Musings of a Marketing Maven

If the iPad is a BMW, Amazon’s new Kindle Touch is a Chevy or a bare-bones Ford. It will take you where you want to go, but don’t expect frills along the way…

I chose the $99 entry-level touch screen model, with WiFi but no 3G. It displays advertising constantly, except when you’re actively reading or interacting with the device. Fortunately, the ads don’t intrude when you’re reading.

The device seems a bit slow, especially when responding to touch for menu selection, page turns, etc. Perhaps the hardware is a wee bit underpowered?

WiFi is a bit feeble, even when sitting in an office just a few strides away from the WiFi router with a strong signal.

Text display is crisp, but can be uneven. (My opinion about the Touch’s readability has improved somewhat after a week of usage.)

The ads themselves are not intrusive; however, navigating away from a full-page ad to whatever you want to read is a bit clunky.

One of the most pleasurable aspects of the Kindle Touch is how it feels in your hand: lightweight, nicely balanced, with a suede-like finish on the back. Friendly and approachable in its feel.

No Romance

Out-of-the-Box Experience

Compared to the experience of unveiling a new Apple product, there’s no magic (except for my cat, who adores all Amazon boxes, no matter what their contents).

Kindle’s packaging is plain and monochromatic: no-nonsense cardboard encases the device, a plastic film protects the screen.

Inside there’s no friendly marketing collateral to welcome the new Kindle owner. Amazon’s Thank You Letter will download when you sync your Kindle. (Four hours later my welcome letter has not yet downloaded.)

When I powered up the Kindle, I was surprised to note there’s no “welcome screen,” just a user tip on how to turn pages. (A missed branding opportunity on Amazon’s part…)

Unlike Apple Amazon makes no attempt to “romance the brand.” It appears that Amazon wants to position Kindle as a utilitarian product, focusing on its concrete functional benefits and practical uses. It’s a curious positioning strategy, especially if they’re aiming Kindle at book lovers, people who like me love the experience of reading, and are willing to invest in building a Kindle compatible library.

Somewhat Confusing Usability Model

Touch or Tap to Use

If you’ve used an iPhone or an iPad, you may find the UI a bit confusing. On the Kindle Touch, you touch an item to select it (you point to it and hold your finger there long enough until it highlights). The response time is a tad sluggish.

You touch anywhere in the left-hand area of the screen to go back a page; you touch the middle of the screen or to the right to advance a page. This is intended as a convenience for one-handed readers. (Over time I’ve discovered the swiping horizontally, to left or right, can flip pages, but on my device it doesn’t always work reliably.)

Swiping on the Kindle Touch is not as universally useful as on an iPad. I don’t think there’s a rich “gesture language” for the Touch. It seems that the swipe gesture is only partially functional; when displaying lists, you can swipe vertically to scroll the book list up or down. When reading you can swipe to change pages.

Displaying Collections: Text-Centric Approach

On an iPad, the Kindle app displays images of the book covers as shown here:

The Kindle Touch takes a less visual approach when displaying collections; it simply lists books by their title or author’s name — a missed opportunity for finesse.

I had expected this latest Kindle generation to be more visual in its UI. Sadly, most of the visuals are reserved for the sponsors’ ads, or illustrations within books or magazines.

Kindle Touch: Better for Reading

Although the iPad displays collections in a more visually pleasing manner, the Kindle Touch is better suited — that is, easier on the eyes — for long-term reading. This new Kindle is also smaller, lighter, and takes less effort to hold. All-in-all better for immersive, multi-hour reading.

I just wish the Amazon device had a better UI. Based on a couple of hours’ use, the design language seems inconsistent, hard to predict (especially the home button). As a result it’s going to take longer to learn than expected.

Confusing Home Button

On a Kindle Touch the home button is a set of 4 parallel lines at the bottom of the device. If you’ve learned “home button behaviors” on an IOS device (iPad, iPhone, etc.), expect to be confused. The Kindle’s home button is under utilized.

When the device is in screensaver mode — displaying full-screen ads — you might expect that pressing the home button will take you to your home screen, or resume reading where you’d left off. But in this case pressing home has no effect. Instead you must press the on/off switch to switch from the full-screen ad to resume reading. I find this confusing.

E-Ink — Text Display

Better, But Not Perfect

Given specs of 167 ppi and 16 shades of grey, I had expected reading legibility to approach that of black-and-white newsprint — or a classic newspaper. Yes, there’s higher contrast and improved legibility compared to the Kindle DX I tried a year ago, but the display still disappoints.

On text-dense pages, lines display unevenly, even when it’s obvious that the characters should be rendered identically. This is distracting, because it draws attention away from the delightfully immersive experience of flow when reading.

The uneven display appears to be caused by the way E-Ink renders text on screen: sometimes using different shades of grey or different thicknesses when rendering character shapes. (An inconsistent use of pixels for rendering character glyphs.)

I’m not sure if this is an issue with this particular device, or a limitation with this generation of E-Ink on Kindles.

This bugs me, because I was ready to ignore the lack of typographic diversity, in exchange for highly legible text that does a few things superbly well.

Fixed Orientation

Unlike the Kindle app on iPad, you cannot change the display’s orientation from portrait to landscape mode and have text reflow. Kindle Touch offers portrait mode only.