Kindling

As a kickoff post, and since I feel compelled to jump on the bandwagon, today we'll look at the Amazon Kindle 2 e-book reader.



Amazon, the online retail giant, has taken it upon themselves to jump off of the cliff of product design. This is the second iteration, and the result is somewhat confusing.

The two versions of Kindle are polarizing, restrained, and memorable for very little.

Brief background: the Kindle's main differentiation from other similar devices (cellphones, smartphones, PDA's, etc) is in it's display: E-ink, or electronic ink, which uses microscopic spheres which are suspended in a clear liquid, and change from black to white when an electric charge. The result is a monochrome display which is thinner, flexible, and uses less electricity than commonplace display technologies. This is a relatively new concept, and it's ultimate goal (using cheap, plentiful e-ink displays to completely replace newspapers or books) is far away, and it remains a novelty.

Unfortunately, the outside form elements of the Kindle mostly serve to actively undermine the qualities that make e-ink attractive in the first place. Kindle's designers, no doubt sweating through their shirts, ties loosened, empty coffee cups strewn on the cubicle floor, seemed to have turned, in desperation, to the iPod, a design which represents the design zeitgeist for this decade, for inspiration. The large, radiused corners, the white finish, even the ratio of screen to display is reminiscent of early genetation iPods. But there are pitfalls to this. The screen border is large and flat, giving one a sense that the case is too big for the screen. The tiny round buttons seem old fashioned, reminiscent of typewriter keys, and take up an astonishing amount of real-estate. How much of a keyboard do you need to read a book, after all?

On the sides, navigation buttons exist but are only differentiated by part lines. Traditional interface design wisdom tells us that we need some kind of material, color, or other change to tell us where controls are without us having to waste valuable mental capacity finding and memorizing the location and function of every control.

Kindle 2 is a response, or redesign, of Kindle 1. For comparison:



This was wildly unpopular when first released, and while it has it's own set of problems, I feel somehow by comparison this one to be the better shape. Sure, it's a little more radical, it has more dangerous design choices, but this one elicits emotion. One thinks of origami, or woodcarving, or god forbid, that Kindle 1 is merely several generations removed from the sharp, dangerous chamfers of a BMW.



Perhaps, though, that's being generous. The important thing about Apple's design is not the rounded edges, or the simple design, or the color or ratio or really, any one single tanglible element that you can simply grab and magically imbue your own product with. Apple's real magic comes from the intangible feeling you get from their products; the soothing, reassuring voice in your head that says; "This is the future now. Everything is okay."

Because that's the real underlying influence behind both the kindle and the ipod: the future. Not our actual future, of course, but the visionary, limitless, maybe even naïve future of decades past.