Collapsing Experience Layers.

Using a personal computer is, in a way, akin to having intercourse in a hazmat suit.

For nearly a year after I bought my iPad, I essentially ignored my (now 4.5 year old) macbook.

When I needed to write, or assemble a .ppt, etc, I reached for the laptop, but passive consumption was generally handled with the iPad, or iPhone. Having thought about it at length, there where three main reasons this happened:

I stopped having a desk at home
I was spending less time at home
The experience of media and information consumption is just BETTER on an iOS device

The last point is the only contentious one, but it’s still worth discussing. A laptop is a browser dominated consumption experience. Nearly all consumption done on an iOS device is application based.

And applications pay more attention to the formatting, controls and ‘feel’ of information you consume.

Individual websites have a wide range of UX quality. but when you consume media from within a browser, we’re talking about three layers between the user and the information. It goes:

Physical interface (keyboard, mouse / touchpad, etc)
Browser (with its own UX and visual design)
Website (again, with its own UX and visual design)

The big step forward that iOS has taken, and that has expanded to other touchscreen devices, is the removal of these separations. The interface is the software is the content.

The fewer layers separating your input, and the feedback it generates, the more immediate and intense an experience feels. The mistake made by many, is the assumption that the flexibility and power of a tool, somehow outranks the immediacy of the experience.

When you make a decision regarding what tool to use, emotional connection plays as much of a factor as functional specifications.