4 reactions:

ascian said...

Uhh... just press the back button a couple of times, same as turning a page back? And, if you remember they mentioned a character previously but you don't want to flick through 100+ pages to find out who they were, just search within the book to find other references.

Part of the benefit of eBooks, and part of the reason why they'll take off, is actually the fact that they make books more accessible to elderly people and other people who have difficulty reading normal-sized print. It allows them to read any book just by up-sizing the text, rather than only having access to large-print editions.

Usability's a nice buzzword, but it's not quite going to plug the hole in the bookseller's sinking ship. Books will still be around as beautiful works of art, but not as everyday reading material.

2:18 AM

Jasper (uselog.com) said...

@ascian I liked the quote because a bookseller used usability as an argument. I'm not sure he's right though; seems a little desperate. But as far as usability being a buzzword... I'd have to disagree on that. In the nineties it may have been a buzzword, nowadays it's just a product property.

7:16 AM

Jim Drew said...

Disclaimer: I worked in the previous round of eBook device companies in 1999-2001.

The stopper for eBooks to get popular acceptance now is the same thing it was a decade ago: eBooks and eBook hardware and eBook delivery systems are not yet good enough to match (much less exceed) what printed books have to offer.

Never mind the nonsense about the feeling of the paper and the smell of a book; that's people looking for an excuse to be dismissive. I'm talking about the print quality (screen DPI) and the color fidelity. I'm talking about some of the physical modes of interacting with printed matter, like flipping pages, fixed pages numbers, and the sense of depth into a book or remaining in it. And I'm talking about the pricing structures, which treat digital texts as identical to printed ones, when users do not see them as having equivalent monetary value.

Some of these are solvable eventually by improvements in the hardware and software. Some are tied to physical nature of paper and binding and have to be overcome via design, not just trying to emulate such but by providing new and innovative ways of interacting with the digital text that replace those methods such that you don't feel their loss. And of course the pricing issue requires producers and sellers to grasp that digital objects need to be their own items; the music industry has been able to grasp this (to a degree), but print has not.

In my opinion, the technology has advanced at a snail's pace. 10 years ago, we were talking about moving to ePaper and OLED screens; they are now here, but they are still not what they need to be, what they will be in another 10 years. It's the UX design that really needs to advance, though, to get out from under the heel of book emulation and into the realm of digital text innovation.

I did for the first time this past weekend, on a trip to Washington DC, see Kindles in use in the wild. That is the biggest sign of transformation: once seeing people using eBook readers in the real world becomes commonplace, then eBooks have a chance to be more than a curoisity.

1:13 AM

list said...

What's with the world's pervasive all-or-nothing thinking on the book format?? There's a place for both ebooks and printed books.

I use an ereader for some work-related reading, and some client interaction, but for personal reading, I'm a hard-copy fan.

It's super sunny and I want to read...paper please...ereader screen contrasts aren't so good yet that the reading process itself isn't effort-ful.

Sunny day turns rainy? Paper please...no freakout over getting rain in the wrong crack of my $200-300 reader.

Rain makes my hands wet and I might drop what I'm reading? Paper please...see above.

I want to take a break from multi-tasking, multi-thinking, multi-strategizing...paper please. With ONE book in hand, I'm required to focus on it...no excuses to flip, check, browse, elsewhere.

Oh yeah, when I want to turn the pages...forward or backward...a paper book allows me to turn them WHEREVER I WANT....no futzing around for a button (no hitting it accidentally), etc.

I love my ereader for magazines, some tech manuals (300+ pages of eyetracking studies? Ereader please.), and newspapers. For my multi-tasking, get-everything-in-the-world-done-now times. My ereader helps me keep deadlines.

My paper pals help me relax, reflect, focus...and in that 1-subject time...I grow.

8:02 PM

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