Gadget Reviews, Product News, Electronic Gadgets

Let’s face it, if Jakob Nielsen says you are doing it wrong in the web-game, chances are good that you are in fact doing it wrong. Having been described by many as the ‘King of Usability”, Dr. Nielsen has more than earned the right to call himself an expert user advocate.
And so sure, your mileage may vary, but we can safely give some weight to his opinion published in the latest bi-weekly Alertbox indicating that the 7″ screen on the Kindle Fire is just too small.
Dr. Nielsen begins by stating in plain and simple English that “Amazon.com’s new Kindle Fire offers a disappointingly poor user experience.” He continues by discussing the Silk web browser, describing it as “clunky and error-prone.” But beyond that he discovers that the problem is more fundamental: the 7″ screen places this device uncomfortably between a functional tablet and a smartphone.
Previous studies by Dr. Nielsen have shown that regular full-sized websites work well on a 10″ screen but describes the same experience on smaller devices as being like “squeezing a size-10 person into a size-7 suit”. The problem is that mobile sites are optimized for display on a screen closer to 3.5″ which may mean users on a Kindle Fire aren’t scrolling or needing a magnifying glass to see things, but they are also not seeing an appreciable advantage over using their smartphone either.
Beyond his concerns over the screen-size, Dr. Nielsen also noted that the Kindle Fire is a heavy device which makes it uncomfortable to hold for long periods of time. He regrets the loss of the physical buttons like those seen on other models of the Kindle, because “tapping an area of the screen disrupts reading enjoyment”. He further explains by stating, “it’s easy to keep a finger on the button when all you use it for is to turn the page.” Lastly, it appears that display updates can lag and make the interface feel erratic and unresponsive thus “break[ing] the illusion of direct manipulation.”
Dr. Nielsen does caution that his report should not be considered as advice on whether to buy the Kindle Fire. His intention has always been to improve the user experience and this means establishing design and interface guidelines that make sense and evolves useful technology into indispensable technology.
Dr. Jakob Nielsen is the principal of the Nielsen Norman Group, a company he co-founded with Dr. Donald A. Norman in 1998. Both Dr. Nielsen and Dr. Norman boast impressive resumes as high-ranking technology experts with Nielsen once enjoying a career as a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems and Norman as the former Vice President of Advanced Technology at Apple.
So is the Kindle Fire inexpensive enough that consumers will overlook these flaws? Is Amazon banking on those people not knowing any better? Should manufacturers be listening when these and other respected opinions are stating the 7″ screen format is just too small (consider Daring Fireball’s John Gruber who said “A 7-inch screen might be great for books, but how could anyone think it would work for what we think of as magazines? Try to find a 7-inch magazine on the (non-virtual) newsstand.”)?
[via Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox]