UsabilityPost

The Laws of Simplicity

2010-02-07T00:00:00-08:00

At the 2006 annual TED conference in Monterey, the New York times columnist David Pogue delivered a presentation about the importance of simplicity in business. The commercial success of Google’s simple search engine interface and Apple’s iPod music player show that simplicity sells.

This idea of simplicity as a selling point clashes with the old thinking of constantly adding new features to your product in order to make it more appealing to your customers. Simple products are often thought of as dumbed-down, basic and inferior. But adding features doesn’t mean you get better products — it almost always means you get more complicated products just because the interface has to be expanded to accommodate the new functionality.

The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda is, as the name implies, an exploration into the lands of simplicity. It’s a book about the nature and soul of simplicity and how simplicity can be applied to your own work and life. The book is structured into 10 laws, with the last one split into 3 ‘keys’.

The first three chapters are directly applicable to software design. The first law is called “Reduce”. Maeda offers a concise method for working with this law called SHE: shrink, hide and embody. Small devices appear simpler to us because on the surface it seems like they cannot contain much complexity in them — there’s just not enough space. Of course this is deceiving because the microprocessor technology in today’s phones and notebooks is very complex and powerful, but you can at least maintain an illusion of simplicity by making your devices smaller. For example, the iPod has a shiny metal surface at the back which reflects everything around it and makes the whole device look slimmer. Today’s LCD monitors usually sit on very thin stands to accentuate their thinness.

Hiding is another great method of making the complex appear simple. For example, when using the Swiss Army Knife you will only really open one knife or tool at a time — the rest remain concealed inside. User interfaces on a computer screen are not constrained by physical space which means you can hide an awful lot of stuff in software. Secondary features and settings are usually tucked away in the menubar.

The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.

Embodying is more a business decision than a technical one. Consumers will only buy smaller and simpler devices if they feel they are powerful enough for their needs. Example: the thin Bang & Olufsen remote control is intentionally heavy, which implies “high quality”.

The second law is called “Organize”. When you can’t reduce and hide any more, organize what’s left into something meaningful. Here again the author offers a method for doing just this he calls SLIP: sort, label, integrate and prioritize. Sometimes you’ll want to squint when looking at your design. Squinting (or looking from further away) lets you see the forest from the trees — i.e. groups will form from individual content elements. Groups are important: they differentiate the different areas and functions of your interface. When you squint, can you clearly see the different groups, or is it all just one big forest of content?

Organization makes a system of many appear fewer

The third law is: “Time”. Here we can utilize the SHE (shrink, hide, embody) method again. For example, the iPod Shuffle music player shrinks time by removing song selection from the process of playing your music tracks — simply hit Play and the device will play songs at random. Same thing with Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky Button”; instead of looking through search results, just hit the button to take you to the most likely page.

Savings in time feel like simplicity

Hiding time is possible. Casinos in Las Vegas have no windows or clocks. They do this to hide the passage of time away from you in order to try and keep you there longer. But this is deceiving. A better way to work with time is to embody it somehow. Here, we have things like progress bars. When you’re performing a some resource intensive task in a software application or downloading a file you’ll almost always see a progress bar. The progress bar shows how much has been done and how much longer the application has to keep working. But it also moves — you can see the computer working and progress made is being visualized for you. Research shows this simple interface element reduces perceived wait time for the users.

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful

The chapters that follow are also very interesting, though the ideas in them will require more thought into how they can be integrated into your design philosophy.

My only real criticism of this book is this: while all the laws Maeda paints are interesting and insightful, there seems to me a lack of cohesion between them. I can see each law for what it is but I cannot see them all fusing into something clear and concrete. To me the books feels more like an exploration into the uncharted territory of simplicity and in the process manages to plant a few flags here and there, gaining plenty of territory but stopping short of drawing up a clear map of the whole. But even so, the book is worth reading — perhaps even because of this. The “unfinished” nature allows you to draw your own conclusions and interpretations, and more important, it will get you thinking about simplicity and how it can be better applied in the design of your products.

