The Professional and the iPad: Part 6 - Use Cases for the Pro

Use Case 1: Mr. Good Note
The model for a good laptop device or a great arm's length device is the book. It contains knowledge, it's portable and a single book in-hand fills its role innocuously. (A pack full of them is a back-breaking pain.) Likewise the paper notebook or notepad is the universally accepted portable device for knowledge retention in the both the board and class rooms. While you can walk into most class rooms with a laptop computer these days, most meeting rooms are still hostile to the presence of computers. But take a tablet notebook into a meeting and the objections disappear. For me me the lesson has been clear; the tools of engagement, and the way they are perceived, are important in determining the success of a meeting.

The iPad has the opportunity to displace both the book and the notepad. The immediate use case for professionals is as an information storage and capture device. My experiments with the TC4400 tablet computer have persuaded me that there is no real resistance to a computer being in a meeting, just certain types of computers and form-factors. The trouble with my existing tablet? It's heavy, dim and has poor battery life. You just don't want to go to a meeting with your power plug in hand. So the iPad's promise of light, bright, long-life display is compelling. There is a problem though. Typing on the display is going to be unnerving to other meeting attendees, so I am planning on using a stylus with my iPad. I'm sure it will be essential and I will report back on this as I gain experience with concept. Interestingly, stylus products are all from third parties and Apple does not natively support "inking" in the iPad. This will be a big space for developers and early indications are that are a few developers ready to port their iPhone inking programs to the iPad.

Use Case 2: The Memex
If you have never heard of Vannevar Bush's Memex, you will be using something like it soon -- whether it's an iPad or not. Many of us use our iPhone's like a Memex now however the screen size and resolution is not optimal for many pictures and diagrams. The iPad thrusts us into the Memex age with ubiquitous connectivity, portability and accessibility. Every professional could use a Memex, so go buy an iPad. With access to Wifi or 3G, you have a port into all of your knowledge windows.

How will the iPad work with private sites, networks and personal information? Very well. I smile every time I hear or read about "lock-in" or "closed systems" on the iPhone or iPad. Have you been to the App Store lately? The iPad is going to do a few things really well out of the box, the rest is up to developers. Right now on my iPhone, I can SSH into confidential servers and sites with ease using ezShare. The same program allows me to effortlessly transfer files and capture email attachments. A killer feature that I hope is fully exploited in an iPad version, is desktop sharing. Yes, that's right, imagine cruising your own desktop computer from the iPad while you recline on your couch. Now think about accessing that file you forgot during a meeting, calling up a key piece of data to refute or confirm an issue or using the iPad as a window into a video presentation that runs somewhere else. That is the kind of thing Bush wanted in the 1930's and I wanted in the 1980's. The future has arrived.

Use Case 3: Workflow Control
I'm sure many will abuse the iPad's email functionality by blindly using push technology in a Pavlovian rush to mediocrity. The smart professional will see a different picture; one that leads to a more mindful, controlled use of action oriented tools.

We're sort of there now but the model needs tweaking. A well developed iPad app would be able to deliver information in context based on location and time of day. Imagine a scenario where a well planned day gets "entered" into the iPad and shepherds the busy professional from desk to meeting, meeting to presentation, presentation to one-on-one. Stuff arrives just-in-time and only the stuff that's needed gets delivered. It's going to happen and I'm hoping the folks at Omnigroup are working on this. I'm using OmniFocus on both a laptop and an iPhone, so parts of the workflow are there for me now. An iPad, however, would better fulfill the promise of a rich workflow management device.

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Well that covers it for now. I'm going to sit back, anticipate the launch and think about some more specific use cases. I'll be blogging about my early use of the iPad and will dive more deeply into app and workflow development.