Artificial Horizon

What was wrong and is gone

Good bye slanted keyboard keys, we won't miss you. It was one of the fancy features held by the Kindle, and its disappearance proves it was so. The same goes for the angled cuts of the overall shape, the grey silicon back and its letters recessed pattern : looks like they didn't feel the need to keep them after all. This is what happens to features not belonging to an object's DNA, as you can see in the incarnations of car models : door handles, headlights, mirrors, window shapes...
The problem the Kindle had was : these details were actually not details but features defining the Kindle's identity, in the industrial design sense of it *. They didn't mean anything, they were like words without a sentence to bring sense to them as a whole.

The strip on the side of the screen has gone too, reducing the visual noise of the Kindle's reading surface. The interface designers must have been given more time to think of a way to navigate the kindle without the need of this disturbing strip. Given the comments in the users feedback video, they seem to have done a great job.

The Previous / Next buttons apparently didn't need to be so big, as they shrunk quite a lot. Certainly to prevent users to turn pages inadvertently, as it has been reported to happen with version 1. This leaves some more and needed room for the fingers to grab the device.

Still

Amazon may have recognize the emptiness of some of their form factors by not replicate them in version 2, the absence of a clear industrial design identity is revealed by the (voluntary ?) resemblance with Apple's ID codes. Or should I say Braun's industrial design codes... White plastic, rounded corners, satin metal back with plastic top. Sort of a mix between the iPod classic and the first generation iPhone. Blackberry may copy Apple's codes for their new phones, it doesn't make it a valuable reason to do so. Grow some balls Amazon, you have the shoulders to port an identity of your own. Speaking of white plastic, as I suggested last time, it could help reduce the frame effect of the screen's enclosure to match the two colors exactly. Sure, this grey is less Apple, less hygienic, but if it enhances the reading experience, they should own this color, make it part of the DNA, find another color this grey plays well with for the other parts and create a great harmony. The manipulation of the Kindle 2 seems to be as awkward as for version 2, thanks to the keyboard and navigation. Here are still from the video showing how the (directed) actors were handling it : far from the comfort of avidly grabbing a paperback, they look like they hold a precious golden frame containing a medieval manuscript, or a fragile mirror. By the posture of its users, the device communicates its nature ; you don't hold a 3 years old mobile phone the same way you hold an iPhone. Here, the posture of the actors tells us : precious, fragile, expensive, exclusive, even if it's not. I think this is due to the placement of the keyboard and the next/previous buttons ; it prevents the user to actually grasp the object without interfering with the content. It makes the Kindle closer to a fancy new electronic device and farther from an all purpose, democratic and sturdy reading device, even if it is. This keyboard needs to go some other place (or is it rendered idle when you read ?). The slide-out keyboard solution still seems interesting ; I would be ready to give on the thickness increase if I could handle this device like a paperback, deep in my couch. All that being said, the idea of the Kindle is fantastic. Users seem really happy of what they get from their new reading experience, and being able to download a book from amazon's servers in 60 seconds is just incredible. What pleases me the most is that Amazon is today the company which is successfully implementing and distributing the e-ink technology on the wide scale it needs to improve and be more affordable to more people, and it should be thanked for it (ship it to Europe and I'll show my support with hard money). I can't wait for the first laptop using this kind of screen : having to work away from sunlight because of reading issues is so frustrating.
This is why these comments (and the previous ones) may sound a little harsh : such a beautiful idea deserves only the best for its incarnation, and as a designer, it's really guts talk in such cases.

To the designers in charge of the Kindle, if they ever come across this read : I know it's easy to criticize a project without knowing the brief and the constraints you faced, and I'm perfectly conscious how shameless it is to have done so. It's more the goals that I criticize here than the execution. For a project so beautiful and from a company like Amazon, the bar should be higher, the advantages and drawbacks better balanced. Face it : you shouldn't be shipping a two years old Apple product.
Moving forward, as book designers, you really have to read this one from Jan Tshichold if you haven't already done so. It will explain in greater details and with much more patience the reason of some points I made here today.

* To continue with the cars example, this would be the proportions of the car, its size, its intended usage. Have a close look at the VW Golf over the years, it really shows what consistency it has, and how strong its DNA is.

The problem with the TripLog app screen is that it doesn't respect this analogy at all.
— it has a plain flat background that doesn't react to this light source the same way the numbers selector does : it's like they live in totally different lighting situations, instead of being in the same "light space", the app screen, as they should be.
— The "plus" and "Edit" buttons are treated as if they were made of a 3mm high block of carefully polished transparent plexiglass sitting on this words-fail-me-but-it's-ok blue background. The problem is, they don't cast any shadow on the surface bellow them as they should (the "Next" arrow button in the lower right corner does it rightly though).
— The white buttons in the lower part are totally flat, sheet of paper like. And that's ok too, totally cool. The confusing thing about them is not this treatment, it's the table bellow them which is too much alike: font, text size, background color, border, and 2D, same level (or height) as the background surface.

Even without considering the placement and alignment of this app's UI elements, discomfort is felt because there is no or little consistency in the way these objects are rendered : we are given contradictory informations about the space they are supposed to re-create, so we're having an uncomfortable time looking at this.

I'd say that for an iPhone app UI of this type to be ok and well integrated with the Touch OS, you should be able to give :
— a perspective view of your UI,
— CAD drawings of all the elements (buttons, text fields,...),
— a bill of materials,
— and make sure the virtual light conditions are consistent in all the app's screens.

Make sure you envisioned every aspect of the virtual 3D object your UI : it's a way to be help your user have a natural understanding of it. It also can be a great source of inspiration to think of materials and textures, and how they react to the light source you choose. Apple choose glossy surfaces of recessed rounded rectangle shapes under a single softbox, but there are many many more options available to be explored.