Who this book isn’t for: those who are looking for a clear set of guidelines and formulas to follow during product design. You won’t find this here. However, this doesn’t mean the book won’t help you design simpler products — it will. The Laws of Simplicity is an entertaining and engaging read. Maeda follows his own ideas and delivers his message in concise form at just around 100 pages. The book will get you thinking about simplicity in new ways, which is going to be ever more important as consumers switch to products that are simpler and easier to use.

Blogging Simplified

2010-02-06T00:00:00-08:00

I’ve just finished migrating UsabilityPost to another blogging engine. Before, the blog was powered by the usual suspect: WordPress. The new engine is called Toto which was recently launched by Alexis Sellier, the creator of LESS. Unfortunately Feedburner has re-published all the articles to RSS again, so apologies to all the RSS subscribers for the confusion.

Ok, so what’s Toto? Yet another blog engine? Not quite. Toto’s features are so compelling that I just couldn’t resist switching over.

First of all, Toto doesn’t run on a database. The whole blog is essentially a set of template files and a collection of articles in text format. Yep, plain old text files. Each article file contains a bit of metadata at the top, like the title and date (and whatever else you want), followed by the article itself, which is formatted either with HTML or Markdown. This fits in a lot better with my workflow since I don’t normally write the posts in the WordPress edit window when I begin, I write them in an external text editor. Once I’m happy I paste my work into WordPress, format it, and add the images. Toto cuts out the extra step — the text files you work with are the posts.

The new "database" of articles

Toto uses a popular distributed version control system called git to manage deployment and keep a history of every change and update you make. Toto itself is a Ruby gem that’s been designed to run on a popular Ruby cloud host Heroku, although you can run it on your own server just as well (Heroku is very fast though and offers the automated git deployment). All this basically means is this: whenever you add articles or make changes to the site’s design, you check in the changes to git, and then push them to Heroku. 2 commands and the changes are live. You use a command line for this but the process is very fast and simple to those familiar with version control systems.

The site itself is generated from the text articles and layout files. This static nature of the site offers two big advantages. The first one is that it runs very fast. Once a page is loaded it is instantly cached, and the next visitor to load the page accesses the cached page itself, which uses minimal computing power. Toto will easily handle very heavy traffic which comes in useful if you ever get on the front page of social news sites like Digg. WordPress has a plugin called Super Cache, but I’ve experienced problems under heavy traffic even with Super Cache running on full.

The second advantage is that the site is very secure. Nobody can hack into your admin panel because there’s no admin panel.

The static nature of the site poses a problem: how do you deliver something dynamic like comments? Disqus to the rescue. Disqus is an outsourced commenting engine that you can easily integrate into any blog. Comments are pulled from the Disqus server using JavaScript and are pasted right into your pages. I’m not 100% sold on how Disqus works (there’s way too many popups and extras that come by default — I’ve turned most of them off to keep things simple), but for now this seems like a good solution. I’ve also imported all of the old WordPress comments, so the transition should be seamless. As a bonus, there’s some new features like subscribing to the post by email and threaded replies.

Ultimately, what I love about Toto is that there’s no layer between you and the blog, as is the case with WordPress. With WordPress everything you do goes through an admin panel. This may work for some people, but I find all the options just too much. Additionally, it adds extra work: you have to format all the posts inside WordPress. Now I’ll just write the posts as I would normally using text files, and publish directly using git.

A blog is essentially a set of documents, it shouldn’t need a large content management system to support it, just a light templating system and a way to manage your posts. I think over the years all of the popular blogging systems have set off on the wrong path. They’ve got advanced control panels, widgets and full GUI text editors that try to replicate your desktop publishing tools, which all ends up being too much. I think systems like Toto hit the perfect middle ground between database driven dynamic sites and static sites. They let you use the best tool for the job, for example you can use your favorite text editor to edit your posts, and git to manage version control.

If you’re not afraid of the command line and are looking for something simpler than WordPress I highly recommend you give Toto a try. It’s still in early versions but I’m already seeing a lot of potential. Leave a comment below to let me know what you think.

