Illustrations Of People Using Their iPads At Work

I created these tonight. Sharing the wealth with my valued readers. Use it and have fun. Remember! All enterprise apps can be as cool as a consumer app on the iPad. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or lazy.

Look at that form factor, It looks natural for quick consumption, or conversation.

Simulating Simultaneous Movement Of Independent Panels In An iPad Prototype Built Using @AxureRP

While prototyping for an iPad app using @AxureRP you may need to move multiple independent panels simultaneously. This is a video showing you how you can do it.

While designing SAP Career OnDemand applications, I use prototypes similar to the one above to test the waters of a concept or a story with potential users. Since I can built these things myself, the turn around time to built, test iterate is literally days rather than weeks. This approach helps me talk to customers, partners, development colleagues and analysts with real data and confidence.

If you are wondering why enterprise applications cannot have user experiences like the one you see above, you have a point. They can and they will start looking like this in the near future. It is an idea whose time has come.

Simulating Multiple Panel Movements in an @AxureRP Prototype For iPad

This one is for the AxureRP prototyping geeks. If you want to simulate the dragging of multiple panels in AxureRP, there is a simple way to do that. The video below explains it.



The Axure Interaction logic is posted here.

Simulating Page Loading In An iPad Prototype Makes It Feel Like A Real App

While building iPad prototypes using @AxureRp I use a simple technique to make users feel like they are seeing a real iPad app. I deliberately display a page loading animation for a second just to give them the illusion that they are seeing a real app, even though they know very well that it is only a prototype. It helps the audience visualize the final design of the app, and helps me convey the possibilities.

Here is a video of how I do it.


Here is a sample gif file in case you want to use it. You should be able to right click and save this file, if you want to use it in your prototypes.

Simulating iPad Panel Movement in an @AxureRP Prototype

There is a simple way to simulate a panel movement in an iPad prototype built using Axure. Here is a video explaining how to do it. If you are interested in learning more about this, email me and I'll be glad to talk more about it.




There are some basic Axure features you need to know to be able to build the iPad prototype I explained on the top. These are the videos explaining those basic features you need to know.


How to add conditional logic to an Axure interaction

Building iPad Effects In A Prototype Using @AxureRP

I am increasingly thinking tablet-first while designing and prototyping enterprise applications. When I show my prototypes to customers, partners and colleagues, I want them to see the effects provided by the unique and interesting effects that a touch interface provides. 

I did not find too many prototyping tools that have built in support for the touch interface. So I decided to try building some patterns on my own using existing tools. Since the results are useful for me, I decided to share the wealth. Hope you like it. Let me know what you think. If more people find it useful, I will share more.

The video below shows how to build a swing effect in your prototype using the tool @AxureRP.

Click here to buy the AxureRP project file.
Buy the AxureRP 6.5 Project File Simulating iPad Panel Movements

The screen shots of the prototype I used to explain the iPad animation effect 

When it comes to technology more seems to be less

It seems Mark Twain once said "I did not have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead". When it comes to technology products, a long letter does not seem to work well.

I am an early adopter of the  Tablet PC from Microsoft.I am also an early adopter of the iPad from Apple. I use the Tablet PC extensively for drawing my storyboards. The pen interface is wonderful for drawing. The tablet PC could also do everything a regular PC could do. So, for most of the time I ended up using the Tablet PC like a regular PC and I was not using it as it was supposed to be. In other words I could use it like a regular laptop and it worked fine. This abundance of usage choice, I suspect, was the reason for its demise.

The iPad on the other hand does very few things compared to the tablet PC. In fact it is very very limited when compared to a traditional laptop and yet, it redefined computing as we know it. I, and all those who use an iPad, use it in ways that we never imagined.The Apple designers, I am sure, worked very hard to eliminate functionality while making the product useful in new and compelling ways for users. In other words, they worked hard to write us a short letter. When it comes to technology products, more seems to be less now-a-days.

If you are interested in reading about the topic of choice more, there is a good book named The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz.