Denise Preston on the allure of future predictions

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.

Although the screen is 5 times the size of an iPhone, developers should not jump to cram in a bunch of new features. He suggests that we could make it twice as feature rich, but make the features 2.5 times bigger so that it is easier to use.

Only being able to do one thing at a time -- monotasking -- might emphasize a more rich user experience because people will be more focused on a smaller number of things than when using a desktop computer.

The publishing industry is very excited about this release. Many hopes for the continuation of the industry as we know it have been pinned to the iPad device. Nielsen thinks that the fact that the iPad forces users to only do one thing at a time might support charging for content because it will encourage deeper engagement with the content than the superficial in-and-out that is true of desktop web use.

I am not sure I agree with Nielsen's logic about the iPad pushing content engagment. In talking to a colleague yesterday, I confessed that my iPhone has only served to make me crave more information, even faster than before. In the time it took for my bubble tea to be made in China town, we were able to use my iPhone to see what the bubbles were made from. I even confessed to using my iPhone at home because I can't bear the thought of waiting for my laptop to boot up. If I can't use my iPhone, I have found that I'd rather not know, than wait for my laptop to get there. I don't think I am alone in this.

If one accepts that this need for ever increasing speed is paramount, then the iPad might be a bigger hit than I had originally thought at it's unveiling. If they can work out the WiFi speeds, it could marry the desire for quick interactions with an interface that can be used reliably with a finger. (Anyone else remember trying to use a stylus on a palm and learning "graffiti" short-hand).

Having said that, I am not overly hopeful that this will mean more engagement with content and a rise in revenue for web content. I am starting to believe that in this time ruled by micro-blogging and information instant gratification, that it is not really device limitations that are driving consumers' shorter attention spans, it is becoming a human limitation.