On the iPad

2010-01-29T00:00:00-08:00

Wow, I’m seeing a lot of negative commentary on the new Apple iPad tablet from pundits all around the Web. People are already shouting that this will be a flop and that Apple have dropped the ball this time. A lot of criticisms: no USB, no multitasking, low memory, no Flash support, no camera, no full OS, and so on and on. Everyone seems to be missing the point completely.

I am personally really impressed with what Apple have delivered and I have absolutely no doubt it will be one of Apple’s best selling products. Let me tell you why.

One mistake people are making is assuming the iPad is just a “scaled up iPod Touch”. Mistake? Really? Absolutely. It’s a mistake because this evaluation of the device comes from an anchored comparison to Apple’s previous work. Instead of looking at the product for what it is, the evaluation simply analyzes the differences, which is mainly the screen size. Instead, you should look at what the product actually is, and what it’s going to do for you.

The screen size is a huge difference. Try browsing the Web on the iPhone. Works well but you have to keep zooming in and out. You’ll need to zoom on the iPad, but not as much — you’ll see a lot more of the page which will make a big difference to the browsing experience. Same thing with photos, and videos, and pretty much everything else. While the iPhone is mainly a phone that does more, the iPad is a fully functional information consumption device. The fact that it uses the iPhone’s OS is also irrelevant because the OS in question is suited perfectly for what the product is intended to do. Instead of looking at the iPad as a big iPod Touch, you should look at it in isolation and ask: is this a good tablet device? The answer is: yes.

Another mistake people are making is assuming that the device was made for them. It probably wasn’t. Most people don’t know what a Web “browser” is, they think the little Internet Explorer icon on their desktop is the “Internet”. These people have a computer at home but they don’t really need most of it. They struggle with it to just do very basic tasks, like show the latest photos they took to their friends. This is the real mass market, and the iPad is an ideal device for them.

The iPad will succeed not because of what it has, but because of what it does.

What it does is enough to cover all the basic needs of many people: look stuff up on the Web, keep a calendar, check email, show photos to your friends and watch videos. The iPad isn’t a personal computer, it’s a highly mobile consumption device. I can see a lot of other side markets: medical, students, taking notes in meetings, and so on, and these will push the device even further. The iPad is in no way meant to replace content creation devices like the desktop or the laptop for real work — and it won’t.

Another criticism I see is that it’s a very closed device. From all the negative feedback, this one bears real weight. However, I don’t think this will negatively affect the sales of iPad. This is because as I’ve mentioned above the iPad isn’t a personal computer. It’s not meant to be some godly tablet that does everything you want. It’s actually the opposite: it’s a tablet that does very few tasks. It’s very focused, and because of that it does the very few things incredibly well. Less functionality leads to a simpler interface, which makes the device a lot more accessible to a lot more people than previous tablet computers that run full blown desktop operating systems. The iPad isn’t a desktop or a laptop, it’s a lot simpler than that.

One great thing about the iPad (and the iPhone) is how responsive it is. When you scroll, the content scrolls without any interruptions and lag — it’s very, very smooth. Why is this so important? It’s important because this level of responsiveness blends the borders between analog and digital media. When you use an iPhone, the content follows your finger as you scroll it — it feels like there’s a physical piece of paper moving under your hand. It feels this way because there is no lag. If the scrolling effect isn’t 100% smooth, this illusion of physical media breaks down and you’re back to struggling with an interface, waiting for it to catch up. This is a big problem that plagues almost all of competing devices.

The iPad will be a very successful product for Apple because it solves problems rather than competes on features. Remember that this is just a version 1. This is a start of a new line of devices that are only going to get lighter, thinner and more powerful, and there will be many new apps designed specifically for the new screen size. Finally we have a device that offers convenient and conformable consumption of information, like the Web, like newspaper, like books. This is the beginning of the end of paper.

What's in a Name?

2010-01-24T00:00:00-08:00

Gruber of Daring Fireball posted his take on a suggestion that the Apple tablet could be called “Canvas”. I agree that it would make a great name, and the artwork in Apple’s invitation does point towards it. This post gave me another thought though for a potential use for this device.

