As you’ve probably seen from the Youtube videos, the iPad/iPhone direct interaction is as close to natural interface as one gets. The absense of a pointing device removes an extra step from between the user and the interface, and multitouch naturally adds to this in a very exciting way. In this article I’ll go through a few pointers about our tablet concept, and of course how and why we arrived into our design decisions.

Form equals function

Conceptually iPad has two orientations—vertical and horizontal. We came to the conclusion that in a context of TV use the form should be respected to some extent: the portrait form is perfect for browsing and reading content, whereas the landscape facilitates more old fashioned, TV use. One major factor supporting this is the broadcast industry heritage especially with aspect ratios of TV content. This is actually quite significant because SuomiTV has 100%  HD production pipeline, and hence all the content is very high quality 16:9.

Pointing fingers

From the start one of the main ideas for this concept was to have as little interface as possible and let people interact directly with the content itself. With iPad this comes quite naturally, and we felt we should take the whole notion of a seamless interface one step futher.

Despite being a young platform, thanks to other, earlier iProducts, the iPad comes with clear interaction language already familiar to users. There are three kind of controls in this concept; direct, gestural and physical interaction. The primary way of interaction is tapping the screen and receiving an immediate response. In addition to this, there are simple physical gestures such as swipe. In fact, these two(!) things are all you need to learn in order to use an iPad. And since we’re talking about direct manipulation, the learning curve is almost nonexistent.

Not just one, but two

What we did is build a gestural system on top of this. Single finger tap + swipes are reserved for navigation and straightforward tasks. Placing two fingers on the screen means either more prominent tasks such as swapping playlists and saving videos locally for later use. In our initial concept we also toyed around familiar gestures such as pinch, but ended up leaving it out from the final concept for later development. Instead, the landscape use gives you access to joystick-like contextual video controls, which enable an enjoyable flow without having to concentrate pointing accurately on a timeline.

The third way to interact with the content is physical interaction with the device itself. We believe that by physical interaction with digital content makes it more real and tangible. There’s some great potential here, and we included in the concept playful little things such as shaking the device to shuffle a playlist, and tapping the side of the device to fast forward / scrub a video.

Selected screens (click for larger)

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The concept is a result of compact three weeks of intensive work. We produced quite a bit of ideas and material of which about 25% made it to the final concept. Naturally our intention is to share as much as we can, so look out for more posts delving into related material.

Remember to check out the other parts as well;

• PART 1: TAP THE TV – the concept
• Our concept video on Vimeo
• Our concept video on Youtube

Bit of a background— at Nordkapp, we work with a fairly systematic process/framework which we apply to each project we do. SuomiTV was no exception—we started with a competitor analysis, which we then turned into some obvious opportunities and design drivers. After presenting the findings to our client, we proceeded to synthesize these findings into a high-level concept, which again was approved and designed into more granular and real world designs screen by screen.

After the workshop 1 it was already obvious we were designing a quite complex system with a very tight schedule. This naturally led us to implement the features into a very clear roadmap touching fairly many facets of the client’s business— and of course to deliver first concept documents and design assets to our agile partner, SBA, as soon as possible. Business as usual, and in a way we’ve handled quite a few projects recently. This whole project took about four weeks from start to finish. Not too much time in our hands, but still quite doable when designing a clear and concise service with clear drivers and all stakeholders working together seamlessly.

So, dear reader, I’m sure you can imagine our surprise a while ago when we received the information from Brightcove that we had indeed set a world record with this one. Our project had indeed been designed and implemented into a fully working system tapped into SuomiTV’s HD broadcast pipeline faster than anyone before. Quite impressive when talking about a platform which runs services for more than 1300 organizations all around the world.

Of course, things like this are more a byproduct of a successful project than anything else, and don’t hold that much of a value unless the main product itself is successful as well. But one thing is for sure— we are very happy and honored to work with partners like this, and especially with a client, Mikael, who trusts us his business and dares to take the leap with us. That is courage we are extremely grateful for.

What comes to the actual product, you can check the first public release at SuomiTV.fi/nettitv. We are currently working on quite a few aspects of the site and the business, but more about that later on. Meanwhile, please share us your thoughts and tell us what you think.

Our team that worked on the project consisted of Teppo (IxD lead), Petri (visual lead), Ilkka and myself. Teppo and Petri’s input spanned throughout the whole project, whereas I was responsible for the initial insight and high level concept, and Ilkka made sure our dialogue with Mikael + SBA was as seamless as possible.

