However, the designers of the Kindle must have felt that reading books was not a compelling basis for commercial success, because there's lots of additional functionality. Now, adding features beyond the core design is risky business behavior; Amazon won a few bets, and so far, have lost a few.
Sleepy operation
The Kindle is operated with a drop-down menu and navigated with a multi-selector button. It's a familiar design pattern from smart phones that most people will understand with a little practice; that is, if they can stand the wait. Sluggish response is, by far, the most common criticism of the interface - in operation of the device, and in paging through a book. Especially annoying is the black-flash of the screen when paging through a book. Despite the quality of the reading experience, the flash turns some peoples' enthusiasm to rejection. It's amusing that so many people try to interact with a touch screen. I feel myself badly wanting a touch screen at times.
Annotations and User Content? Not yet
The Kindle allows the reader to search, bookmark locations and write annotations using a multi-selector button and full querty keyboard. It seems natural to operate the keyboard with two thumbs because of the way you hold it. However, unreasonable force is required to press the keys, which slows the speed of writing. The keys have a diminished tactile quality which discourages touch typing and further slows the write speed. Taken together, the design choices seem peculiar and user unfriendly. Neither are there keyboard shortcuts like those found on an iPhone - two spaces print a period, for example. And what about your data? If it's locked in the Kindle forever, it's not very useful. It turns out that bookmarks and annotations are stored in files associated with the book, and already the Kindle has been hacked, but so far Amazon has not developed a solution for mere readers.
Note to content sources: design for mobile devices
There are other problems. Imagine a commuter dashing off to the train. She's wants to read up on the todays' parade of misery and horror in The Wall Street Journal. Jakob Nielson tested this use case and concluded that there were design errors that created an "awkward interaction design and poor support for non-linear content [in English: the short article format of newspapers]." Undoubtedly, that sluggish menu and the odd multi-selector button is irritating to use, however, the interface of a news source is decidedly not a problem with the device, but with the information design of the news source itself. And however distasteful to Web designers, people do in fact learn the tricks of navigating important sites - and so convention eventually becomes a "standard".
Easy reading for the disabled?
The Kindle has some interesting and useful innovations. The buzz around the new machine-generated text-to-speech capability seems to have created a hope that it may help people with certain disabilities. Sorry to disappoint, but the audio is limited to content only, and does not assist in the *operation* of the Kindle. Whereas the Kindle is not ready for people with blindness or poor vision, simultaneous reading and reading the text display may indeed have some applications for reading and learning disabilities. We eagerly await the time when text-to-speech is extended to include device operation.
It's a mobile device, not a workstation
Kindle also is shipped with an experimental web browser. How you judge the effectiveness of the browser depends on how you view to the Kindle itself. Is it a computer? Is it a mobile device? Is it merely a book reader with an odd, experimental browser that might come in handy? Comparing the browser to Firefox, or Safari will disappoint. It's black-and-white rendering seems quaint, it doesn't respect style sheets, and will rearrange the structure of the sight in ways that will horrify designers. However, compare the Kindle's browser with those in other mobile devices and you can tell a much different story. It is now understand that sites designed for Firefox, Safari, IE, and other large-screen devices provide users of mobile devices a very poor experience. The old Web standards mantra of good rendering across multiple platforms is largely a false hope. If a site's stakeholders want mobile visitors they must provide alternative page designs for them. And for those sites that do - not surprisingly, Amazon happens to be one of them - the experience is excellent. To conclude: think of the Kindle as a mobile device, accept that most Web sites suck when viewed in mobile designs, and you will be happier.
Finally, there was one really awful behavior that desperately needs to be changed. While I was happily absorbed in a science fiction novel the Kindle suddenly blanked and performed a software update. Grrrrr. The update process took only 4 minutes, including restart, but it brought me back to Home rather than the page I was reading - kind of rude and unrefined, that Kindle.
1 comments:
I have to say I do enjoy reading on the kindle 2 ... I know it has its shortcomings, but at the end of the day I feel like I am reading more and reading it all faster. That damn turning of the pages thing no longer slows me down. I do think it is a generation or two away from really being a powerful tool.
Post a Comment