Condé Nast’s iPad Apps Shine in Usability Study
January 31, 2011
The market research company eye square recently tested the iPad apps of AZ Nürnberg, Der Spiegel, The Iconist, Vogue, and WIRED as part of a study entitled “iPad - the new way of reading: Goodbye Gutenberg...”. Magazines published by Condé Nast, a vjoon K4™ customer that uses the Adobe® Digital Publishing Suite, fared especially well. “The study’s clear winners” were Condé Nast’s WIRED and Vogue magazines, as well as Axel Springer’s The Iconist. These applications put the distinction between text and images to good use, and feature smart advertising with videos, for example. Their design was also commended for being sexy and trendy. Overall, the magazines were found to be well adapted to the new interactive environment. Users awarded WIRED top marks for its graphical content.
The goal of the study was to identify the advantages and drawbacks of the iPad in day-to-day use by analyzing user behavior with implicit methods, and to work out design recommendations for the iPad. The study findings: Magazines and newspapers that have been optimized for the iPad handle more intuitively and are less hassle to use. The iPad is a medium unlike others and therefore needs to be addressed differently. Interaction with the iPad is becoming increasingly familiar, so users have to devote less of their attention to handling it. Consequently, eye square sees great promotional potential in the iPad, as well as opportunities for publishers to launch new business models.
The company formulated the following recommendations for designing appealing iPad apps: Enable intuitive interaction as often as possible, include a table of contents for better orientation, understand the iPad and make the most of its popularity, and feature more multimedia such as videos.
The full study is available at eye square.
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