Everyone is talking about reading stuff, watching movies and playing games on the device. It’s all about digital consumption, not creation. How would you write documents and manage spreadsheets on a small tablet device which likely doesn’t come with a physical keyboard? The answer: you wouldn’t. But there is a form of creation that doesn’t require a keyboard: art.

Think about it: the tablet would be perfect for designers as a… well… a graphics tablet. Today artists use products like the Wacom Tablet to paint digital art. If you actually want to see what you’re doing you’ll need much more expensive tablet with screens on them. But here comes Apple with a touch tablet device that’s not only multi-touch but features a high resolution screen. A perfect replacement for the old Wacom.

Apple has always maintained a large mindshare with designers. Windows runs Photoshop just as well, but designers tend to prefer the Mac. I think art creation could be a great angle to explore with this tablet, and would potentially be one of the selling features for artists and designers. Not “the” feature, just one that gives the product that extra edge. Like the camera on the iPod nano.

E-books are Books

2010-01-24T00:00:00-08:00

Today everybody is still using a misleading term: the e-book. What’s an e-book? An e-book is an electronic book. But what does it really mean? Essentially all it means is: “a digital book”. A book that’s not made from paper, ink and glue, but from bits and bytes. This is misleading.

It’s misleading because the term ‘book’ doesn’t really refer to the type of materials used to realize written work — it refers to the format of such work. It’s all about distinguishing and categorizing a piece of writing so that readers know what to expect in terms of length and structure.

Every book these days begins life on a computer. It doesn’t make it an ‘e-book’ though. It’s just a book that hasn’t yet been published. When such books are published (read: printed) they become knows as ‘books’. When these books are published in electronic formats, e.g. as .PDF files, they seem to take on the title of ‘e-books’.

But the term ‘e-book’ carries with it a bad association. A quick way of making money online is to release these things known as ‘e-books’ that teach people how to do something specific (lose weight, make money online, and so on). These books are produced for the sole purpose of making money and as such are generally not very well written. They also tend to advertise doing something without much effort — again, for the sake of being sold. It’s a cheap and dirty genre that dominates the perception of what an ‘e-book’ is.

The thing is, books are migrating. They’re migrating from printed pages to pixels on reading devices. They’re the same books, and yet many people refer to devices like Kindle as e-book readers, and the books published on them as e-books. They shouldn’t. Books on the Kindle are books, whether they are also printed or not. Books published only in .PDF formats on the Web are also books. E-books are… books.

Why is this terminology important? It’s important because it underlines the perception people have of this separation of content — as if the printed content is somehow different to the content we consume using digital media. It’s not — it’s the same thing, and more and more of it is going to be consumed primarily through electronic devices.

I think it’s time to stop using this misleading term and just call books by their proper name. Paper and ink isn’t that which makes a book — it’s what’s written in it that does.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy

2010-01-18T00:00:00-08:00

Steve Krug’s new book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems is essentially a companion book to his first, very successful book on usability “Don’t Make Me Think”. While the first book focused on design, this new book is all about testing.

The book is split into two parts. The first part is called “Finding Usability Problems”. It’s all about the usability test: how to go about planning it, recruiting testers and finally conducting it. The second part, “Fixing Usability Problems”, covers debriefing after the test and what your next steps should be — i.e. what you should actually do with the information you’ve collected. At the end of the book, Krug briefly touches on remote testing and provides his recommended reading list.

If you’ve read Krug’s first book, “Don’t Make Me Think”, you’ll be familiar with his informal and humorous writing style. There are also plenty of illustrations throughout to keep the content interesting. The book isn’t very long, actually, as the author states himself, it’s “short enough to read on a long plane ride”. I think that’s a good thing. The clear focus, accessible language and length ensure that the book will be read, and hopefully also used. The author’s aim for this book isn’t to turn you into a usability testing expert, it’s to teach developers how to conduct their own small tests that will make a difference in their products.

Indeed, Steve Krug recommends doing each round of testing with as little as just 3 people. This approach won’t give you a long list of problems to solve — and that’s exactly the point. Testing with 3 people means you can conduct the whole round of testing really quickly: test in the morning, and debrief during lunch. You’ll almost certainly discover the really critical issues. The author advises you focus on fixing 10 most important problems, which is enough to make a difference for your users and plenty for your team to get on with.

