On eBook design

I thought of penning a few thoughts on designing an eBook reader, the hardware kind. After reading about Amazon's Kindle, I was wondering how the next version could be made better.

Here are what I feel are the requirements for a good eBook reader.
Ability to:
- Read

- Search

- Bookmark

- Annotate (Highlight, comment, markup, etc)

- Shared read (read along with another person)

- Loan a book

- Buy books, publications, etc.

- Turn page

- Turn multiple pages

- Leaf (flip) through

- Choose a publication to read

- Search for publications to buy/download

- Print

- Modify type size

- Single hand hold and operate

- Configure to individual taste

- Customize (software as well as firmware)

Phew. That seems like a big list, but it is what would make me switch from a paper book to an eBook.

Here are some of the desirable characteristics of an eBook reader:

- Should have a color display. In the days of color everywhere (have you seen a B&W TV or a computer monitor anywhere?), and publications using color, it makes a lot of sense to have color screen.

- Be easy to read. Should not be hard on the eyes and not produce eye strain. Easy to read in bright sunlight as well as in the dark.

- Easy to operate. Intuitive, with minimal buttons or menus. Shouldn't need the user to read a 200 page manual before using it.

- High quality display.

- Backlighting, for reading in the dark.

- Light and portable (preferably the size of a paperback).

- Configurable so users can tailor it to individual needs. I like to see page numbers on the bottom right, and someone else might like to see it on the bottom left. A left handed person might prefer to reprogram the buttons on the eBook to be mirrored.

Here is how I would design a new Kindle:

I would design the Kindle with a touch sensitive screen and incorporate a keyboard akin to iPhone's. Since the keyboard is utilized in certain actions (search, annotate, buy, etc) not directly pertaining to reading a book, it needs to be hidden out of sight. The only controls that should be visible are those that are "necessary" for reading. The only hardware controls that are provided should be directly related to the main purpose of the reader, which is Reading.

The rendering above is my concept of a eBook reader.

The book will be both right handed as well as left handed. The rendering above shows the book being held in the left hand of a person. If one were to hold it in the right hand, just turning the book 180 degrees produces the paging buttons on the right, AND inverts everything on the screen so that it appears in the correct manner. Now you understand why I have placed identical power buttons (again configurable to be anything) both at the top and bottom.

The reader would have a touchscreen and soft menus on the screen. Display thumbnails of the pages (as shown in the rendering) and allow users to leaf through the pages by flicking their finger on the thumbnails. Tapping on a thumbnail will take you to that page.

Single click of the page turners will turn one page, and double clicking them would turn 5 or 10 pages (configurable).

The header and footers should be configurable and provide content orientation clues like page number, chapter, section heading, book name, etc.

Of course, it would have a color screen. And, long battery life and all the other good stuff I haven't talked about.

Since the hardware uses a touchscreen and configurable buttons, the book could be customized to produce different menus as well as reprogram the buttons to do different things. Opening up the hardware to third party vendors and programmers will help drive the customization of the book.

For all you know, someone may reprogram it to act like a GPS or a video game console!

As for the improvements on the service side of Amazon's Kindle offering, that is a topic for another blog.

PS: The unnecessary random line breaks is due to a bug in blogger. Whenever I include images this happens. I am still trying to figure out how to fix it.

Coolest wiimote hack so far...

Check this link to read about (and watch video) Johnny Lee's wiimote hack turning any surface into a multi-touch interactive whiteboard. This is awesome.

I am going to get myself a spare wiimote and try this one soon.

Is Kindle going to kindle your reading?

Ever since Amazon released their Kindle reader I have been wondering why Amazon went into the hardware business. Amazon's core is their service offering, be it their online merchant services or cloud computing/storage services, and this move into hardware is a pretty far adjacency to the core. Move into far adjacencies (in this case, hardware) is always fraught with risks, especially when you don't have Jonathan Ive on your design team.

