it is that it can provide an awesome viewing experience. You can be instantly immersed in that experience with very minimal distraction.

Now, what sucks about? For me, it’s finding content. Endless scrolling lists, crazy remote controls and complicated set-top boxes. Granted, I only look forward to a few shows a week, but still, when I’m looking to watch something and tune in I immediately get overwhelmed. I just want to view stuff that’s relevant as quickly as possible.

Some solutions I’ve seen try to solve this by allowing you to search. Which may be part of the solution, but I really don’t want to have a keyboard on my lap to go with any remote controls. I’d rather just get rid of all that.

So, what’s the solution? As I mentioned, some of the technology we may have heard about may already be prepping us for a solution, beginning with the apps on your phone. Think about it? The apps you choose to download already begin to create a profile of your interests. Imagine if there was a way for those apps to display their content on a TV as easy as going into landscape mode or taking a picture.

We browse a ton of content on our iPhones, iPads and iPods. Wouldn’t it be cool, for example, if I were in the ABC Player app and while I’m watching a show I could tap a “Play on AppleTV” button, which would immediately detect my AppleTV device and start playing that content right on the TV? Better yet, what if I’m playing Real Racing and want to switch my view to play on the TV? Simple, tap the “View on AppleTV” button and now my iDevice turns into a controller and my view is now on the TV!

How would this work? We’ve already seen something like this on the iPad when you connect it to an external display. When you do, a completely different viewing version of the app is shown on the external display, while you go into a different mode of the app on the iDevice. This same thing would be great for TV because the iDevice could turn into the most appropriate thing for the way it’s being used. The iPad becomes the game controller or the iPad becomes the remote.

There’s one thing missing though; the hardware/software that connects the iDevice to the TV. How about that UI-less device people are buzzing about that is supposedly priced for $99? That device could sync what apps you have (wirelessly I hope) and when you trigger a bit of content you want to engage with on the TV, that triggers the AppleTV hardware with the app and you’re instantly in game/viewing mode, whether it’s content from the device or streaming.

Throw in GameCenter, iAds, an awesome OS, the ability for publishers to dictate content, a ton of devices ready to go and you may have that go-to-market strategy Steve mentioned. With it, there’s an opportunity to bring a whole new level of engagement to the TV. Would you pay $99 to get that? I would.

If you have an iPad you know that on the lockscreen there’s a button you can tap to turn your iPad into a digital picture frame. I was thinking, why limit it to just pictures? What if you could turn the iPad into a jukebox, clock display, etc. right from the lockscreen? Here’s a mock up:

Menu to select iPad Lockscreen Options.

Basically, instead of tapping the picture icon, there would be a more universal icon. When you tap on that you would see a popover with options for apps that support the lockscreen. These would be optimized views that did very specific things. For example, selecting “iPod” would shuffle songs like a jukebox, like this:

The iPod App as a Lockscreen

Other examples

Any app could be packaged with the optimized lockscreen view. These views would do one thing and provide no options besides switching to another lockscreen version of an app (and unlocking your iPad). Here’s some other examples:

QlockTwo – This is a typographic clock app. It would be awesome to be able to have this as an option and run as a clock on my desk while I’m not using my iPad.

Twitterific – This could show your tweet stream, but I think that might be a little extreme. It could show a single tweet from your tweet stream or maybe display your tweet stream in a different way that didn’t feel overwhelming.

This Day in History – Display a single view with a list of things that happened this day in history or maybe cycle through different events for that occurred on that day.

Dictionary.com – Could show the word of the day or cycle through a different word every hour.

Sure, something like this shortens the life of your monitor cause your screen would be on a lot more. Still, I thought it was worth mocking up.

You can see the images in higher resolution on my Flickr page.

As I’ve been working with the iPad I’ve been intrigued by some of the UI differences between it and the iPhone. One of the first things you notice when playing with the iPad is the popovers that display in context of the element you’ve interacted with. On an iPhone, the same interaction would take you to a new view.

This got me thinking about how popovers might be used outside of applications and in the homescreens where your app icons live. Specifically, I was thinking of how I could use popovers to peek at specific content from an app instead of launching the entire application. For example, peek at recent emails, see what AIM buddies are online, etc.

