iPadOS Multitasking — Show them the way
A suggestion for making split-screen and multitasking in iPadOS better
With iPadOS, Apple continues to improve some superuser functions for the iPad, split-screen interactions, drag and drop functionality, etc. etc.. I welcome these changes because it makes the iPad feel more like a “for work” device. These features, though, often go unnoticed by casual or typical users.
The tips app that is built-in is friendly to help people, but we can do better than that. Let’s take one experience that iPadOS improved. How can we add a signifier to improve multitasking for the typical user, you know, like our moms?
Affordances are the Key
“…the term affordance refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used. […] Affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things. Plates are for pushing. Knobs are for turning. Slots are for inserting things into. Balls are for throwing or bouncing. When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking: no picture, label, or instruction needed.” (Norman 1988, p.9)
A physical object implies its use by the physical properties that it has. Have you ever tried to use the blade end of a pair of scissors and cut things with the handle instead? Probably (and hopefully) not. This functionality is evident because the part with the handle and its holes implies (or affords) its use. Affordance.
Signifiers Add Visibility to Affordances
What about your iPad? An iPad has an unlimited amount of affordances, with no physical objects to guide your brain. iPadOS’s multitasking, for example, falls in this respect because there is no way to know how to use certain features, or that they even exist, unless you are trained. iOS for years has been successful because its interaction design has been one that typical users could figure things out. Try to explain, without showing, to someone how to invoke split-screen in iPadOS. It isn’t straightforward.
Enter signifiers. A signifier is anything that can help a user infer those affordances without a tutorial. We need to give our scissor blades orange grippy looking handles. iPadOS should somehow say, “Psst, there’s this great thing called multitasking, and if you [do this], the interface will [do that].”
For the sake of my mom and yours, let’s add a signifier to the interaction, shall we?
There is much to consider because multitasking interactions can be very complicated. But for the sake of this exercise, let’s look at how it works currently and one way a signifier can help.
A user has to:
- Swipe up to show the Dock.
- Tap and hold just long enough for the icon to lift off the Dock
- Drag the icon over the active application
- To go into split-screen; touch and drag down on the indicator and move it to the edge of the screen
What can we do?
Let’s keep all that, but add a simple popover on tap of app icon in the Dock.
The popover can be as simple as this:
So the new interaction could look something like this:
In iOS 13, if you tap on the icon, it merely opens that app in full screen. A user in this state likely wants to put the selected app in a split-screen or floating configuration. By adding the popover suggested above, the user is put back in the driver seat without ever losing their current context.
They simply:
- Swipe up to reveal the Dock
- Tap on an app icon
- Select configuration
This popover could seemingly get in the way of a user that does know what they are doing. But the beauty of this solution is that if you know what you are doing, you’ll rarely see it. If you prefer the current flow, you can still touch and drag. If you do, this popover won’t get in your way since it only would display on the touch up inside interaction on the icon.
What I’d like to see:
- A continued effort to make the iPad more Pro
- Apple add signifiers to affordances for all features of iPadOS that make typical users able to use them
