While the technology is amazing and the concept of an e-Book reader is great the actual design of the Kindle and it’s second version is still pretty bad.
The core scenario is reading content and the design doesn’t reflect this. The design has too many bells and whistles and not enough elegance to be a truly great device.
- A keyboard has no business being in a book. It clutters the hardware and it takes away space from your content. It’s about consuming content not creating it.
- The device needs to be touchable. If you’re going to offer any type of interaction with the pages and content you need to be able to touch the screen to turn the page and tap menus.
- The design should be more anthropomorphic (human-like) both in look and interaction. It needs to feel less mechanical and more natural.
- It needs to properly render the design intentions of the typographers and publishers that created physical books. Things like hyphenation aren’t just pretty, they help readability. The book content comes first.
- Black and grey, really? This is an example of a compromise in the design. The readability, functionality and user experience suffers because someone decided that it needed to use e-ink. This technology is cool but it’s performance and color contrast is still not as good overall as a color screen. Yes you can use it outside but a design that sucks inside still sucks outside. Plus you can’t read it at night without a secondary light.
My proposed design:
- Three buttons, on/off, next page, previous page. Everything else is touch screen (including a touch keyboard when needed)
- Color screen design allows for better web and book reading
- Screen takes up 80%
- Typography and graphics are rendered as the author intended
- No menu/wifi/battery indicator. It’s a book. Tap the screen to see menu/status info/options.
Most of your issues with the Kindle were absent in the eBook Reader (the 3rd edition version of the SoftBook Reader), almost 10 years ago. Color screen, minimum of buttons with a screen keyboard, etc. Alas for the device, since if it still existed today, we would undoubtedly have PDF support, WiFi, multi-touch, and various other things which are commonplace today but not viable then.
That’s my real issue with the Kindle. Other than the low-power eInk and the WiFi, why are the features no further along than a decade ago, and why is the hardware design *worse*?
(Disclosure: I bought one of the first SoftBook Readers and then worked for the company. Note the order of those two items.)
I agree with Greg all points. I bought a Kindle 1.0 when it first came out in Nov’07 and I used it a lot during my train commute. There are many problems with it besides the button layout — the key problem is the eInk screen, it’s so SLOW, which dictates most of the limitations. Putting a touchscreen on eInk was not possible until recently, so the keyboard and roller interface were necessary. Furthermore the contrast is okay but still not good enough — it’s like reading newsprint under cheap plastic.
I’d rather that they drop the eInk screen and use a larger, higher resolution, backlit, color LCD that’s responsive to page flipping… so what if you have to charge the battery everyday. That’s an acceptable compromise over all the limitations of the eInk screen now.
I hardly use my Kindle nowadays. I read on my iPhone, which has a much more user-friendly and responsive interface. I just can’t stand how awfully slow the Kindle is. I’m putting my Kindle up for sale.
Don’t you mean you prefer a nettop to read a book? Asus is planning on bringing an Eee PC with touchscreen very soon.
You raised some interesting points but I think you got it completely wrong with the button layout. One of the most useful things about the Kindle 1 is that I can hold it with one hand and be able to press the previous and next buttons with one hand.
With the first Kindle, I can hold it with my left hand and press prev/next but when I hold it with my right hand I can only go forward. The Kindle 2 solves that problem by putting prev/next on both sides. Plus the easiest position to hold the device isn’t where the hand model’s fingers are in that picture, it’s in the center (vertically).
This is invaluable on a crowded subway train in NY (or even if I want to lie on my side in bed and not be forced to use two hands), and a huge advantage over paper books, where I would often choose not to take a book out of my bag because of how annoying it is to turn a single page while keeping my hand on the rail.
Without E-Ink, Kindle has no purpose for me. I can read E-Books on my laptop, thank you. Or I can buy a Tablet PC. The E-Ink display, with its paper-like qualities that make long-term reading reasonable, is what makes Kindle actually functional as a reading device.
No, it’s not bright. Neither is PAPER. And Kindle is trying to function like paper. Which means it needs to work like paper: producing pigment via reflecting light, not by staring into a lightbulb.
“The design has too many bells and whistles”
I can’t understand why you complain about “bells and whistles” but want to use the device for the web.
No way! The e-ink is what makes this device desirable. If you want colors and light, go read on a cell-phone. You missed the concept completely.
Your design concept is, like most design concepts, not based in technical/economic reality. The resolution and size limits for an almost reasonably priced reader are currently going to look like the 40% contrast eink devices today. Invoking the need for color and fidelity to a book designers vision isn’t a novel or unique desire, but it does express an ignorance of affordable contemporary technology.