Sure I could fire up the application and navigate to the information I’m interested in, but I’m lazy and am not interested in doing that. So, here’s some mockups of what I’m thinking. The popover could be displayed by double-tapping the app icon.

Peeking at Twitterific to see only recent tweets

Peek at AIM to see who's online

See what the current weather is like

The person who creates the app can dictate what shows up in the Peek functionality of the app, but the goal would be to have a minimal amount of interactivity. Otherwise, what’s the point? The user could just launch the application.

It would also be important to keep content to a minimum. For example, don’t show an entire Twitter stream, just show the most recent tweets. Maybe even limit it and have the option to see more tweets that launches the app.

Customization of each Peek view might be interesting, but it may not be necessary. For example, setting Twitterific to show recent replies versus recent tweets.

Dashboard and Widgets on the iPad

When you think about it, this feature mimics in some ways the Dashboard in OS X. So, if these views are already created, why not have a Dashboard app on the iPad?

To add these Peek views as widgets to the Dashboard app you could drag the icons onto the Dashboard app icon similar to the way folders work in iPhone OS 4. The only difference would be that the Peek views appear in the Dashboard now and the actual apps themselves don’t leave the homescreen.

It’s just an idea

Like any quickly executed idea I’m sure there’s flaws in this, but I thought it’d be fun to mock up. You can see the full resolution mockups on my Flickr page.

…one of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real.

via LukeW | iPad Apps: Physicality and Heightened Realism.

This looks like an awesome eBook reader. Sounds like the company who makes this app is going to be bringing textbooks to Apple’s iPad too.

via Iceberg Reader.

No, the iPad isn’t for everyone. But I’m going to go on record as saying that, for non-computer-geeks everywhere, the iPad is going to redefine computing.

via Ethan Nicholas on TechCrunch

It appears there are several new gestures being introduced on Apple’s new iPad. Luke Wroblewski pointed out some he saw in the keynote.

Since other companies are sure to duplicate the efforts of Apple, it seems their needs to be a universal gesture language or set of expectations that is consistent from device to device. For example, a simple interaction performed on computer is to copy/paste something. You know, Command + C/Command + V. I know I can do that on a Mac or a PC. So, there’s bound to be expected interactions like that for touch.

We’ve already seen things like the swipe, pinch/zoom, rotate and other interactions for touch begin to become a standard, so things are already going that way. Will Apple be the one to determine this language? Will other companies adhere to the same gestures Apple is introducing?

Will nobody care and just do what they want? That kind of scares me as a UI designer because I always leverage things that people are familiar with before trying to reinvent the wheel for the same interaction from application to application. However, I always run across new delightful interactions that really make the experience unique. The thing is, I usually have to discover those and, in a world without tool tips, that discovery is not always something you can rely upon.

Would it matter if everyone did their own thing? Everything in the physical world is interacted with differently, but there are some base level expectations of how you might interact with an object. Would it be wrong for touch interfaces to do the same thing? I imagine it would be some kind of hybrid.

It’s here. Apple’s new creation is the iPad.

People keep asking me about what I think about it and I’m just not sure yet. I can definitely see myself using this device while traveling or just casual computing while watching TV. But, is that enough to warrant getting one? Not sure.

I think a lot of people put some impossible expectations on this thing. If it’s one thing we’ve seen from the iPhone is that Apple likes to iterate on its products. There were delays in later releases of the iPhone because Apple learned so much about how people wanted to use the device (or so they say). That ultimately made the device better.

A camera would be cool, but I’d have to prop up the device or hold it straight in front of me, otherwise people would get a direct shot up my nose. I can see multitasking being beneficial, but I can also appreciate having one dedicated task at a time; if I’m reading I’m reading, or focussed on watching a video, etc.

From what I’ve heard, the iPad is crazy fast. The form factor looks tolerable and I’m really interested in the types of apps that are developed specifically for the iPad.

So, like I said I’m just not sure. It might be one of those things you just have to experience to appreciate. I’ll find out in a couple months.