Reconsidering the Hardware Kindle Interface
I’ve been using Kindles on and off ever since they launched. Our relationship has been contentious but I’ve always been seduced or re-seduced by their potential. At their best, they are beautiful devices. At their worst, infuriating. They are always so close to being better than they are.
Initially they didn’t have touch screens, but Kindle.app on iOS did. The iOS app worked in its own funny way: adopting its own interaction model. An analog to that model found its way to hardware Kindles. I think this was a mistake.
What is the iOS Kindle interaction model? The iOS Kindle model is the “hidden spaces” model. That is, all active interface elements are invisible. This “hidden spaces” model of interaction is supremely user antagonistic. [0]
There are no affordances to the taps. No edges to the active areas. Nothing to hint at what might happen. This creates what I call a “brittle” interface — where one wrong tap sends you careening in an unknown direction, without knowing why or how you got there.