Throughout the book Krug uses short maxims, for lack of a better name — little snippets of wisdom that summarize the main idea behind each set of recommendations. Some of my favorites are: “Start earlier than you think makes sense”, “Make it a spectator sport” and “When fixing problems, always do the least you can do”. Presenting recommendations in such compact form makes the ideas behind the book much easier to remember.

One great thing about the book is the detailed materials the author provides for conducting your usability tests. For example, there is a full script to follow with your test participants, a script to follow with the observers, a brief form for each one of them to fill in and a checklist for you to go through before and after the test. There is also a video you can watch of a usability test that Krug conducts (you can watch it here).

Krug advocates two approaches to tackling usability problems. The first is: tweak, don’t redesign. Oftentimes you’ll be tempted to do a lot more than necessary. A problem with one or two items in your navigation menu may prompt you to want to redesign the whole navigation. Small fixes and tweaks just don’t have the same good feel to them as a complete redesign — that smell of new paint if you will. But unlike redesigns, tweaks are usually quick and easy to implement. Going off on a redesign will consume all your resources and time, the redesign may get sidetracked or never finished. Small tweaks can be implemented even if you do plan to have a redesign later, and your users will start enjoying the benefits right away.

The second approach is: take something away. That is… literally, take something away from the page you’re working with. The reason people find a lot of sites confusing is because they can’t find what they’re looking for, and they can’t do that because there’s too much other stuff around which they must look through. Taking stuff away shifts more focus on that which remains, so the first thing you should do when trying to fix a problem isn’t necessarily to add something, but to see if you can take something away.

Who this book is for: If you plan to conduct usability testing on your site (or other software products) and are new to it, this book is for you. If you’re thinking about it, then you may also benefit from this book. It will tell you exactly what’s involved, how to do it and what you’re getting out of it.

Who this book isn’t for: anyone who doesn’t plan to test (and are sure about it). While the author does touch a little on actually fixing usability problems, the majority of the book is all about testing and conducting tests, so if you want to read more about the design side of things, get Krug’s first book: Don’t Make Me Think.

Flash Is Never Coming To the iPhone

2010-01-12T00:00:00-08:00

TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) posted a list of things their readers want to see in iPhone 4.0. Flash made it on the list with 80% support.

"Almost 80% of us want Flash, even if it's a bad idea."

Personally, I’d love to see Flash work on the iPhone. There are so many sites and apps on the Web that use it that it would most certainly be something users will benefit from. But, this just isn’t going to happen — at least through the phone’s Safari browser that is. The reason for this has nothing to do with technical problems; it’s all about Apple’s strategic vision for the device.

You see, Flash is a powerful tool when compared to something like simple HTML. Yes, many of today’s apps use JavaScript to power dynamic controls and animations, and in the future we’ll be doing this with HTML’s canvas, but for now Flash is one of the easiest tools to use if you want to create rich, interactive sites and apps on the Web. You can use Flash to make games, play movies and do all manner of things which HTML just wasn’t built for.

The problem? Flash is expensive — in terms of CPU usage that is. Flash, especially on the Mac, is hungry for computing power. It’s also slow when compared to native apps or HTML pages. If Apple were to get Flash to work on the iPhone, it would almost certainly eat the battery for breakfast and probably won’t run very fast either. But… even if they did figure out how to optimize it and get it to run relatively well, it still wouldn’t matter.

It wouldn’t matter because Flash isn’t just something consumers would use — it’s something developers would use to build iPhone apps, and there is no way Apple is going down that road. Developers had to wait a while for Apple to release a native software development kit. Before this, the only way to make iPhone apps was to… well… it wasn’t; you just had to make web apps and run them in mobile Safari.

People wanted more, and so Apple delivered a set of tools to make native app development possible. They worked very hard to make sure this set of tools was very, very good. The reason: they have to ensure that the apps created by third parties are good and feel at home on the device. Apple provide things like UI presets, icon builders and usability guidelines to ensure people’s apps are as good as their own.

