Reflections on iPad usability

The former design director for the New York Times has written a blog post giving his thoughts on magazine apps for the iPad (something he clearly gets asked about a lot), reports Mathew Ingram on GigaOm. The bottom line? He hates them. With a passion. Why? Because, Khoi Vinh says, they’re “bloated [and] user-unfriendly” and because they are largely a result of a “tired pattern of mass-media brands trying vainly to establish beachheads on new platforms, without really understanding the platforms at all.”

Related to this is the report by Jakob Nielsen on the iPad usability in general, where he critiques iPad apps being inconsistent and having low feature discoverability, with frequent user errors due to accidental gestures. An overly strong print metaphor and weird interaction styles, he says, cause further usability problems. See also this Guardian article.