Great UX, thwarted by walled gardens

Readmill is a great reading environment. That their designers obsess on visceral user experience makes it a true pleasure to use. It may very well be the best “feeling” ereader application out there. This is a critical attribute for an environment in which you can spend hours a day.

But it suffers from the thing that any book-related company or product or startup that is not a Kindle suffers from: It’s a slog to get content into it.

This is a discussion less about DRM (although, it is that, too) and more about seamless user experience. Sure, you can hunt down a copy of “Gone Girl” on a website you’ve never bought a book from before. Enter your credit-card information. Download it. Then upload it to your Readmill account. Or, you can click “Buy now with 1-Click” on Amazon.com and have it on all your devices in 10 seconds, ready to be read in the Kindle reading application. You have to be really persuasive to beat that kind of convenience.

Since Amazon would never allow its library to be accessed by reading applications other than Kindle, this is a non-trivial problem for a startup like Readmill to surmount.

A community to challenge Amazon

Goodreads has always been a bit of an enigma. Truth be told, I’ve never been an avid user. There’s a number of reasons why, but the biggest is simply that the distance between my books — and the activity that happens within them — and Goodreads has always seemed ginormous. That is, updating reading statuses for books on a website always felt odd and forced. It felt odd in 2007 when I was mainly reading physical books, and it feels odder still in 2013, where I’m mainly reading Kindle books. That said, 16 million people clearly don’t agree with me.

So why did Amazon buy Goodreads? Well, the promise of a collaboration between Goodreads and a great reading platform (like Readmill) loomed large. A combination like that had the chance of being the Last Great Stand against Amazon. Goodreads is many things but most defensibly it is a community. A strong community. An engaged community. (And now, a slightly enraged community.) Sixteen million users is nothing to dismiss. It’s not Facebook or Instagram levels, but 16 million excited people is a firehose to be reckoned with. What Goodreads didn’t have was a reading application.

It also should be noted that publishers love Goodreads. No surprise there; it’s just as one would imagine. Goodreads is an amazing platform for promoting books to an avid, core readership. So if Goodreads were to develop a reading application, it doesn’t take much imagination to see them signing up the catalogs of the big five and launching a Goodreads store for the Goodreads reader. And were that reading application to plug seamlessly into the Goodreads ecosystem — the community — then getting those 16 million users to switch from Kindle to Goodreads Reader would have been one of the easier platform sells in publishing.

Goodreads users already want to hang out at Goodreads. If they could read there too — in an app — I suspect many would.

Kindle flaws present opportunity

Despite the maturity of the market, the tablet reading space is still weirdly under-polished. Kindle reading environments have hardly changed in the last three years. The Kindle app has seen some improvement — mainly in support for complex KF8 formatted titles — but the polish around the reading experience, that visceral component, for novels and other mass-market books has remained largely unchanged. Books in the Kindle applications still don’t hyphenate. And page slides still stutter ever so slightly. These are small details that add up.

Certain polish aside, Kindle’s strengths are manifold. It has a vast catalog and transactional trust. It has all our credit-card information, making purchasing seamless. It is also supremely good at cloud data — consistent and reliable storage and retrieval of our books across devices. What it doesn’t have — and no inkling or iota of — is community.

What might have been

So you can see, there was a combo here. A curious matchup. Take one of the most polished, most satisfying digital book reading applications and merge it with one of the most engaged reading-specific communities. A marketplace could have developed that might have been the first real competition against Kindle. Not one built around competing with Kindle toe-to-toe as Barnes & Noble and Kobo have attempted (and failed at), but competing on ground on which Amazon has no footing: community.

It’s a certainty that Amazon, too, saw this. Which is why the sale this week comes as little surprise. I’ve always imagined that secretly, deep down in the murky stacks of Amazon headquarters, they had a crackerjack team making kindle.amazon.com the best social reading network in the world. Maybe they did. Or maybe they just realized it would be easier to buy the one that already existed.

Craig Mod is an independent writer, designer and publisher focused on publishing and storytelling. You can follow him on Twitter @craigmod.

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UX designers’ primary job is to improve usability and extend productivity. But they also have a responsibility to address the unintended consequences of new technologies, some of them with a clear ethical dimension. Following is a look at some of the principle ethical quandaries that UX designers will run up against and must deal with responsibly.

