Last week I looked at the roles in TouchXPRT that would make sense on a touch-based device like a tablet. I suggested seven possible ones. The next step is to create usage models and scenarios based on those roles. In turn, we would need to develop simple apps to do these things. To get the ball rolling, here are some activity and scenario ideas we came up with for one of the roles—consuming and manipulating media.
After doing email and reading books, this is one of the main things I do on my iPad. Originally, in this role I mostly showed pictures or videos (especially of my grandsons) to people. (Yes, people do hide when they see me coming with my iPad in hand saying, “You gotta see this!”) As the iPad and its apps have grown, I’ve found myself doing some cleaning up of photos, video, and even sound directly on the iPad. I think a person in this role is not necessarily an expert in media, but like most of us enjoys playing with media. So, the person might do something like scale/trim a video or add a nice cross-dissolve between two video clips. Maybe the person would even create a video montage by combining stock travel footage with personal video clips. Beyond simply rotating and cropping photos, the person might add some stock preset effects like making them sepia toned, adding titles, or creating a postcard. The person might create a slideshow based on a set of travel photos and use some visual or audio effects. They might also add sound by manipulating audio clips. Based upon these kinds of usages, the apps would include some of the features found in apps like iMovie, Instagram, SnapSeed, PhotoGene, iPhoto, and GarageBand.
What do you think? How do those activities match your usage of touch-based devices? What would you add, subtract, or change? Do you have suggestions for the other roles? Thanks for your help in defining what TouchXPRT will be.
Bill
