Exploratory trying is a form of discoverability. Plus the whole social context of learning new gestures through friends using similar devices.
I looked at a Blackberry Playbook at the store and tried to use it without having ever seen anyone else use one before. I spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out how to close an app before finally looking it up online with my iPhone.
What amazes me is how GOOD my son is on the iPad and iPhone. He turned 2 in June. He can unlock the phone, knows the passcode, can get into any app and knows the "flick" gesture. On his iPad, he can navigate to his Sesame Street episodes or random Pixar movies.
I learned computers on an Apple IIe and a Mac, and this is basically that for him. To think that by next year we'll have retina iPads, by the time he's "using" computers for things like school, it'll be like really bright paper.
Next to the staggering complexity of learning how to drive a human body, and learning human language more-or-less from scratch, flicking, logging in, and getting to favorite episodes is a parlor trick. The only reason we think it's amazing is because of the number of adults we interact with that have decided that they are "technologically incompetent" and refuse to interact with technology and just throw their hands up. If 2-year-olds benefit from anything here, it's not coming with pre-existing notions of what they can't do.
Which can also be overromanticized; my two-year-old once demonstrated that he did not have a preconception about how unwise it is to stand up on a kitchen chair and throw yourself at the back with all your strength. He has what you might call a postconception now.
I think this shock that a two-year-old could drive an iPad in simple ways says more about the adults and the poor quality of their ideas about children than much about the children themselves.
I learned computers on a Mac+. At two I could load the disk into the drive, load up Paint Shop Pro, "paint" a painting.
The lesson isn't that iDevice's (or apple products) are amazingly intuitive -- it's that 2 year olds are quite smart and good at learning/playing/exploring.
Ah, so you're complaining that he was actively interacting with his target program (painting) instead of passively interacting with it (watching and 'consuming' a film, whatever 'consuming' means in that context).
Depending on which way you want to spin it, you could claim the ipad is better (omg! kid does less work and gets to sit back entertained!) or worse (omg! kid has lost the ability to actively create something, become a passive consumer instead!).
No I wasn't diminishing anything i was just saying the context of interaction and media consumption changes dramatically and what is normal for a two year old to figure out on their own will likewise change dependent on the affordances of the tools.
My kids will often unlock my phone to get at the Peppa Pig game but something inside me still thinks it's not right that a 2yo has his own iPad. I don't know what. It's probably irrational but I can't help feeling that books and posters are more appropriate. Of course, time will tell. I wonder if the games and interactive media on an iPad might shorten the already minuscule attention span of children :-\
Edit to add: I didn't want this to sound like I was critical of your parenting. In fact I'm probably jealous. We bought a poster on the Solar System for our 3.5yo daughter because she spotted Jupiter next to the moon yesterday and wanted to know what it was. And now I wonder whether I should have tried to buy an iPad and StarWalk?!
He has his own iPad (a first generation WiFi only) because we wanted to lock it down so he couldn't delete apps, etc.
He uses it for reading practice, coloring, watching movies, playing music. It's been great for cognitive development, letter identification, and especially music, which is his favorite thing.
I've learned to not discuss parenting on Hacker News however. Yikes.
This is what it'll look like though. Till now we've debated about putting computers in classrooms. Now it's going to be ridiculous to consider stripping him of his many computers, especially when taking him to the learning place.
Hey, my gf (25yo, ph.d in medecine), sometime try to zoom by pinching my macbook screen.. it takes 1-2 secs for her to realize "oh right, this is not the ipad". We always laugh of these moments :D
To be honest, I'm surprised there's not more touchscreen a little bit everywhere. I.e. On the coffeemachine, microwave, etc. It makes it so damn easier as you're not forced to use 1 interface to cover all use cases.. you can simply use a hierarchical smart interface.