Your redesign is good. I am interested in the kindle, but don’t find the interface compelling. The hypothetical design you show would be very compelling.
Your concept is great and I think it could work with few modifications.
keyboard: Get rid of it.
The device needs to be touchable. ( Absolutely)
The design could be simpler, as mentioned before just get rid of the keyboard,keep the rest of the keys as it is, make the screen bigger and the shutdown button looks great at the top left.
hyphenation is important.
Color E-Ink is already developed, it’s rather expensive but it was there 5 years ago so why is it taking so long to be commercialized.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/12/08/hp.flexible.tft.displays/
http://www.inkinmotion.com/press/releases/pr86.html
The Kindle is good for kindling. No more.
It doesn’t have a touch screen for a reason: The e-ink screen loses its paperlike texture with a touch screen layer. There are other ebooks that have tried touch screens and there are reviews out there of them.
I won’t comment on your concept, except to gently suggest that you try using Amazon’s version before trying to propose improvements (using = reading 5,000 pages on it).
My comments (I’m a Kindle 2 user and have read thousands of pages on it):
– If it could have color with absolutely no side effect fine, but that’s not possible at this time. Think of printers: If you have a business, do you use a black and white laser printer or a color ink jet printer? Every once in a while the color would be nice, but speed, pigment cost, moisture resistance, crisp printing, etc., makes a laser the better choice. The Kindle is a single-purpose device to read (textual) books. Color would add to maybe 1 in 1,000 pages read and subtract (in contrast, added cost, etc.) from the other 999.
– Touch screen: The e-ink does not respond fast enough for this, so the effect would be like virtual reality glasses where the computer is overtaxed and slow: frustrating. And most people don’t want fingerprints on their pages. Finally, contrast would be (slightly) compromised (it’s already a bit low with e-ink).
– The power switch in your mock-up is there your thumb is when you’re reading on your back in bed. You’d know this if you’d ever used a Kindle. The power switch should not be somewhere where it could inadvertently be pushed.
– Most Kindlers want more Next Page buttons, not fewer. I’d like one on the top left. At any rate, the way you read a book on the Kindle is to hold it with your thumb over the Next Page button (which pivots at the *outside edge*) and when you are close to the end of a page, slightly press and rotate your thumb to click it down, then when you are about to end the page (with about a line left), let it up (it pages on click release). So you don’t actually reach and push the button. It needs to be in the natural place where your thumb would be while holding the Kindle, so the subtle press-rotate will activate it. Again, you need to have actually used one to know this. On the Kindle, if you expect to be paging back and forth, holding it on the left side is best, since you also have a Previous Page button, and you can put your thumb over both buttons.
– Without touch screen, the other buttons are useful and well thought out.
– At first glance you’d think the wide bezel is not a classy design. Why not a thinner bezel like yours (or Sony’s)? Or no bezel, like the iPhone? Well, I’ll be glad to answer that: The Kindle is about as heavy as a trade paperback, but in a thin, stiff form factor. You need a good chunk of real estate to grab it securely. You don’t want to grab or touch the display. Again, actually using something before passing judgment is recommended.
– Keyboard: I think the keyboard could be gotten rid of if some small software fixes were done (which I won’t go into). The keyboard is used mostly for looking up character names who you’ve forgotten, and also for looking up multi word words in the dictionary. You can do all this without the keyboard even now, but it takes too many clicks. But another problem would present itself if you got rid of the keyboard: When you read on your back on the bed, sofa, or at the beach the extra height given by the keyboard positions the Kindle perfectly. With an iPhone type device you’d either need to hold the device up, or put some sort of spacer (like a book?!?) on your chest. In addition to the keyboard, the volume switch and speakers could also be dumped.
I don’t know why people are whining so much about the Kindle 2. This is the first digital reader I have purchased and I absolutely love it. Wants the big deal about the SD memory slot anyway???? Who wants to have to keep 2500 books that you have already read on hand at all times anyway! I like the fact that Amazon keeps my already read book in a library for me so I don’t have to worry about loosing my SD card thus loosing my E-books.
As far as storing pictures and music; I think you people have ordered the wrong device try an I-Pod or a digital picture frame instead of a DIGITAL READER; HELLO!! You might have better luck. Good job Amazon this is a far better reader than the Sony reader my friend bought he wishes he would have purchased the Kindle 2 reader instead after seeing mine.
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