First of all, Kindle is not a replacement to a computer or a PDA or a web connected phone. One should realize that neither is the opposite true. Kindle is conceived to be purely a physical book replacement.

There are two parts to what Amazon has released:
- EVDO service to dole out the eBooks
- Kindle, the reader

In the first case, Amazon is trying to provide a direct wireless service to download books directly to the reader. No need to download to a computer and then transfer it into the reader. This is an excellent move from a services POV.

In the second case, Amazon has failed to produce a reader that is sexy and attractive to a sophisticated book lover. It has produced a reader with a lot of room for improvement.

The book market is $24 Billion a year in the US alone. This includes all categories of books. The eBook market $54 Mil annual and growing. This is a good market to be in, and Amazon has made a good move.

eBooks initially failed in the market because they were too early in their intro. Akin to Newton for PDAs. Newton failed mainly because the market was not ready for its acceptance, and the interface sucked. Its form factor sucked, and Apple learned a great lesson from this failure. Newton's hand writing recognition was flawed, but the main reason for its failure was the market timing. The same is true for the eBooks.

Until now.

Amazon is trying to copy Apple's model of creating their own mp3 players and selling them for a premium. Unfortunately, this only works if your hardware has the oomph to command a good market. Like this blogger, I also feel that opening up Kindle to be a platform and letting other developers come up with hardware will give Amazon the best bet in succeeding in peddling their eBooks.

DRM and activation requirements can kill the eBook. Books bought on Amazon cannot be read on other readers, and vice versa. Why not make it similar to a physical book. A physical book can be loaned to a friend. Why not do the same with an eBook. As long as there is only one copy floating around, there shouldn't be any problem. As soon as the book is transferred to my friend's reader, I can no longer read it on mine. Come up with a handshake transaction mechanism to move the book around. Make it simple for people to do with eBooks whatever they are used to doing with a physical book. And, remember, the best marketing for a book is to be read. If no one reads your book, it doesn't get sold.

One thing that Amazon needs to consider is the cost of the eBooks. They need to choose a pricepoint that will spur the eBook sales. I don't have any data on how many they have sold after the introduction of Kindle. But, I have a feeling that $9.99 is not a sweet spot for eBooks.

They could also look into the advertising model when it comes to periodicals and blogs. The time commitment for a book is huge compared to a blog posting or an article in a periodical. So, the Ad model might work when it comes to blogs and periodicals. I would never (directly) pay to read a blog.

Another point to consider is the service's longevity as this author points out. What if I plunked $400 on a Kindle, and the service shuts down in a few years? This hits upon the price point of the reader itself. Introduce an inexpensive reader, and once the service takes a good foot hold, introduce better models with more features, AND charge boo-koo bucks for it. Prove yourself first, and then milk the market.

Some things that would make an eBook successful can be learnt from the successes of the iPod:
- Interface - simplistic interface with minimal buttons that just did its job: Dole out music.
- Design - Need great industrial design
- Brand marketing
- Integration and connectivity of the player, computer, software (This has been solved with the EVDO delivery)
- Windows support (No need of platform support)
- iTunes store (Amazon store)
- Form factor
- And last but not the least is Accessories - Sleeves, jackets, the most expensive ones are cars!

Something that the Kindle could benefit from is style. And, a water tight case.

Some of the benefits of eBooks/Kindle are:
- A great boon for independent freelance writers. Akin to music and blogs, everyone of us could write a book and publish it!
- No worry about the book spine and closing books.
- You can also upload your documents to the reader to read them.
- They are green. They do not waste paper or other natural resources.
- Convert any book to large print automatically.
- Take up space of one book, but can hold thousands.
- Random access and searchability.
- eInk technology is cool and makes a great reading device.

Will be really cool if they can add a "reader" to it and make it an audio book. That would have to wait for good text to speech technology, though.