Human costs and de-valuing work

So much of the UX discipline’s early efforts were driven by the desire to improve human performance and productivity while reducing errors. Few questioned the value of these gains, achieved by optimizing system design, augmenting human ability, and automation, especially as it eliminated dangerous, repetitive, or tedious work – think of assembly line factory jobs that in past decades injured and maimed scores of people.

But some forms of automation come at the cost of diminishing the work’s intellectual and emotional value. Consider the levels of automation found in fast-food restaurants or warehouse fulfillment centers, where work is de-humanized, worker growth is diminished, and the value of rewarding work is stripped away. Undoubtedly these issues were at play with the spate of protests and suicides by distraught Foxconn workers in recent years.

The question for the UX professional who designs these work experiences then is: at what point must efficiency and optimization yield to human concerns?

‘De-skilling’

Over the past two decades, there have been tremendous advances in the development of powerful support systems that augment human intelligence in demanding environments. For example, some aircraft systems, such as the  Boeing Dreamliner and the  F-35 Lighting II, have become so complicated that they challenge the human capacity to fly them without assistance from an “intelligent” assistant.  The positive benefits of this technology can reduce error and improve safety.

At the same time, UX researchers must examine the possibiliy that automation can create a situation where skilled operators can be replaced be less-skilled operators. (On a mainstream level, that would include losing the ability to navigate without the aid of GPS, or more simply the ability to do math without using a calculator.)

In some cases, the gains from technology will outweigh the loss of skills. In others, the level of support and automation might warrant reconsideration. Whatever the outcome, it is critical that UX designers initiate this conversation, so that users of technology can make informed choices about their extent and consequences.

Influencing user behavior

We’ve gotten pretty good at being able to subconsciously influence and alter behavior (by nudging, for one), which creates a vexing ethical conundrum for UX designers. The UX professional must understand that for every product created with the “best intention,” there will be another that deliberately nudges the user to ends not in the user’s best interest.  Thus on the one hand, they recognize that human behavior often results in sub-optimum choices and actions. On the other hand, they recognize that they have the potential, through design, to affect that behavior in other ways – positive and negative.

So how do UX professionals define their ethical responsibilities as they subconsciously influence users’ decisions or actions? The case of producing negative outcomes is clear; less clear is who determines what is “positive.” The line between the two is often not well defined. Take for instance the medicare prescription drug plan finder tool on the medicare.gove site which navigates this dilemma well. It guides and supports the user in an unbiased fashion to the plan that best aligns with their health needs – a great improvement over early support efforts on the site.

The erosion of privacy

With the best intentions, technologies have been developed to remotely monitor the activities of the elderly – what and how much they eat, where they’re located, even when they take their prescriptions. Similarly, products like vuezone or  Car Connection allow parents to monitor every movement of their children – what they’re doing at home, how fast they are driving, where they are at 2 a.m.

The benefits of such technologies are real, for one allowing the elderly to live independently or for parents to be confident in the safety of their children . Yet such constant monitoring of the individual can also have the opposite effect, instead leaving one feeling the loss of highly valued privacy and dignity because of non-stop monitoring. With each new capability comes added consequences.

The dangers of distraction

The convergence of technologies can tax our attention spans in a way that threatens the limits of human capabilities. One case is the increased integration of communication, navigation, and entertainment technologies in automotive design. We now have GPS screens, entertainment monitors, handsfree cellphone use, and advanced stereo systems with various control mechanisms.

While these technologies deliver unquestionable value and pleasure to the driver and passengers, they indisputably divide the operator’s attention, distracting him or her from the stated purpose of driving, leading to life- threatening situations (and that’s not even including texting while driving). The problem has become so severe that the Highway Safety Administration has created a website to address this issue.

So what responsibility do UX professionals have in these situations? The likelihood of distraction and its consequences should become an area of intense focus in the UX discipline’s research agenda.

At the end of the day, UX professionals must increasingly consider where their responsibilities lie – with the organization that reaps financial gains from the technology sold, or with the user who may possibly suffer negative or life- threatening consequences from these products.

Bill M. Gribbons is professor of information design and corporate communication and director of the graduate human factors program at Bentley University. 

