Question number 6, can I teach without teaching? 1
Now, there's something that is said of a lot of digital products and it's the word in intuitive. 2
It gets used so frequently even I'm to blame sometimes. 3
So when we say intuitive like we say you know the iPad is so intuitive to use, we don't actually mean 4
intuitive because that would suggest that we were all born with the ability to interact with a digital 5
screen. But actually all it means when we say intuitive is just that it's really easy to learn how to 6
use it. 7
So this takes us to this idea of can I teach without teaching? 8
And we're going to bring up the NBC News app again. 9
So these are examples from their previous versions just to show you some of the anti-pattern. 10
Now when you first download the NBC News app, they have a tutorial to teach you how to use it. And it 11
says you know here's a quick rundown of the new features. 12
You can search by tapping the search icon. When you get to the bottom of the list 13
more stories will be added so you'll never run out of news. 14
Whoever designed this must have really assumed that people are idiots because if they were using the 15
app and they're going to scroll down to look at more when they get to the bottom and suddenly new stories 16
appear they would have learned this. 17
You don't have to make everything so explicit. 18
Now let's look at a better example of this. 19
Flipboard is one of my favorite apps and it's really well-designed and it was really really groundbreaking 20
when it first came out. 21
And one of the things that it uses to it's advantage is the swipe gesture and some pretty nifty animations. 22
Now when you first open up Flipboard if you didn't know that the way to use it was you swipe up and 23
you go to the next page, 24
after a few seconds if the user hasn't interacted with the screen yet, you'll see the bottom half popping 25
and peaking showing you that "Hey there's something else on the next screen" you know. And it pops up and 26
then goes down. 27
So intuitively, there's that word again, 28
so without having to learn this or without having been taught anything you will try to swipe up and 29
there you go. You've learned how to use Flipboard. 30
There wasn't a tutorial, 31
there wasn't a whole paragraph about how you can swipe up to flip to the next page. You've learnt without 32
learning. 33
So think about how you can implement this in your own app. 34
Nobody wants to be talked at. 35
So trying to teach without teaching.