So I bought my folks a couple of 2nd gen ipod nanos . They are  nice and cute and the new software had a few nice tricks. Some things like clicking on the center button bringing up the “On the fly” playlist as it was earlier along with an option to browse the same artist or album are nice, and Apple also introduced a way to search through the songs stored on the IPod.

When we loaded about 6 GB of songs on the nano, we did a search which was amazing, brought up the songs and albums (distinguished nicely by an icon) and we were happy. Until, we wanted to do another search. Unfortunately the search that we did earlier brought about 200 results and we scrolled down to pick up a song of our choice and played it. When we wanted to do another search, I couldnt find out a way to get to the interface where I could type for returning Search results. Ah! I never thought Apple’s products need more learning that what is required but Ive been fooled before by iTunes (which IMO is a piece of crap). 

As a proper end-user, I looked up the skinny 2 page manual hoping that there will be some mention of the Search functionality. None..nilch..nada…ZERO no mention there. I started scrolling through the search results back and forth desperately and ha, found the option for re-entering another Search. Its the first option in the Search Results. Apparently, Someone at Apple thought they could save another menu option by adding the “search” along with “search results”. Cmon guys, Im not a UEx Designer, but I dont think it needs a lot more thinking to find out that you need to have an intuitive way of telling people how to get back to a search menu.