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The trouble is in the execution. To some degree, the site is redundant, because developers already get plenty of offers without using the site, and big fees aren’t always involved. The site hasn’t been promoted as much as it could be. It prioritizes salary above all else, even though some developers don’t. Despite the write-ups it garnered in the tech press, a handful of developers I spoke with for this article had not heard heard of the site. While auctions run in private to keep developers’ current bosses from spotting attempts to find better work, at least one developer was fired for using the site. And to top it all off, the company’s name calls to mind the antiquated, antebellum idea of selling people as products.

Nevertheless, co-founder Matt Mickiewicz told me venture capitalists are interested in funding the company. At nine employees, overhead isn’t enormous, and its business model allows for sizable revenues off transactions. The company is profitable, Mickiewicz said. Plus, it’s not Mickiewicz’s first startup: He’s co-founded a few startups, including 99designs, which has become profitable, taken on venture funding and expanded operations to multiple countries. Plus, he’s a compelling entrepreneur. In a recent interview, Mickiewicz confidently delivered smart answers to tough questions.

Value begets more value

VCs refer more companies to the site than any other group, Mickiewicz said. A talented developer is “one of the biggest value adds to add value to (a VC’s) portfolio,” he said.

Sure, the site’s concept makes sense for the developer segment, especially nowadays. The number of jobs in Silicon Valley increased by 4 percent from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2012, according to data from California’s Employment Development Department that was included in the 2013 Silicon Valley Index. That high level of job growth hasn’t been seen since 2000.

The website says a typical developer will receive five to 15 requests from venture-backed startups for job interviews. Developers stay available on auction for two weeks and are free to take any offer, not necessarily the one with the highest salary. The first auction ran in September.

The company claims to be cheaper than a recruiter, but it’s not exactly cheap. If a company decides to pay a developer $100,000 a year through DeveloperAuction, the company pays either a $15,000 flat fee — 15 percent — or a $10,000 fee as well as the equivalent of $10,000 of the developer’s salary in stock options (10 percent plus 10 percent in options). DeveloperAuction even kicks in a small reward to developers as an incentive for using the service — 20 percent of the fee that the hiring company pays DeveloperAuction, which can be $3,000-6,000 or more, according to the site. That appears to mean DeveloperAuction rakes in $12,000-$24,000 or more per hire.

There’s competition, too. Besides more traditional hiring routes on company websites and job boards, so-called dev bootcamps have emerged as a new talent source.

Issues bubble up

However, last month the site received criticism on a few fronts in a Hacker News thread. Commenters complained about spam emails, shared alternative recruiting options (Pitchbox, for example), pointed out technical shortcomings and even called the company’s name into question. According to one user, “‘auction’ reminds me (of) the last time human beings were sold like stuff.” Another user reported being fired for using the site.

Developer Zac Shenker of Collusion, a company with a plan to make iPad drawings shareable with a nifty pen, told me the site duplicates and commercializes what already happens naturally to those looking for new jobs, whether on LinkedIn, over email or at networking events.

Recruiting managers at larger companies might be reluctant to use the site because of its emphasis on compensation packages above all else. A recruiting director at one webscale company who declined to be named for this article said the company would not hire people through DeveloperAuction, because finding people with the right character traits is more important than finding someone willing to work for a low price.

And while the model seems sensible now, with developers in great demand, the most talented ones will get gobbled up quickly, resulting in a drop in quality, said Chris Hollindale, chief technology officer at Hasty, a stealth-mode startup creating technology that aims to make people healthier.

Developers, customers abound

Mickiewicz sounded unswayed as I brought up the issues.

Regarding the comparison to slave auctions, he said people elect to join the auctions. That wasn’t the case in the pre-Civil War South.

“I think that’s a very unfair comparison,” he said. He emphasized that developers don’t have to work for the highest bidder. “It’s about who tells the best story at the end of the day,” he said. Developers, he said, want to make “a meaningful impact.”

Still, the founders might just have to consider changing the name, because it includes the word auction, he said.

Overall, Mickiewicz cited the adoption of the website among job seekers — 10 apply for every auction spot — and employers alike as proof of its value. “The employers are seeing very, very good success with us, compared to any other platform,” he said.

Hollindale intends to try out the site when Hasty is ready to hire another developer.

“To me, it’s a very interesting kind of twist on the whole technical hiring process,” he said.

Will the steady stream of developers availing themselves of the auctions de-escalate the tech bidding war? The answer to that question could determine the fate of DeveloperAuction.

