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Here's another good example of a huge brand creating an experience that fits the iPad.

Amazon is clearly keen to push itself into a number of channels and has already had massive success with mobile.

With its new iPad application, it demonstrates an understanding of "the lean back" experience by translating the Amazon experience into a "Window Shopping".

It creates a fantastic browsing experience that allows the user to move rapidly through items and complete transactions.

It's further proof that the iPad offers brands an opportunity to create an experience with users that's fundamentally different from a typical website. With the growth of the iPad, brands can't ignore this area of development.


Posted by Ed Cotton

There's nothing that makes people in marketing more nervous than handing over control to the consumer. The idea is that they (consumers) are supposed to listen obediently to everything they are told and like good "puppies" act only on that information. Of course, this is complete fantasy, but the mythology and illusion still perpetuate the mind of many a CMO, marketing dept and creative team.

When it comes to the interactive world, this attitude is the kiss of death. If you ask a people in user testing to just sit, watch and obey- they will either ask to see the "skip" button, or leave the room.

It's great to have good content, it's the thing that really matters, but you've got to let users into the sandbox to play and get out of that content exactly what they want. This defines a good user experiences vs. a "non" user experience.

A fantastic example of a great experience comes from conference maestros TED and their freshly minted iPad application. The app allows users to select one of TED's awesome talks based on duration and/or theme, also it can even organize playlists for based on big ideas.

You instantly can see that this solves the convenience and practicality problem right away and also has a nice level of play potential.

TED could have easily just put its videos up on a site

It shows how fat TED has moved from being an aloof, expensive gathering for millionaires to an opinion leading think tank, that provides inspiration for all and this iPad app proves it.

Now all we need is for all those marketing types to give up their fear of handing over control and great user experiences will abound. 


Posted by Ed Cotton When your brand is powerful and iconic, others do the marketing for you.
Apple may spend hundreds of millions a year promoting its brand, but it's often the work of the "crowd" that generates the most attention.

Take a look at the work of the iPad orchestra.
 

The iPad Orchestra from Alex Shpil on Vimeo.

Posted by Ed Cotton An analyst at UBS wrote this in a report yesterday.



Posted by Ed Cotton Research work by Christopher Hsse and his colleagues at  University of Chicago has revealed some interesting traits about human behavior; namely that we are naturally inclined towards idleness to conserve energy, we would rather do nothing, but we are happier and less bored when we are busy.

Therefore finding hooks and ways to make people feel like they are busy or giving them the illusion of busyness is a huge business opportunity for experience creators.

One example given by BPS is making travelers walk further to pick up their bags, rather than making them wait at baggage claim. Given a task like walking to a destination is more pleasurable than simply standing and waiting.

This simple and somewhat obvious insight must explain the massive appeal and success of applications for phones and tablets.

The user feels that that these distractions will keep them occupied for a while and are pure examples of futile busyness, just the fact they exist and are easily accessible is probably enough for most users to hook them in and get them to trial. They are the "digital candies" of the information age.

While many of these apps might lack staying power, for the store owners like Apple, it's the constant stream of new apps and potential distractions that make the store exciting to users. The problem for Apple will come if the rate of application development slows and there are fewer and fewer newer and interesting applications to satisfy user cravings for futile busyness.


Posted by Ed Cotton Traditional magazine art directors seem to love the iPad because it respects the classic rules of the grid and pagination.

When we see examples of future concepts for tablets, most of the time they reference the physical magazine and just build interactivity around it. This is because the tablet is a "lean-back" device, something you read and look at on the couch, rather than "the lean-forward" experience of the computer.

Smart Design has tried their hand at imagining a future magazine concept on a tablet and have some good suggestions, based on solid research with magazine subscribers that gets translated into ideas around browsing, deeper diving and productivity. Their thoughts on the integration between mobile and magazines are especially good.

Smart Design magazine UX concept from Smart Design on Vimeo.

However, Smart's concept take a bit of a "rear view mirror" approach by exploring consumers current experiences to project into the future. In 24 months time we might be looking back at this concepts and finding them surprisingly dated. It's likely publishers and developers will come a long way in that time and create new experiences that don't mirror current magazine or online consumption, but are radically new ways to consume media.


Posted by Ed Cotton