They distribute these apps through their closed marketplace — again, to try and maintain a certain standard. I say “try” because this didn’t work out very well and there are plenty of pathetic “iFart” apps in the store. I’m sure Apple doesn’t really want these sort of apps in there since they cheapen their premium brand, but with a flood submissions that they’re receiving daily they have to give way to developers somewhat.

Anyway, my point is this: Apple want to tightly control the stuff people make for the iPhone because the product’s selling point isn’t the hardware, it’s the software — the user experience. Hardware can be copied — a user experience cannot.

Allowing third party apps on the phone meant that Apple is no longer the sole architect of this experience. Now, every developer making iPhone apps shapes this experience in their own limited way. Apple are doing their best to keep a firm grip on this to ensure they are still in control and are the ones setting the direction.

Back to Flash. If Apple were to implement Flash for the iPhone, developers would get another tool with which to make their apps. They will also have a completely open channel for distribution: the Web. This means no control for Apple. People will make Flash apps without their guidance, toolkits or distribution. These Flash apps would all look different, feel different, and probably won’t run very well given Flash’s performance issues on OS X. What we’ll get are a lot of laggy apps and games that eat the phone’s battery and look out of place on the device. Apple’s sacred user experience will be shattered.

This doesn’t fit at all into Apple’s strategy for this device. That’s why there is no Flash for the iPhone today and why Apple won’t be implementing it in their mobile Safari browser in the future. We’ll likely see it in a form of an application packager that turns Flash apps into iPhone apps, something Adobe is working on right now, but on the browser front, where it really matters, Flash isn’t coming.

Introducing the UsabilityPost Forum

2010-01-03T00:00:00-08:00

A lot of interesting and valuable discussions take place in the comments of the posts here on the blog. I think it would be useful to have a dedicated platform to take these discussions even further. So today I’m opening up a new section of the site: the UsabilityPost Forum. Access it from the menubar above or go directly to: forum.usabilitypost.com

Feel free to post about anything you find interesting — for example, a good book you’ve just read or a useful app you’ve discovered. Launched a new site or app and need feedback? Post about it. Discuss latest trends and design ideas.

Of course since the forum has just been launched there might be a bug or two hiding somewhere and a few design elements to iron out. If you find a bug please let me know, either here or on the forum itself.

Get started by signing up here.

High Quality

2009-12-10T00:00:00-08:00

I see the term “high quality” used quite a lot when reading descriptions of what a good product should be, or indeed companies advertising their own products. But this term is ultimately meaningless.

Quality is a distinctive characteristic or attribute possessed by something. The screen on that new device can be described as “high quality” but that won’t actually say anything about it. What will say something about the screen are things like resolution, contrast, color, size and so on. All these factors contribute to the overall quality of the screen, yes, but using the term “high quality” without elaboration is meaningless because it doesn’t provide any parameters to measure this quality.

Saying your product is a “high quality” product is like saying your product has “great characteristics”. Your product is a good product because it’s a good product.

Make It Difficult to Read

2009-12-08T00:00:00-08:00

Every article I read on writing content for the Web revolves around one key idea: make the content easy to read. It’s all about making it scannable, writing great headlines and headings, and using simple and clear language. But before you follow that advice you need to answer this: why?

Why make the content easy to read? Why not ignore readability and just focus on your own particular style? Or perhaps even make it more difficult to read? You think it’s all clear cut and writing something that’s hard to read has absolutely no value?

How about this: writing content that’s difficult to digest slows the reader down. They can’t scan it so they have to slow down and actually read it. If they cannot understand something they may even have to stop and think about what they’ve just read — perhaps even re-read it over again.

This facilitates a deeper engagement with your readers. Instead of gobbling up your content like some cheap fast food they will actually take their time to savour it and reflect back on what they’ve just read. Will you lose impatient readers looking for a quick fix? Probably. But do you care about that? What’s important to you: connecting with an intelligent audience who cares about your content or attracting as many eyeballs as possible and trying to keep them on your page?