This story was corrected at 9:17 p.m. with a revised list of companies that have hired employees through DeveloperAuction. Dropbox and Quora made job offers through the site but did not hire.

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So I’m always on the lookout for products and services that are a joy to interact with at every touch point. Here are five standouts I personally use (but have no affiliation with) that offer an excellent user experience.

1. Oral B Professional Care SmartSeries 4000

Compared to barebones electric toothbrush, the SmartSeries 4000 sets great default behaviors that require virtually no brain cycles for the user to brush properly (perfect for those groggy mornings). For instance, the brush beeps every 30 seconds (or 45 if you choose), ensuring that you spend enough time on each quadrant of your mouth. If you ever brush too hard, a prominent red light engages and the brush vibrates at an audibly different frequency to alert you. Another nice touch: The bristle color fades to indicate when it’s time to change the brush head, so you never have to keep track yourself.

2. Quirky PowerCurl

I’ve seen many cord-management products that take too much finesse, come undone too easily, or exist as a separate clip that are simply too easy to lose. The PowerCurl is an elegant cord organizer that enhances Apple’s MacBook power adapter in every way.

Once you slip your adapter into the PowerCurl, it’s immediately intuitive how it all works: Wrap the thinner cable in the small section and the thicker cable in the large one. With the included clip, the thicker cable then snaps onto itself to form a neat, compact bundle. The PowerCurl also elevates the adapter slightly to prevent it from overheating and even allows the power brick to stand on its side to minimize its footprint.

3. Jawbone Jambox

You know a product is outstanding when it satisfies a need you didn’t even know you had. In the case of the Jambox it was for a decent, portable music system that’s a snap to set up. In my year of owning this little Bluetooth speaker, I’ve enjoyed wireless tunes in places I never had before: on my apartment rooftop, at picnics, and even on a cruise.

Jawbone made the setup and usage straightforward by including only three buttons and a switch. Once you slide the switch on, the speaker goes directly into pairing mode and, handily, announces it via a voiceover (instead of relying on inscrutable flashing LEDs or a keyboard input). In fact thanks to the use of audio feedback users always know exactly what to do — when the volume has been adjusted, when it needs a recharge, when devices connect or disconnect. I’ve tried other Bluetooth devices, such as Supertooth’s Buddy speakerphone, and it is often unclear whether I’m pressing the right button or if I’ve held it long enough to start the pairing process.

However, user experience doesn’t end with the product, and the Jawbone delivers in support too. When the Bluetooth antenna failed within a year after purchase, the company happily replaced the speaker.

4. TwelveSouth Bookbook case for iPad

TwelveSouth’s tablet case transforms your iPad into a beautiful leather book. But instead of just being a protective case (albeit a particularly good-looking one) it provides several stand and viewing configurations that are dead simple to figure out. And while some might possibly have a little difficulty initially inserting their iPad into the case, TwelveSouth nips the issue in the bud by shipping the case with a cardboard iPad insert to illustrate exactly how yours should fit.

Before this case, I had Apple’s Smart Cover, which regularly slipped off and became visibly dirty over time. TwelveSouth’s is far more rugged, and the choice of distressed leather means that I’m not afraid to scuff up the case, as each ding and scratch only gives it more character.

5. Bonobos

Bonobos is a (mostly) online men’s clothing shop that sells its own products along with a few other curated brands. They’ve put together an experience that addresses the common but key psychological hang-ups that consumers tend to encounter when online shopping.

For instance, by limiting the number of products, they’ve eliminated decision paralysis. Bonobos’ straightforward and unique 365-day return policy – combined with free shipping both ways – all but eliminates risk to the consumer and the idea of buyer’s remorse. In fact, if you’re between sizes, Bonobos encourages customers to order both and return what you don’t want. Other than Zappos, which pioneered this type of friendly return policy, I can’t think of another online store with a policy anything like this. (In contrast, while I’ve generally had a good experience with Mr Porter, it has a much more involved return policy: request a return authorization number within 14 days, give reasons for the return, write the number on the receipt, then mail everything back.)

Finally, the Bonobos team is responsive and personable in all communication channels – phone, email, social media – so users feel confident that any issues that could crop up will be addressed swiftly and pleasantly. What a difference in an age of outsourced call centers and frustrating AI customer service robots.

