For the last few weeks, I’ve been handing my iPad to random people to gauge their reaction to the device and their reflexes once they actually HOLD one. Seems that iconfactory’s Craig Hockenberry has been doing the same. He did a great post on his site furbo.org recently about the communal/campfire nature of his family’s First Encounter:
I was particularly interested in how my mother, the quintessential technophobe, would react to the device. She picked up on things quickly and was flipping through photos in no time. It astonished me how the interface disappeared for her: at one point she subconsciously licked her finger before “flipping” to the next photo.
As interesting as it was to see someone non-technical use the device, the real eye opener was how several people could interact with the iPad at once. Much of my mother’s fear of computers was overcome because she was looking at the pictures alongside my sister-in-law who helped her out when she got stuck. Learning was organic.
I like the idea of the iPad as a multi-player device, even when it’s not being used as a gaming platform.
