Summary

This report is based on usability studies with real users, reporting how they actually used a broad variety of iPad apps as well as websites accessed on the iPad.

We are making this report available for free to support our loyal audience of usability enthusiasts by providing them with early empirical data about iPad usability. This report is less thorough than our normal research reports and does not contain as many detailed and actionable design guidelines as we usually provide. We decided to publish the report anyway (as a donation to the community) because all experience from the last 30 years of usability shows that early usability findings have disproportionally large impact on design projects.

> Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox summarizing the report

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary
   • First studies
   • Wacky interfaces
   • Inconsistent interaction design
   • Crushing print metaphor
   • Card sharks vs. holy scrollers
   • Toward a better iPad user experience
2. Research Method
3. Websites on the iPad
   • Using full sites on the iPad
   • Using mobile sites on the iPad
   • iPad-specific website?
   • App or website?
4. Mental Models
   • Magazine mental models
   • Modeling a different app
5. Beautiful Images
6. The Touch Screen
   • Small target areas
   • Accidental tapping and the Back button
7. Lack of Affordances: Where Can I Tap?
   • Targets that do not look like targets
   • Invisible controls
   • No hyperlinks
8. Getting Lost in an Application
   • The home button
   • The search box
   • Tabs and the iPad's tab bar
   • Navigation panel on the left
   • Carousels
9. Changing Orientation
10. An Abundance of Gestures
    • Gestures that are too complex
    • Memory for gestures
11. Multiple Panels
    • Small font size and crowded content
    • Lower working memory burden
    • Disconnect between action and feedback
12. Methodology

Who Should Read This Report?

• Responsible for a company's or organization's mobile Internet strategy (or mobile intranet strategy)
• Designing applications for the iPad or other tablet computers

Even though this report is free, it is still copyrighted information, so we encourage you to not distribute it on the Internet—or otherwise—but instead link to its home on our website where other readers can download it if they are interested. Please do not link directly to the PDF file, but rather follow the guideline to reduce "PDF shock" by linking to this gateway page that summarizes the report within the format of a simple Web page: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/mobile/ipad/

Download Report (93-page PDF file, 10 MB download) (Free download)