Image credit: bass_nroll on Flickr

Presentation schedule

Helsinki Design Capital 2012 – Palvelumuotoilu kaupunkimediassa

9.00 Welcome, Esa Blomberg & Helena Hyvärinen

9.10 4 things to remember when designing service interactions Anton Schubert, 358

9.30 Miten palvelumuotoilu luo mahdollisuuksia kaupunkiympäristössä Mikko Koivisto, Yatta

9.50 Palvelumuotoilussa oli avaimet voittoon: Forum Virium Helsinki ja WDC (world design capital 2012)

10.10 case I, Mikko Jäppinen, Palmu inc

10.20 case II, Teppo Kotirinta, Nordkapp

The new old media

One of the most obvious uses for this is naturally the “old” media and the publishing industry. I am not probably very much off if I propose that the iPad, along the whole interaction paradigm, will breathe a new kind of life to the industry at a brink of being left behind. It will change the way how we see both form and content and the papers themselves. It will not happen overnight but  I feel that we’re approaching the tipping point on this quite soon. After more than a few not-so-successful attempts to bring the magazine experience to a digital medium (Flash newspapers anyone?) we’re finally on the verge of reaching the sufficient levels in technology, business ecosystem and last, but not least —interactions.

For a taste of what I’m talking about, here’s two examples: First, the GQ iPhone app which delivers a somewhat familiar magazine format spiced with video content for your iPhone. Buying an issue €2.99 a pop hasn’t ever been this easy. And once done with that, the Mag+ concept for Bonnier R&D by BERG London will most likely blow your mind.  What’s cool about it, the concept is very much implementable for iPad right away. And believe me, these both are only a taste of things to come.

The iPad as a prototyping platform

Which takes me to this: From our point of view, the greatest thing about iPad isn’t that it’s the business ecosystem, eBooks or even the possibility for quite slick and carefree couch surfing. What’s really cool about is that having roughly a 10″ multitouch tablet-like device with a proper, modern web browser. This means an easy access to a super capable platform for prototyping *anything* portable, with or without touch interaction. A clean slate if you will.

To illustrate the possibilities, a few uses from the top of my head would be concept, prototyping and development of a store cash register replacement, musical instrument or a sampler, a medical assistant or even a multi purpose communicator/support device for the elderly people. The natural interactions and ease of use are all there, while the technical capabilities are far beyond what’s needed. Very much of this of course is possible on iPhone + iPod Touch as well, but  the physical size is a major factor here.

What the iPad will *not* do is replace laptops and work machines at the office anytime soon. As Casey Reas pointed out— it is mostly about consuming media instead of producing, at least on a large scale.

Elsewhere;

— Pentagram’s Luke Hayman has posted a fairly good analysis on the publishing industry: Five ways the iPad will change magazine design.

— Gizmodo makes a very good point on Apple iPad just tried to assasinate laptops.

— New York Times’ David Pogue’s first impressions on the iPad.

— POPSCI Hands on, including video. Especially the browser behaviour looks super smooth.

— It’s all about the context according to Brendan Dawes.

— And of course, there’s always the nerdgasm/aftermath on Twitter

Since I was hyping ubiquitous computing and internet of things stuff so much, I want to add one more point that I missed during my talk. I wanted to say that we’ve known for 10-15 years that “the internet is the future”, and we’ve known for 2-5 years that “mobile is the future” – but now they both are already the “present”. There’s a lot of work to be done there still, of course, but they are not the “future” anymore. If you want to be pro-actively building the future, and not just reacting to present, I suggest you start looking into ubiquitous computing, post-digital and augmented reality sort of things.

May this recap presentation inspire you on that path.

Updates:
dConstruct09 podcasts are starting to be published online by Clearleft. They always put them out one-by-one so it will take some time to actually be able hear all of them, but in the following weeks/months you will be able to make your own judgments about what was said there by all those magnificent speakers.

Podcast available at http://2009.dconstruct.org/podcast/.

You have a surprising chance to see some of these keynotes live here in Finland too. August de los Reyes from Microsoft surface is presenting on September 30th in Microsoft’s Remix event in Helsinki, and Adam Greenfield is presenting on October 2nd in Mindtrek 2009 in Tampere.