Have any favorite products or services that really deliver a great user experience? Hit the comments to tell us about them.

Henry Tsai is head of UX at Astrid, developer of the popular list manager app. He blogs at htsai.com;  follow him on Twitter @henry_tsai.

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Don’t get me wrong, though; algorithms still matter. In fact, Zoosk co-founder and Co-CEO Shayan Zadeh told me the company’s algorithms for exposing members to the right set of potential dates are still very much “the secret sauce in the belly of the beast,” and the company expends a lot of effort trying to get this part of the business right. Like most companies trying to match people with other people or content, Zoosk analyzes profile information, stated interests and intra-platform behavior in order to present members with the guys or girls they probably want to meet.

Shayan Zadeh

However, using big data to power matching engines (and even some more, shall we say, “experimental” user data analysis) is par for the course in online dating and studies suggest they’re not all they’re cracked up to be. Zadeh acknowledged this, explaining that “[Your] mental map of who [you] should be interested in is not the same as who [you actually] should be interested in.” Zoosk has data to prove this, which is why it tries to inject a little serendipity into its platform to break members out of the molds in which they cast themselves.

What a girl wants

To get to the next level, Zadeh said, a company has to be committed to developing products that help people use them more effectively. Meeting people you want to date is like going to the gym, he analogized: You know it’s good for you, but it takes hard work if you want to get good results. Zoosk tries to add the hookup equivalent of personal trainers, group yoga classes and other perks that make it easier and more appealing to get active.

“The magic is humans talking to each other,” Zadeh explained, “not computers picking [who you'll date].”

Zoosk for Android

And here, too, understanding the data is critical. Take, for example, Zoosk’s decision to launch a native mobile site in 2009 when a decline in web activity suggested users were ready to make that transition. “Our big data told us, ‘You’re gonna have people migrate en masse from desktop to mobile,’” Zadeh said, so the company got active building a mobile site while others waited to see how things played out.

In another instance, Zoosk determined that men are more comfortable reaching out to potential mates than are women once they’ve been presented with a pool of candidates. So the company redesigned the method by which members interact. Instead of requiring members to personally reach out to someone who they’re interested in getting to know, the product asks if they’d like to get know this person and then sends the introduction for the member.

“That subtle shift in the positioning makes a huge shift in the number of people who actually get to talk together,” Zadeh said.

Social media is a mindset

But all this work really boils down to knowing your users and what they’re after in a dating site. Whereas dating giant eHarmony might appeal to the 40-plus crowd by promising users it will find their future spouses by picking out exactly the right companion, Zadeh said Zoosk is more tailored to 20-somethings who just want to meet people and maybe go on a few dates. “We were born in the social media age and and it’s visible in every aspect of our business,” he added. (Actually, the company began its life as an app on the Facebook platform.)

This mindset manifests itself in product design, too. Zadeh says being social “is a different way of thinking about product altogether,” something learned from the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and the other companies that used the data at their disposal to build effective and popular social networks. Some dating sites market themselves as psychology companies, he noted, but Zoosk considers itself very much a technology company and it takes that part of the business very seriously.

Like a Facebook or LinkedIn, Zoosk wants to be a platform where technology enables more interaction among people in ways that feel natural and let the users dictate how those interactions progress. “[We want to] be the tool instead of being the lifestyle prescription,” Zadeh said. “… Our job is to make it easy on them and get out of the way.”

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Sweet November studio.

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Since the early days of Apple, their approachable design made digital software and interfaces accessible and usable, to the extent that even a child could use them. But their innovation since the launch of the first iPad has either been incremental (for example iOS or the iPad Mini) or flawed (for example Siri and Apple Maps). Their software design has also remained stale with many contending that a refresh is overdue. Arguably, Apple is now playing defense, giving competitors like Microsoft and Google space to innovate and set trends in interface design across devices and platforms.

Steve Jobs was—notoriously, to many members of the design community—a fan of skeuomorphism, a style that relies on real-world metaphors and textures in digital interfaces. Fake leather, wood, paper and glass became commonplace in Apple applications, in addition to real-world metaphors like bookshelves, paper shredders, and even casinos. While skeuomorphism might have been beneficial in the early days of computing in helping less-tech-savvy types navigate a user interface, it now feels out of place in a world where most people are using a host of digital interfaces throughout the day, and where younger people have never even experienced physical rolodexes, paper shredders or giant desk calendars. From a design perspective, when used excessively skeuomorphism is at best out-dated, at worst confusing and tasteless. More importantly though it feels at extreme odds with Apple’s hardware, which is designed with sophistication and constraint. So where might Apple’s designs go?

