One of these days, it seems, Google will out-app Apple: Apple just announced 50 billion app downloads; Google is still slightly behind at the time of this writing, with 48 billion apps downloaded to date, but given the number of monthly downloads, it is only a matter of time before Google will claim the top spot.
What is wrong in this picture?
The first user experience benchmarks we conducted focused on four 7-inch tablets: The Google Nexus 7, the iPad mini from Apple, Amazon's Kindle Fire HD, and the Galaxy Tab 2 from Samsung.
The results are in....
At the outset of this research was a simple but depressing realization: We don't know how to talk about digital technology any more.
More precisely, we are incapable of properly assessing the actual value users derive from these increasingly popular, not to say ubiquitous devices.
Being connected is not enough - a modern tablet should to provide the user with a rich set of content and apps as well as accessories and physical extensions that have the potential to transform a relatively useless device into a gateway to a wide range of possibilities and entertainment options.
The operative question is of course: what is a good, frictionless user experience? Well, that should be fairly simple: an ideal device should provide a completely natural user experience. We should be able to use it without having to learn anything, and nothing should inhibit our expected use of the device. Interactions should be intuitive, every operation should be smooth and natural.
Cognitive load is one of the great overlooked aspects of user experience. Yet it is quite easy to demonstrate—and hard to ignore once you are aware of it....