The Nook may have been the to-buy gift for book fanatics this holiday season, but it looks like it may have had far more buzz than bite. The once touted Kindle-killer has gotten some lukewarm reviews, and it turns out it’s much-touted dual LCD screen is more of a hindrance than a boon. It turns out that even though the Nook has some great features and innovation, the user interface reacts too poorly in it’s current state to be the break out hit it needs to be.
Slow and Sluggish
Most e-readers are chastised for their display speed, since the current technology only allows for a slow refresh while all the particles update for each virtual turn of the page. But the Nook has been criticized as having the worst frame rate–almost 14 seconds. Compared side by side with other e-readers, there is a noticeable difference in speed. This is even more obvious when you compare it to the speed of the touch screen LCD on the bottom of the device. Speed is a critical factor in Usability Design, and the Nook fails miserably in this area.
The LCD screen is fast and responsive, but the E-Ink screen is not, and this creates a strange lagging effect between the user-interface (selecting books, turning pages) and the actual display of the books. You flip through your library, make your choice. The LCD screen moves lightning fast. Then you need to wait for the e-paper screen to load the image. The same goes for adding in notes, turning pages, anything. There is a strange disconnect that is disorienting between the two technologies. And instead of the LCD screen enhancing the experience, it muddles it and makes it even more confusing.
Not to mention the constant eye-strain from moving to the LCD backlit screen to the e-paper device and then back again. Your eyes constantly need to refocus, and this causes the same eye-strain that e-paper was invented to prevent. Certainly, there is a rumored Nook update that fixes some of these problems, like the buggy LCD screen interface and the lagging e-paper refresh rate, but it won’t be able to fix the eye-strain from moving between the two screens. Not to mention, some users have found the second screen to be more of a distraction than a benefit.
Usability is Key
It was nice to see another e-reader step up to the plate and take the Amazon’s Kindle head on, with improvements over some of the features and matching other features right out of the box. There was so much promise to be had. Being able to lend books? A great idea, badly implemented (buggy, barely supported by publishers). Reading a book for an hour for free while in Barnes and Nobles? Again, buggy and barely supported by the publishers. So far, the only thing it delivers is the wireless connectivity and instant book buying, both things that the Kindle already has.
Even though the Kindle has been criticized for it’s basic design and layout, it does have the usability down right. It does one thing and does it well–reads e-books. The whole device works on this sole concept, and in the end it makes some sacrifices of features to the benefit of usability. It doesn’t have a touch screen, but it doesn’t need one, it works like you expect it to right away without any problems. Even though you can wirelessly order books on the Nook from the Barnes and Nobles webstore (a recently acquired Fictionwise), you can do the same thing through the Kindle much faster and easier.
This is why the iPhone is still the must-have cell phone, even though the Android machines have more features out of the box than the competition. The iPhone does usability very well - it is simple and intuitive. The Kindle is the same way, even though it’s stripped down it’s very easy to use and very simple to order books without having to connect to a computer. Buying, reading and browsing books is intuitive.
That is probably why the Kindle sold more e-books than Amazon sold physical books during the Holiday Season. With the advent of full-color e-readers coming out next year, as well as more companies joining the fray (including Lenovo), it seems pertinent that they need to keep up with good usability and design techniques. They need to look beyond the feature creep that users say they want, and go for what works well with creating a book-like environment electronically.
The e-reader market is ramping up, with more and more companies joining in and creating their own devices. We will need more innovation in the market, and less features that feel more like a gimmick than an advance in technology.
e-reader, kindle, nook, ui, usability