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Author here. Thanks for your response. (I've had a few ex-Kindle folks reach out with either precisely similar or precisely opposite sentiments; I guess it's a
by cmod 8y ago
Author here. Thanks for your response. (I've had a few ex-Kindle folks reach out with either precisely similar or precisely opposite sentiments; I guess it's a big team.)
I originally had a huge footnote acknowledging that much of this is obvious and that the Kindle team is full of smart people who have data showing that maybe these aren't the best optimizations. I'm just describing my expectations from having used Kindles for ten (??!) years coupled with having worked on designing digital reading interfaces for a similar amount of time. I'm certainly an edge case user.
Having seen my mother (edit: and, more pertinently: myself) struggle with her Kindle, I do think the interaction model is one-degree unnecessarily complex — all of those hidden spaces.
You could distill my whole piece to: This is a single purpose device that's been designed like a multi-purpose device.
Page turn buttons + menu button would all but eliminate any interaction ambiguity. And could be done quite beautifully.
Although I don't have access to any data, I think there might be a subset of casual users who would prefer the screen to do nothing when touched.
- ruddct 8y ago> You could distill my whole piece to: This is a single purpose device that's been designed like a multi-purpose device. That just feels a little sideways. Then we're in agreement! There are a TON of features/complexity in Kindle; combine that with e-ink being a clumsy display technology to combine with a touch screen and we find ourselves in the situation that we're in. (Note that I totally understand why e-ink was combined with a touchscreen for Kindle. Give someone a screen these days and they'll try and touch it, for better or worse)
- fatboy 8y agoI’d say the touchscreen is essential if only for text input. You don’t need it as often as you do with a smartphone, but not having it when you want to type pretty much anything is a nightmare.
- frobozz 8y agoA qwerty keyboard made of physical buttons is a lot easier to type with than a touch screen. From some of the discussion here, it looks like the Kindle 3 was a pretty neat idea. (As the author suggests)
- stephentmcm 8y agoHave you tried typing on a Kindle keyboard? As a Kindle DX user, it has always been a terrible experience and now the letters have rubbed off so it's even worse - the symbol and and number keys are accessed via a 'SYM' control key.
- mantas 8y ago> Although I don't have access to any data, I think there might be a subset of casual users who would prefer the screen to do nothing when touched. +1! I loved my original non-touch Kindle. Newer paperwhite is nice, but touch screen is a disadvantage for me. I rarely interact with it and older Kindle with buttons was perfectly fine for those tasks. Yet it sucks when pages are scrolled or next is selected if I accidentally touch/hold screen in a wrong way. I’m seriously considering spending extra $$$ to getter expensive version purely to get away from touch screen. But I’m worried that it wouldn’t allow me to lock the screen while reading with hardware button :(
- 0xffff2 8y ago>Having seen my mother (edit: and, more pertinently: myself) struggle with her Kindle, I do think the interaction model is one-degree unnecessarily complex How often do you struggle with the interface once you've learned it? I agree that the current Kindle interface isn't the most intuitive, but to me that's a non-issue. I've long since learned how to interact with the Kindle, and now that that initial learning is complete, the interface does an excellent job allowing me to do what I want.
- stingrae 8y agoThe goal of the interface should be to be intuitive. You shouldn't have to learn an awkward sequence. If there was a page forward and backward button on each side, I don't think people would have anything to learn
- criddell 8y agoDon't people expect to be able to swipe on the screen these days? That seems more intuitive than indirectly controlling the screen via buttons. If I were designing the Kindle, I think I would add a button that brings up the UI and have screen swipes turn the page and screen taps bring up something that makes sense for whatever was tapped on (like a dictionary or X-ray feature).
- thaumasiotes 8y ago> This is a single purpose device that's been designed like a multi-purpose device. Yes, the modern Kindle really suffers for this. I originally had a Kindle 3. It did everything I wanted except for the horrible, glaring oversight that the keyboard didn't have numbers, when better than 90% of my interactions with that keyboard were jumps to a numeric location. I now have a Kindle Oasis, and in most respects other than that one the UI is a big step back. I can no longer remove dust from the screen by touching it. (Actually, I still do this, but it wastes a bunch of my time by unavoidably performing one to four page turns when I do.) Attempts to call up the menu frequently turn the page instead. Jumping to a location is now a ridiculously long workflow involving summoning the menu, selecting "go to", and then selecting "page or location", because the table of contents has been stuffed into the "go to" menu instead of being part of the book. Normal functions should be easier to reach than rare functions, but not so easy that they happen constantly regardless of whether the user wanted them. The Oasis somehow manages to fail at both of those points.