An iPad App Is Not a "Big" iPhone App

As the iPad user base matures, a useful iPad app will need to look and act very differently than it's iPhone sister app. Many developers are missing the boat on this. Although the development skillset needed to build these apps are very similar, the user experience and design considerations are very, very different.

By nature of the smaller 320 x 480 screen, the iPhone (or any smartphone for that matter) is geared towards goal-based actions: check the weather; approve a workflow request; browse headlines; check your flight status; record a call-report for a customer; etc. The iPhone fits easily in your pocket or purse, so it's ideal for these quick hits of productivity. Because of it's small size however, it's not ideal for reading lengthy articles, doing in depth analysis or researching on the web.

The 1024 x 768 screen size reverses the purposefulness of the iPad (or any tablet for that matter). Given it's size, you can't carry it in your pocket and therefore it is decidedly less convenient than your phone for these goal-based activities. However, it's high resolution screen, light weight and ergonomic design make it ideal for pulling it out on the train/plane/cab/couch to do some research on the web, reviewing your call center statistics, responding to an email or drilling into some corporate business intelligence reports.

So after we build an iPhone app for a client and they ask, "How much to port it to the iPad", the answer is typically, "well not much if we utilize the same design and information architecture, but do we really want to do that?"

The use cases for the two devices are different, and although there inevitably will be some cross pollination of features between the two apps, some thought needs to be given to what makes sense on the respective devices. Or, at a minimum, what prominence is given to which features in the navigation.

Take Amazon for example. Their iPhone app includes some nifty camera features like scanning a barcode to trigger a search or taking a picture of a product you see to remember it for later.

Now granted, an iPad doesn't have a camera (yet) but even if it did, it's not optimal for performing on-demand actions.

Conversely, the Amazon iPad app puts Today's Deals as a main navigation item, something that someone on an iPhone is probably not going to be as interested in.

If a user visits the Amazon app on their phone, they've probably got a product in mind. If they visit it on the iPad, they may be more apt to browse these deals.

Content layouts and navigation in general also need to be modified to take advantage of the larger screen real estate. For example, the simple iOS tab bar navigation on the iPad, in many cases, fails to do the app justice on a 1024 x 768 screen. Both ESPN's ScoreCenter and Bloomberg's market research apps do a nice job of presenting integrated content feeds on their iPad's home screens, along with different navigation models than their corresponding iPhone apps'.

Bloomberg iPad vs. iPhone

ESPN ScoreCenter iPad vs. iPhone

So keep the different mobile use cases in mind when launching into the iPad world, and leverage the capabilities of the respective devices. Your apps will be "stickier" and your users will thank you for it.