Image courtesy of Apple

Looking at competitors like Microsoft, its new Windows UI style, across operating systems, is at the direct opposite end of the spectrum from skeuomorphism. It’s a modernist Swiss style, where all excessive embellishments are removed. The life in the experience comes from content and transitions, not from visual UI ornaments.

The wildly successful Android OS lands somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, between skeuomorphism and the new minimalist Windows style. While visually Android is not leading the way (and here I include all of the Android licensees), there are now several interaction patterns and solutions that are better designed and more advanced than what iOS offers.

Microsoft has claimed the minimalist corner, and a radical Apple departure from their current UI style could be confusing to existing users, and would also admit defeat (which is not a very Apple-like trait as well). Apple has long had a human-centered design focus, and has gone further than most to make technology accessible to everyone. Apple’s challenge then is formidable: To retain the focus on simplicity, accessibility and ease-of-use, while at the same time refreshing their UI style and introducing design consistency across their increasingly wide range of software and services. It’s a tall order, and will need investment, focus and talent.

The most transformative devices today are ingenious pieces of software wrapped in desirable hardware. The Nike+ FuelBand or the self-learning Nest thermostat are examples of new software products that are wrapped in well-designed hardware. Apple has long been the master at this, but competitors are encroaching on their territory. Microsoft has gone against its hardware suppliers in creating its own showpiece for Surface—a move it had to make to ensure that the hardware maximized the potential of the software. But creating this combo is not easy, and Apple will have to work hard to stay on top. Various pieces of Apple software on a range of different devices connect to incredibly advanced services and algorithms in the cloud. Orchestrating this, and presenting the services to people in a way that’s easy and delightful to use, is very challenging. Not many companies do it well and consistently (which is why the relative failure of the complex Siri and Apple Maps services weren’t a big surprise for some).

With iOS, Apple showed the world how the graphical touch paradigm should work. Modern touch interfaces are now characterized by responsive, fluid and direct interaction, while tapping, swiping and pinching have become dominant gestures. Apple led the way in making touch interaction mainstream. Looking ahead, interactions will move beyond the screen into thin air, and both input and output will increasingly use voice. Apple now has an opportunity to once again lead the way and design the dominant interactions for what comes next in computing.

The wearables category will need great design to go mainstream, and Apple’s entry in the race could be inspiring. A radically redesigned iOS would be very interesting, and a confident Apple entry into “control point” services like search or commerce would be fascinating. If Cook and Ive are able to succeed with a bold investment in a service play, they will not only create immense value for Apple, but also demonstrate that they can pull off their own innovations, rather than just incremental changes to what Steve Jobs envisioned.

Om Malik’s recent piece here about the change-up at Apple highlighted an increasingly schedule-driven release culture under Tim Cook’s leadership. This might indeed become a challenge for software innovation. If the question “when do we ship” ever becomes more important than “what do we ship,” true innovation, risk-taking, and design excellence become hard.

A radical refresh of iOS, a category-defining entry into wearables, or a confident push into services like search or commerce could spell the real making of Tim Cook. Right now the jury is still out. For us designers, Jony Ive now has the chance to upgrade his status from mere legendary design Lord to design demigod. I hope he takes it.

Olof Schybergson is CEO and Co-Founder at the service design consultancy, Fjord. (Twitter: @fjord.)

Apple image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Nielsen’s full report is here. It doesn’t take into account the technical problems many Kindle Fire users have experienced, notably the inability to connect to WiFi. Some of Nielsen’s findings:

»  Fat-Finger Problem “Everything is much too small on the screen, leading to frequent tap errors and accidental activation.” Mobile sites work well on the Fire’s 7-inch screen, but full sites don’t, even though they work fine on the iPad’s 10-inch screen. “Using designs intended for a full screen on a 7-inch tablet is like squeezing a size-10 person into a size-7 suit. Not going to look good. But that’s what the Fire is trying to do,” Nielsen writes. He recommends that Kindle Fire users set the device to mobile view.

