Adapt Learning Community: Using the Authoring Tool on tablets

Hi all,

In our Authoring Tool UI chat on Gitter we have recently been talking about the need to support users who wish to create courses using the Authoring Tool on tablet devices.

One of the huge benefits of having the Authoring Tool as a web app is that it can work on any computer or device. Some of the most popular Authoring Tools force users to only use Windows PCs. The Adapt Authoring Tool works on the other hand works with Windows, Mac and Linux with no issues. It should also in 'theory' be able to work on tablet Operating Systems such as iOS and Android.

However, there are a few screens such as the 'menu editor' screen which are designed to be impossible to use for tablet users. As they require 'double clicks' of items to interact with the page, this is a standard interaction on Windows, Macintosh and Linux, however if you try and perform this action on a mobile Operating Systems such as iOS and Android the screen resizes of opening the item, as such the user is unable to access this screen and is therefore unable to access the majority of the Authoring Tool.

Tablet devices are more and more becoming capable as productivity devices. Whether it is with additional hardware such as Bluetooth keyboards or new software updates that enable features such as better multitasking. Consumers are moving away more and more away from the idea of needing a laptop or computer to do their tasks and instead are happy with their tablet or phone device being able to do everything.

The Authoring Tool is due to go through a design refresh in the next few months. I was wondering how much the current Adapt Community think it is a priority that we create a design that enables support for tablet devices?

I certainly wouldn't have much interest in being able to use the AT on a tablet that uses a mobile OS like iOS or Android - I can foresee more interest in being to do so using a tablet device more like Surface 4/book - but I wouldn't call it 'high priority' by any means.

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I think it's a nice-to-have for now, probably the next year even. After a year I'd say it will become a higher priority as adoption grows and the AT UI/UX itself is ready to mature.

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I should have made clear that this wouldn't be a huge task to do just updating some double click interactions to buttons and ensuring that any information that requires 'hover' states are redesigned.

Matt - regarding your point of Windows tablets. I've never used one myself so I don't know if their input works. Does double taps on the resize the screen like on Android and iOS or do they work like the desktop version of Windows?

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To be honest it's been so long since I used one I can't remember - and this was before Windows 10 anyway. There's a couple of people at Kineo you could ask, I've sent you details separately.

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Hi Simon,

I've been using the authoring tool on a Surface Pro 3 with no problems. One advantage to this is that I get immediate feedback on how certain interactions work on a touch device or I can go ahead and use the track pad on the type cover for a desktop type interaction.

I haven't had any problems with double clicks.

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Hi Neil, Thanks for the feedback!

That seems really useful. to be able to test multiple inputs on a single device.

Would you like to see the AT redesigned away from double clicks and towards buttons so that you don't have to rely on using the trackpad to enter pages and courses to edit them?

Simon

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Hi Simon,

I've just done a quick trial of selecting items in the AT without using the track pad and haven't really encountered any problems. It may actually be easier to use touch than the track pad on the Surface. I imagine using an iPad or Android tablet may be a different experience.

Personally, I think the buttons might get in the way of my workflow.

Cheers,

Neil

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Thanks for testing this Neil!

From my testing on both Android and iOS tablets of the current AT I found that both double taps and drag and drop don't work at all. To be fair they are only used on a few screens so if we could find a quick way around this then it shouldn't be too hard to implement.

I can appreciate what you mean about buttons getting in the workflow. I feel like before design is started on the design refresh (we are currently doing a quicker UI update). We should research how to UX that allow tablets use without creating a slower interface on other platforms.If we come to the conclusion that double taps are indeed better then maybe we could enable 'long-presses' instead of double clicks.

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I think we can target tablet-size screens relatively cheaply if we design with this in mind -- there isn't much there at the moment UI-wise that won't work on a tablet. In my opinion, the double-clicks should go regardless; they're inconsistently implemented, and I don't think using double-clicks work well in a browser environment.

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