Category Archives: Usability & Accessibility

Kindle 2: Usability Review

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kindle 2Amazon.com’s latest version of its ebook reader, Kindle 2 has been making headlines around the world since it’s public release last month. The new version of Kindle has many improvements in its interface and design. However, there are still some usability issues with the product.

I recently read usability review of Kindle 2 by Jakob Nielsen and I agree with most of his arguments about some usability failures of the device.

It is really exciting to see how much potential this devices has in transforming the publishing industry and book readers in coming years. When I tested Kindle 2 I really liked certain aspects of the device and dissapointed with some its design & usability issues.

My suggestion for Kindle engineers is to make the screen touchable just like an iPhone, which will dramatically improve the navigation and usability of the device.

Here are some of things that I liked and disliked about Kindle 2.

The Good:

  • Form: Light Weight and Thin
  • Readability: Screen is readable on any angle
  • Navigation: Easy to Read & Turn book pages
  • Legibility: Adjust Text Size to small to large
  • Ergonomics: Anti-reflective & black and white screen reduces eye strain

The Bad:

  • Form: Mouse (aka four-way joystick) is very difficult to use
  • Readability: Screen area is small, keyboard takes up too much space
  • Navigation: Navigating links or table of contents in blogs, newspapers and magazines is not intuitive
  • Form: Power On and Off button is clunky, not sure when it is on or off
  • Design: The design of the device is not cutting edge

Target Settles Web Accessibility Lawsuit

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Accessibility+TargetThe giant retailer, Target settled the lawsuit brought by the National Federation of the Blind for inaccessibility of Target’s web site to people with visual disabilities. The magic number for the settlement was $6 million. Although the settlement amount is nothing to write home about. However this case will push other big box retailers (or any other online retailer) to start cleaning house and bring their web sites up to standards. By standards I mean the 508 Web Accessibility Standards.

Update (9/17/08): Just in time, Digital Web Magazine published an article on “Understanding Disabilities when Designing a Website“.

The 10 biggest Web annoyances

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Computerworld magazine highlights 10 biggest Web annoyances, which is right on target, except they forgot to include Pop-ads that keep coming up on their site as well other millions of sites on the web. So here is their list of top 10 annoyances:

  1. Dubious privacy policies
  2. Difficult online forms
  3. Overcommercialization of the Web
  4. Need for standards
  5. Trolls in forums
  6. Buying event tickets
  7. Web 2.0 help doesn’t help
  8. The expense of e-books
  9. Disappointing Web video
  10. Boring virtual worlds

You can read the full article on their web site.

Reading this article made me come up with my own top 10 web annoyances, here they are:

  1. Blog Spammers
  2. Endless pop-up ads on popular web sites
  3. Flash ads that automatically expand over content areas
  4. Flash intros on sites without ‘skip intro’ options
  5. Autoloading music and avatars on sites
  6. Overuse of AJAX without purpose and function
  7. Usage of term Web 2.0 for simple Javascript effects
  8. Reset buttons on Web Forms
  9. Animated banner ads
  10. Snap Preview screens for all links on a web page

Share your web annoyances by commenting below.