» Bad For Reading The Kindle Fire is heavy and “unpleasant to hold for extended periods of time,” Nielsen writes. “Unless you have forearm muscles like Popeye, you can’t comfortably sit and read an engaging novel all evening.” Of course, people who primarily want a device for reading straight text were never best off buying the Kindle Fire, and it hasn’t been heavily marketed as an e-reader.

The area where Kindle Fire could shine–full-color interactive magazine reading–is where it’s a particular failure, Nielsen says. A couple of his complaints:

–Many magazines don’t have a no “homepage” where users can return after finishing an article.
–Headlines on magazine covers aren’t clickable, even though we’ve known that users want this since our first iPad studies in early 2010. (Honorable exception: in our study, Vanity Fair did allow users to tap a headline on the cover to go directly to the corresponding story.)
–”Page View” is unreadable and “Text View” has the worst layout I’ve seen in years. Illustrations are either too big or too small and are usually located far from the place they’re discussed in the copy.

»  The Future Of 7-Inch Tablets Seven-inch tablets like the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet “have either a glorious future or will fail miserably,” Nielsen concludes:

For 7-inch tablets to succeed, service and content providers must design specifically for these devices. Repurposed designs from print, mobile phones, 10-inch tablets, or desktop PCs will fail, because they offer a terrible user experience. A 7-inch tablet is a sufficiently different form factor that it must be treated as a new platform. Furthermore, these mid-sized tablets are so weak that suboptimal designs — that is, repurposed content — won’t work. Optimize for 7-inch or die.

Nielsen says developers need a prospect of high sales to create content specifically for the Kindle Fire and other 7-inch tablets. If the platform “becomes a raving success and quickly sells in large numbers (say, 50 million copies by end of 2013),” we’ll have the “economic foundation” to create that specific content. We’re already seeing publishers like the Wall Street Journal and Weather Channel create apps specifically for the Fire. Nielsen does not mention the broader problem our mobile editor Tom Krazit has raised, which is that Kindle Fire runs its own version of Android, so Fire-specific development may fragment the Android marketplace.

If the Kindle Fire’s sales aren’t as high as projected, “the platform will either die or be reduced to serving poor people who can’t afford a full-sized tablet,” Nielsen concludes. “A small audience won’t offer much incentive for providers to publish 7-inch-optimized content and services. The resulting unpleasant user experience will drive any remaining affluent users to buy bigger tablets.”

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The app is a video library of speakers featured at Adaptive Path’s four-year history of conferences, and includes videos from their two main events, UX Week and MX: Managing Experience. Topics range from the history of UX design to discussions of what exactly makes up the fun factor of games, as well as topics with broad scientific appeal, like one about human-robot interaction from one of the UX designers behind the Roomba robot vacuum.

Even if you’re not in the business of designing or creating apps, or even anything related to UX, the Adaptive Path app is worth a look. First, it’s free; second, it has an incredible amount of entertaining, informative content that you can watch on your device or share with others via email via an in-app button; and third, it looks great and works well, both virtues that will be up for discussion at our own Mobilize even in September, where Adaptive Path’s Peter Merholz was a featured speaker last year.

The Adaptive Path app also goes well with the TED Talks iPad app if you want to assign some required viewing to new hires just getting started in tech, or if you’re looking for a great way to build your own conference that you can attend from the comfort of your couch.

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Defense, not hunting license

Don’t think of this as a hunting license for Apple, or permission to launch a broad offensive against its competitors in the smartphone space. While FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller told me the patent is “excessively broad” in his own personal opinion, “it’s nowhere near the scope of a patent on anything multitouch.” UBS analyst Maynard Um said in an email to his clients that the patents held by Apple seem intended mostly “for defensive purposes,” since “collecting royalty is not Apple’s business model.”

In other words, competitors will still have to cross specific boundaries to incur a legal response from Apple, but where those lines are drawn reveal the key to why the patent is so valuable. This patent covers the ability to navigate in apps and web pages with a one-finger flick, and two-finger scrolling for embedded elements within a frame, which are all part of what makes the iOS user experience so good.

Um believes “Google and Microsoft may find work-around solutions in their mobile operating systems to avoid any infringement,” but Mueller points out that “staying outside that claimed territory will always come with some degradation of the user experience.” It’s that UX advantage that Apple wants to maintain with this patent.