Look at what the MP3 player did to your record/CD collection. Books are going the same route. Of course, this will take a generation to happen, since the older generation is tightly knit with the physical book concept. The older generation did not grow up with computers. The new generation is growing up with computers and MP3 players and what not. They are more prone to adopting the eBook than anybody else.

In this day and age of access anything anywhere, eBooks are here to stay.

Switching to Digital

Many of my friends (who are switching from film to digital) have asked me what to look for, in a digiSLR. So, I thought of writing about it to benefit a wider audience.

If you look at the camera from a very basic point of view, it is just an instrument to capture light. How we do it is secondary. The main goal is to channel the light and capture it with the highest fidelity. Creativity can be unleashed by controlling the light.

A film camera is nothing but an airtight box with a hole in the front. The simplest form is a pin-hole camera. In order to capture as much detail as possible, lenses were introduced to channel the light and focus it. Film was added into the light-tight box to capture the light forever (almost). An aperture and a shutter, in combination, would allow the right amount of light for the right amount of time to make an impression on the film.

Everything remains the same with a digital camera. The camera is still a light-tight box. The same aperture and shutter control the light, the same lenses channel and focus the light.

What is different though, is the absence of film. Instead of the film, we find a photo-sensitive microchip. The chip converts the light rays into ones and zeros and stores them electronically. The chip is dumb and just captures whatever photons that hit it. Unlike film, which captures data at the molecular level, the chip captures data in pixels. So, is it better to get a camera with the most number of pixels? In general, yes. But, not really. There are too many parameters to consider in determining the quality of an image, and number of pixels happens to be just one of them.

So, what happens to the cool variations I am used to getting with switching from Velvia to Kodachrome?

This is where electronics and software enters the picture. The sensor captures raw data. This data is massaged with the help of software to mimic the features of a film camera. The better the software, the better your camera. So, should you go for the camera with the latest and greatest whiz-bang software in it? Not necessarily. Every digiSLR is capable of capturing the raw image which I talked about. The format is appropriately called RAW. If you shoot pictures and store them in this format, you could use Photoshop or other photo editing software to work your magic.

If you store your pictures in JPEG format, the camera would have already performed its software magic (of course, under your orders) and saved a compressed image which is much smaller than the RAW image. But, unfortunately, you would have lost a lot of data during the process.

So, where does it leave us?

For a purist, all the same rules that applied to buying a film camera still applies. Spend the most of your budget on professional quality lenses, a sturdy tripod, and a powerful external flash. And, always shoot in RAW mode. Don't forget to buy lots of film, er, memory.

For the hobbyist, all the same rules apply. Spend the most of your budget on prosumer lenses, a sturdy tripod, and an external flash. Of course, get the best body that you can afford. With today's array of features, it sometimes is hard to choose. Most of the popular cameras come with almost all the features: multi-point focus, multiple metering modes (evaluative, center-weighed and spot being the most common) and a next to useless built-in flash.

One feature worth considering while deciding is image stabilization. This is the ability of the camera (and lens, in some cases) to reduce the 'shake' in an image and improve its sharpness. This feature dramatically increases the range of shots you can shoot without a tripod. Something very useful. There are two types of systems: lens based and camera based. In the lens based systems, each individual lens comes with a built-in gyroscope to move lens elements to compensate for the shake. Pretty cool. The other system is where the sensor itself moves. The greatest advantage of the latter system is that it works with any lens in your bag. The photo above would have been crystal clear if I had image stabilization on my camera. It was shot hand-held at 1/10 sec shutter speed.

So, in short, things have not changed a lot, and a lot of the same reasoning still holds true. Just go get yourself a digiSLR and enjoy the ability to instantaneously preview your successes as well as mistakes!

Crossing iPhone and the Surface

You know what I would like to see. A cross between an iPhone (touch screen, and usability) and the interface of the Surface.

Imagine a laptop with a LCD screen in place of the keyboard. This LCD screen will have the same form factor and multi-touch capabilities as the iPhone. It is software driven and hence can be reprogrammed to resemble any input device. Couple that with the interface of the Surface.

Now, we are talking something useful.

Imagine being able to change the Qwerty keyboard to a Dvorak keyboard with the click of a button. Or, imagine changing your English keyboard to a Mandarin keyboard. Or, turning the LCD panel into a Surface where you can interact with still pictures and video. Or, being able to interface to other electronic devices by just placing them on (or near) the laptop.

That is one powerful interface. Imagine turning your 'keyboard' into a graphic tablet and writing on it with a stylus. The possibilities are limitless. This would be a far more useful application of the Surface technology that Microsoft has come up with.

But, unfortunately, the technology behind the Surface doesn't lend itself to be molded into the form factor of a laptop. Microsoft will need to compress the technology to fit it into the form factor of a laptop.

Design for Assembly

Have you ever bought anything that required assembly? Have you noticed how easy or difficult it was to assemble it? Have you noticed why many people shy away from these "assembly required" things?

One of the main reasons is poor design for assembly.

When you design something that needs to be assembled by the end user, make sure that you keep the end user in mind. As a matter of fact, whenever you design anything (furniture, software, ...), it is always a good practice to keep the end user in mind.

Take the case of Sauder furniture which requires "some" assembly. The instruction manual is usually a book! The furniture, be it a simple bookcase or a chest of drawers, comes with a wide variety of screws, nuts and bolts, and a thick instruction manual. And, to top it all, once assembled, they cannot be taken off without damaging the furniture. At least Sauder uses pictures and words in their instructions. I have seen some companies just use words. God help the assembler.

Another thing that pisses me off is that they always include the exact number of fasterers required. What is their problem in adding a couple extra in each size? If one of the bolts has a bad thread, you have to call an 800 number to get it from them, or make a trip to the local Home Depot. Remember that you can't even return it back since you have already started assembly.

In contrast, look at the things manufactured by IKEA. Not only are they beautiful, they are designed with the end user in mind. Their instruction manuals are usually a page with pictures. I have rarely seen words on their instruction manuals. Talk about Internationalization. And, they standardise on the fasteners and try not to use too many varieties. Most of the times, the items can be easily taken apart (for re-transportation) too.

And, they have bins with extra fasteners in their warehouse so you can pick a few if you need them.

This is elegant and thoughtful 'design for assembly'.

And, they include the tools needed for the assembly (most of the time, an allen key) with each item they sell. Who wouldn't love that?

Apple is another case of great design. Look at this example where Apple has included a paper clip which is needed for maintenance work. Not only have they suggested you use a paper clip to get the job done, they have also included one with the product. How often can you find a paper clip at home when you need one? So, Apple is there to help you.

This is another great example of 'design for serviceability'.

Design for "Accessability"

Who hasn't encountered a product wrapped in such a way that it takes all your might to get it out of its packaging? The worst I have encountered are the hard plastic packaging that is molded around the product. You need to cut the plastic with a pair of scissors to get it off. The edges are so sharp, most often you get injured trying to cut this thing off. And, to top it all, you end up cutting the user manual that is hidden inside the packaging.

Packaging seems to have gone from Tamper-proof to Impossible-to-open.

These impossible-to-open packaging have become the common staple of our packaging industry. I don't know if they do it to protect us (which they are obviously not doing) or to protect the product (what harm would a pair of scissors get into, if not packed this way?).

What happened to the nice "pull me" plastic string sticking out of the plastic packaging of the yesteryear CDs? It was so convenient to pull the string and tear through the whole shrink packaging in one shot. It was a pleasure to unpack those CDs. They served their purpose of protecting the CD as well as sealing it from tampering. They also served their purpose of being easy to remove.

It looks like this kind of packaging was conceived to protect from shoplifting, but I don't see a shoplifter shying away from a product just because it is wrapped in impossible-to-open packaging. All this is doing is push away prospective buyers to products that are more elegantly packaged.