"It is hard to be understood: especially when one thinks and lives gangastrotogati among men who think and live otherwise, namely kurmagati or at best 'as the frog goes', mandeikagati -- I am certainly doing everything I can to be hard to understand myself! -- and one ought to be heartily grateful even for the will to some subtlety in interpretation." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Slicing up your content into bite size pieces and putting it on a silver plate isn’t the panacea for writing all types of Web content. If your objectives are to sell or get pageviews, then this may be a good strategy. If you’re writing a blog though, or something else that warrants deeper involvement, then you should stop and think — what am I after? Am I after pageviews or am I after readers? Maybe you’re not after either of these things — maybe you’re writing for yourself? In that case, why not make yourself difficult to understand, leaving room for interpretation and reflection?

There is no one right way to write content for the Web, just different approaches for different circumstances. Knowing your objectives can help you choose your strategy, just be sure to consider all options, especially the less obvious ones.

The Web Is the Perfect Content Delivery Channel For Tablet Readers

2009-12-01T00:00:00-08:00

A while back I wrote a post on why we still use paper. I’ve talked about the idea of consumption of digital content, mainly textual content. We still read books and magazines because they’re much more suited for consumption — it’s just much easier to sit comfortably in an armchair read a book than to read a book on a computer monitor at your desk. Personal computers are more suited towards content creation because of their size, input devices, big monitors and so on.

I believe than eventually paper books and magazines will become obsolete. This will happen when we get a good digital device for reading them, a good reading tablet. Amazon has begun this with the Kindle, Barnes & Noble have recently answered with the nook, but I think it will take us a lot more time to arrive at a perfect device of this sort. When it does arrive, there will become little point in printing thousands of paper copies when you can distribute the same content in digital form.

One interesting thing I notice a lot is that people tend to be confused about tablets. They see no reason for making a digital tablet. Who would use it and why?

But the reason is staring back at them. The reason for a tablet is this: to consume the Web. You see, the Web, is the world’s biggest collection of content. People today don’t just write books and magazines, they write blogs, participate in social networks and other forms of social media (forums, comments on blogs, photo sharing, etc.). Content is created not in a very rigid form of books, magazines and journals but in a very flexible form, spread all around the Web.

But books, magazines and other forms of old fashioned content that’s distributed in digital form are still packaged up in formats like PDF, or worse, closed, proprietary document formats. Old-fashioned content types are clinging to an old-fashioned distribution model when all the time we have this greatest distribution channel ever made sitting right there, open to all.

The best way to distribute tomorrow’s content then (the content that is currently printed on paper) is simply by using the tools we’ve always had: HTML and CSS, delivered over the Web. No PDFs or proprietary formats — simply web pages. This has obvious advantages. It’s easy to create the actual hardware to read them because we’ve already got browsers that can do it. It’s easy to style — we’re creating websites every day. Easy to modify styles for different devices and to make content more accessible (e.g. resizing text). It’s easy to update content when it’s stored in a central location, making error correction much faster. You can download the pages should you need the content locally when you don’t have Internet access. It just makes perfect sense.

What’s even better is that Google is working on an operating system well suited for this task: Chrome OS. The operating system is just a web browser. While I’m sure many notebooks and portable devices will benefit from the power of Chrome in running web apps, I see Chrome OS a perfect fit for tablet devices as well, where reading will be the main usage.

I think the important thing to consider when thinking about tablets is that these devices aren’t meant for content creation — that would be difficult on a small screen and tiny keyboard — they’re meant for content consumption, reading books, blogs, newspapers, email, etc., which they’ll be much better at given their size and weight.

Steve Jobs once made a comment saying that: “people don’t read”. But they do read. Even if they don’t read books or newspapers, they read other things like blogs and social media. Content is changing. New media has introduced many types of new content that was born on the Web. The Web is its original habitat.

Not so with old content like books, newspapers, journals. They were born long before the Internet was invented and while we’re seeing some move into this new medium, a lot of it still clings to the old. I think eventually books and magazines should migrate online as well. A simple tablet reading device powered by a browser will be the means of accessing them, together with the rest of content we already consume daily on the Web.