More buttons for competitors

Apple’s touch interface on iOS devices has broad appeal because it works intuitively, and it has familiarity because of the broad reach of iOS (over 187 million iOS devices had been sold at last count). If you want to see more content on an iOS device, you push the screen down or pull it up, and the on-screen software responds as one would expect. According to Mueller, staying clear of Apple’s new multitouch patents would likely involve using additional icons or buttons for things like zoom and scrolling, which add a level of complexity to touch interaction. Basically, it would degrade UX on competing platforms. People new to touchscreen computing, and users used to iOS, would have trouble adjusting to these added elements, and they would also make for a cluttered interface. Apple, in other words, is better positioned to achieve a kind of user experience lock-in that would be hard for the competition to overcome.

That’s not to say Apple will be the only handset manufacturer to implement things like two-finger scrolling. Mueller notes that since Apple is already involved in patent litigation with Motorola, Samsung and HTC, it could reach cross-licensing agreements that allow other hardware to use its multi-touch patents as part of a settlement in some of those cases.

Ultimately, this patent is undeniably a win for Apple, and a loss for the competition, but it doesn’t mean we’ll see Apple turn into a litigating monster. It, does, however add some more legal backing to Apple’s existing UX advantage in the smartphone game, which will have long-reaching effects for the future of the market.

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For example, the study found that users aren’t crazy about using their iPad devices to deal with complicated forms that require lots of user input, especially if those forms are found in non-optimized websites, rather than housed in an app. Users would skip registrations processes rather than deal with inputting information in many cases. The solution to such a problem would be to make forms simpler, requiring less information, and reduce the need for repeat entry of information (so apps that offer to remember login details are better, for example).

iPad users also aren’t as able to decipher non-obvious control systems as some developers might think. In cases where it wasn’t made clear what tapping an item that wasn’t obviously a button (i.e., a logo) would do, users often missed the functionality. Examples cited in the report include the logo in the top left of The Daily app, which returns users to the app’s home screen. USA Today  originally used a similar mechanism, but changed their logo to include a “Sections” label to tell users that it was in fact designed to be tapped and tied to a function.

Likewise, gestures in apps can sometimes cause trouble when there are no visual cues to provide information about how they work. Don’t think that placing an instructional video or graphic at the beginning of the app will solve the problem, either. Many users don’t read instructions, though visual instructions that are incredibly obvious, like those used by Bing for iPad, tested well with those participating in the study, since users couldn’t avoid grasping their meaning even when they quickly dismissed them. Nielsen Norman Group advises developers that they’re much better off including visual markers throughout, indicating that swipes and other gestures can be used. For example, magazine apps like Wired include arrows that show the direction a user should swipe to unveil more content.

Another alternative is to provide explicit tips in the form of dialog boxes, like Adobe Photoshop Express does. The iPad Photoshop app uses gestures to control effects like “soft focus,” and pops up notifications to alert users of what to do. Tips can be hidden at any time, so they won’t become annoying.

What users find very annoying according to the report are splash or loading screens. No matter how clever, or how easy on the eye, splash screens and animations become annoying very quickly. Startup sounds, in particular, are singled out as especially bad, because of the potential they have for unpleasantly surprising people who open apps in surroundings where noise might not be appreciated.

Also, almost universally, apps will benefit from having back buttons on nearly every page, and should aim for a simple homepage-like table of contents over more complicated navigation schemes. Users prefer a home base from which to operate without having to hunt through carousels or wade through long columns of thumbnails, and they always want the option to go one step back from their current position, because of accidental taps or to refer back to something they just saw.

As mentioned above, iPads tend to be communal devices, at least within the household. But the report also highlighted some other interesting points regarding how we use the Apple tablet. Generally, we use it for gaming, checking email and communicating via social networking, watching videos/movies and reading news. We also tend to shop, but the participants in the study generally preferred shopping on their desktops, and some even perceived iPad shopping to be more risky from a security perspective. iPads also tend to be carried around by many users, or at least taken along for the ride when long waits or trips are expected.

Now that the iPad is more than a year old, it’s interesting to see how people are using it, and what is and isn’t working when it comes to app usability design. No doubt there’s still plenty of innovation left in iPad app interface design, but this report illustrates that some things never go out of style when it comes to user experience.

How does your experience with the iPad either agree or disagree with the findings described above?

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