Prototyping Tablets

In S4 Computing, we have been looking at the process of product and software design. The process begins with Analysis and Design then moves on to Implementation, Testing, Documentation, Evaluation and Maintenance.

As we were looking at Analysis and Design, we decided to look at how you might analyse the way to build a new tablet device. We researched the sizes of today's tablets:

• iPad 2
• Motorola Xoom
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7"
• Dell Streak 5"
• Amazon Kindle
• BlackBerry PlayBook

We also built models of current mobile phones. Once we had built the models to size out of foamcore board, we sketched their control layout on the board. We designed several "screens" of content on paper and tried them out for ease of use. We looked at the position of the front camera on the devices that had them and noted that some tablets were designed to be held in either landscape or portrait mode.

The big difference came when we made the tablets the correct weight. Using all the plasticine we could find in the school, we loaded up our board models with the appropriate weight and re-evaluated the models.

Suddenly the tablets that had seemed like a great design didn't seem so great any more when they weighed 700g! We looked at the different aspect ratios and argued about whether the Galaxy Tab 10.1's 16:9 screen is overall better than the iPad 2's squarer 10:7 display. We wondered whether anyone could stand to hold a tablet as heavy as the Motorola Xoom for a long time! Finally, we discussed whether a 7" tablet is really big enough to be useful.

So now we're on to implementation, testing, documentation, evaluation and maintenance!