One year old thinks magazine is a broken iPad(news.cnet.com) |
One year old thinks magazine is a broken iPad(news.cnet.com) |
She is simply trying familiar gestures on a similar looking media.
Give her magazines for the next couple of days and you may find she tries to turn the iPad over looking for other pages. It's not because she thinks the iPad is a broken magazine. It's simple familiarity. First we try what we know. Failing that, we begin to experiment.
Newborns flail around not even knowing they've got arms. Then they learn to guide their arms and hit things. Then they grab. After a while they develop a sort of lobster pinch with the thumb against four fingers and can pick things up. Then they develop the thumb and forefinger pinch and can gently manipulate small things.
I'm pretty sure my nine-month old son would behave just like this, even though he's never seen an iPad. In his technologically-deprived state he contents himself with examining crumbs and bits of fluff from the carpet.
<quote>And there is nothing to indicate that she thinks it is "broken".</quote> ..
Ergo, the iPad is a magazine that is broken when you try to use it outside in the sunlight.
(This is mostly a joke, but if we want to go assigning meaning willy-nilly to these videoclips, this one fits too).
My son - admittedly the child of geeks, so maybe a little ahead of the curve - is growing up in a world where screens have always responded to touch; where devices can usually react to being tilted or moved; where you can control things through speaking, or gesturing.
I looked at a Blackberry Playbook at the store and tried to use it without having ever seen anyone else use one before. I spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out how to close an app before finally looking it up online with my iPhone.
I learned computers on an Apple IIe and a Mac, and this is basically that for him. To think that by next year we'll have retina iPads, by the time he's "using" computers for things like school, it'll be like really bright paper.
To be honest, I'm surprised there's not more touchscreen a little bit everywhere. I.e. On the coffeemachine, microwave, etc. It makes it so damn easier as you're not forced to use 1 interface to cover all use cases.. you can simply use a hierarchical smart interface.
It made me smile.
I did, however, tell her to think outside of the box. She didn't get the joke. Probably because she was one. Also, the joke wasn't that funny.
- You just need to click on the "diskette" icon. - Aunt, what's a "diskette"?
I bet in few years most UX designers will use the Dropbox logo instead of a diskette icon to show where you need to click to save a file :D
For those who are parents--are there certain apps/games you let your young ones play around on? Or, is the behavior demonstrated by the child in the video learned primarily by way of observation?
Also, "pocket pond" style things work pretty well with infants. Basically anything where stuff happens when you touch the screen. Though it helps to pick apps where it's difficult to pull up blocking menus. It's amazing how quickly a random-clicking toddler will find his way to the purchase screen in the App Store in most apps.
I imagine the 1 year old in the video is also falling into the 2 year old trap. But as people have commented this is just how learn and how our brains develop.
It's actually kind of amazing that Apple made both those interaction types - Apple 2 was THE FIRST time you had a keyboard + screen, and the iPhone/iPad are(perhaps more arguably) the most successful implementations of touch screen interaction.
I raise you Douglas Englebart and a decade earlier.
Edit: Just went a found Engelbart's lecture at Stanford - it's incredible http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html
Are you shitting me?
Edit: Makes more sense with the 'affordable' qualifier though it is still debatable as a "FIRST".
Edit: No doubt, to be totally honest it's not an area I really know too much about, I just have Steve shouting "THE FIRST" engraved in my memory from a few years ago...
And yes, it's not clear that iPads are a problem. But it's not clear that they aren't, and you are messing around with their brain wiring.
Sometimes when he touches, say, pictures in a newspaper or magazine, he's just trying to get daddy's input (same as when he touches something in a board book.) He touches a picture, and I'll say "it's a blue car!" or "what a furry kitty!" You might mistake it for "thinking the newspaper is a broken tablet", but not for long.
Or more seriously, please take that attitude outside and burn it... :(
Which can also be overromanticized; my two-year-old once demonstrated that he did not have a preconception about how unwise it is to stand up on a kitchen chair and throw yourself at the back with all your strength. He has what you might call a postconception now.
I think this shock that a two-year-old could drive an iPad in simple ways says more about the adults and the poor quality of their ideas about children than much about the children themselves.
The lesson isn't that iDevice's (or apple products) are amazingly intuitive -- it's that 2 year olds are quite smart and good at learning/playing/exploring.
Context is one thing (i.e., mouse, keyboard, MacPaint) and I agree that two year olds adapt to context amazingly.
Media is another thing entirely though. Context and media in intuitive ways will have far reaching ramifications.
Depending on which way you want to spin it, you could claim the ipad is better (omg! kid does less work and gets to sit back entertained!) or worse (omg! kid has lost the ability to actively create something, become a passive consumer instead!).
My kids will often unlock my phone to get at the Peppa Pig game but something inside me still thinks it's not right that a 2yo has his own iPad. I don't know what. It's probably irrational but I can't help feeling that books and posters are more appropriate. Of course, time will tell. I wonder if the games and interactive media on an iPad might shorten the already minuscule attention span of children :-\
Edit to add: I didn't want this to sound like I was critical of your parenting. In fact I'm probably jealous. We bought a poster on the Solar System for our 3.5yo daughter because she spotted Jupiter next to the moon yesterday and wanted to know what it was. And now I wonder whether I should have tried to buy an iPad and StarWalk?!
He uses it for reading practice, coloring, watching movies, playing music. It's been great for cognitive development, letter identification, and especially music, which is his favorite thing.
I've learned to not discuss parenting on Hacker News however. Yikes.
