Monthly Archive

Last week at a status meeting, I took a few moment of frivolity to joke about an issue we were having on a widget we had built -- instead of showing "what people are buying right now!", it appeared to be showing "what people are going to buy in roughly ten minutes". Yes, we had achieved the impossible, we could now predict a person's future behavior with 100% accuracy -- how cool is that?! Netflix, Amazon eat your heart out! (Ok, so, yes, the server on which orders are being processed had a date/time that was off by ten minutes.) BUT think about it, a prominent homepage widget quietly predicting future events...

So, this morning, I had another opportunity to peer into the future. This time the portent showed up in my inbox. Jakob Nielsen's alertbox gave his early iPad thoughts. The iPad was released on Saturday the 3rd.

Now, for anyone outside our industry, new device launches -- well, they are like new toys. They get dropped in our laps and we start trying to play with them. Every now and then, we get a toy that is a true "game changer" -- one that has the power to *change the way that we play*, work, live. The iPhone was one such "game changing" toy -- and although Apple is hopeful, the jury is still out on the iPad.

So, when Jakob Nielsen, one of the great usability pundits, releases his "early thoughts" on the usability of the iPad *before* conducting his user testing -- well, it is his prediction of the future.