This is the Kindle. It's beautiful, it's thin, it's light and the E-Ink screen is perfect for reading. It's a great device except for two very frustrating flaws. These flaws are so distracting that I sometimes have trouble concentrating on what I'm reading.
First Design Flaw: Where's the 'On' button?
Look at the picture to the right. How do you turn the Kindle on? Your first attempt will be to press the 'Home' button just below the screen, but it does nothing. So you look for a button on the top edge of the device, where every other device has it's "power on" button. Nope, not there either. Maybe on the sides? Nup. Getting a bit annoyed now…maybe one of the other buttons on the front below the screen? No. Ok, let's get's check the manual: Ah! The on/off button is on the bottom of the device, next to the charging socket! (Plus the manual could be confusing to someone who hasn't seen the Power symbol before).
I don't know who made this design decision, but let's call him "Jeff". Why didn't any of the other designers say, "Jeff, that sucks"? And did Jeff give a prototype to someone and watch while they struggled to switch it on?
Second Design Flaw: How do you turn the page?
So you're up and running, but soon you've read a whole page and decide that you want to read the next one. That's quite normal. But what button do you press? Well, below the screen there's Up, Down, Left and Right buttons, so it makes sense that the 'Right' button will do what you want, right? Wrong - it takes you to the next chapter. So now you have two tasks to figure out: (a) How to go back to the page you were on, then (b) How to go to the next page. With a bit of luck - and probably frustration - you will eventually press the 'reverse arrow' button at the bottom-left below the screen which solves (a) then press the big button on the right edge of the device, which solves (b).
Finally! You've figured out how to use the Kindle! So you settle down into your big chair with a cup of cocoa and prepare to be immersed in the world of Rankin or Rowling or Rushdie. You're half way though the first chapter when you turn a page but realise you haven't quite understood what you just read, so you try to turn to the previous page. Shit! The Kindle seems to have jumped to some random page!
What just happened? You've been struck by Kindle's worst design flaw. You knew that the big button on the right edge of the device meant 'Go to next page', so without a second thought you assumed that the big button on the left edge meant 'Go to the previous page'. Wrong. That button does the exact same thing as the one on the right. So instead of going to the previous page you've ended up on the next page, and because there's no nice turn-to-next-page animation it seems to be a completely random page.
After a bit of fiddling you realise that it's the smaller buttons on both the left and right edge of the kindle that mean 'Go to the previous page'. The bigger buttons on both edges mean 'Go to the next page'. I cannot believe that Jeff was unaware of the natural tendency for people to think "right-button forward, left button back". So why did we end up with cockeyed button placements? I think the answer is that he wanted users to be able to both hold the device and turn the page with the left hand. This was the design trade-off: Use a natural placement of forward and back buttons or allow left-handed users to operate the device with one hand. Jeff chose the second option (I wouldn't be surprised if he is left-handed).
So now whenever I want to turn the page on my Kindle I have to interrupt my reading for a second to think about which button I really want to press, severely interrupting the 'flow' of my reading. Even after 6 months of use I will sometimes instinctively press the left button to try to go to the previous page, then be summarily punished by Kindle for my behaviour.
Great. Nice work, Jeff.
