Skip to content →

Tag: iPad

It’s over! Not even cats are interested in mice, mazes and cheese. They haz an iPad!

Published April 14, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Our changing times: interaction has got so easy the cats get it!

This is how much we have changed.

Baby Boomers:  Looked for the cheese.

Gen X:  Ask: who moved my cheese?

Gen Y: Looks for there mouse

Gen i:  Is polite to their elders and asks “What is a mouse?”

But you will have to be old to follow these references.  At least 2 years old anyway.

  • A year ago, we noticed kids automatically touch screens expecting them to be interactive.
  • Last week, YouTube trended a two year old ‘got’ the iPad within 30 seconds.

There is something profound in this sequence.  Cat’s play with iPad’s.  Mice? Cheese?

I suppose I am a little relieved.  I live in England and English cheeses are really good.  Cheeses are made to be enjoyed at the end of a long day in the company of friends. So maybe changes in the world order improve my lifestyle.  More cheese for me.

But change the world order has done.  The game of mice in mazes hunting cheese is over.  Not even the cats are interested now in mice, mazes and cheese.  They haz an iPad!

Leave a Comment

Toddlers with iPads remind us that complexity is good; it is complicated that is bad

Published April 8, 2010 by Jo Jordan

I must get an iPad!

Gen i

Lots of buzz today about a 30 month old little girl, still in nappies, who picked up a iPad and used it immediately.   What will she be like when she gets to school?

It’s not that she will know a lot.  She will simply expect that she is allowed to act on the world and that the world will respond immediately with useful intelligible feedback.

If people think Gen Y is spoiled, what will they think of Gen i?

So much IT is sooo painful

As for me, I wish the software I’ve been using today was responsive.  One program took over my screen, crashed a live podcast, demanded I reboot my computer, crashed my print jobs, and didn’t work any way.  I queued that reinstall for last thing tonight.

Now I am using a web 2.0 drawing program.  It’s super.  But I can’t find the right order to use the controls.  It stops working mysteriously.   As if design isn’t hard enough.   Well at least we didn’t pay for this one.

Complex is good; complicated is awful

And to remind budding psychologists who stop by here.  The little girl likes iPad because it is “complex”.  The iPad gives her choice and control.  At 2.5 she was playing spelling games.

My software is frustrating because it is complicated.  I don’t have control.  The feedback doesn’t help me find the controls.  And if I have any choice, I have not the time to enjoy it.  I am messing around with controls.

I’ll be interested to see if older people respond as easily to the iPad.  I hope so.  Old computers are terrifying to too many people.

Complex is good.  It is interesting and engaging.  Complicated is bad.  It is obtuse and exhausting.

Leave a Comment