Amazon's Kindle Is A Success--Hooray For Designer Bob Brunner.

Should Mossberg have to know anything about design to talk about it? It seemed to me that he was discussing a user experience. I have not picked up a kindle, and will reserve judgement on it until I do. That being said, I will look for the things that Mossberg pointed out just to see if he described them accurately or not. It also seems that the success of the kindle is one of positioning not necessarily design. It is well known that Oprah is a rain maker.

I agree that whenever anyone talks about that which they do not know, there is a downside. What is the specific down side to techies talking about design without knowing about it in this instance? Is it that Mossberg hurts himself by giving an inaccurate account of the device?

This is, unfortunately, a lesson about influence to me, not design. Oprah has influence, Mossberg has less influence.

I'm not so sure about this. The Kindle's a massive hit, there's no question of that. And I think that its funky futuristic design lets people know without touching it that this is an entirely new device that will require an entirely new set of expectations for its use. It's a flying success on that front.

But in terms of basic usability, it's an absolute bear. The page-turn buttons are awkwardly located, and the display can be very slow to update when you flip a page or browse Amazon over the wireless connection. For pure reading experience, the Sony eReader is a better design.

So why is the Kindle absolutely destroying Sony's offering in the marketplace? It's what you can't see -- the "WhisperNet" 3G data connection that pulls down books, newspapers, and magazines seamlessly over the air without the use of a computer. The people running the Kindle project for Amazon recognized, correctly, that the problem with all previous eReaders was not the physical device or even the screen quality. It was the process for loading them with content. They all stunk, and they didn't have a good back-end.

The Kindle has done for books what iTunes did for MP3 players. In fact, it's done even better than iTunes, as it's totally self-contained. WhisperNet has finally made it elegant, intuitive, and obvious where you would find an electronic book, how you would load it on your machine, and how to acquire new content on the road.

Kindle is a break-out success right now. But I would argue this is at least in part in spite of its physical usability issues -- not because of its industrial design. With Kindle, the real innovation is invisible -- and that's why Walt Mossberg didn't see its potential.

I couldn't agree more with Rob & Peter. I have been interested in ebooks for many years and have watched their development closely. The Kindle is a major step forward from the perspective of an end-to-end experience but I think it is severely lacking from a design and usability perspective.

As noted, there are widespread complaints about the placement of the page buttons and (in my opinion) the faux 3D appearance of the styling makes it look designed but not well-designed. The design and fabrication details fall apart on close inspection.

I've also spoken to several Kindle owners and asked them how often they use the keyboard and all have said that they rarely use it. The primary reasons you use the keyboard are to look up a word in the dictionary and to search for a new book to buy. An ebook is the perfect product for an on screen keyboard. It's there for those occasional times when you need it but hidden the majority of time when you're just reading.

Widespread adoption of eBooks is important from an environmental perspective to cut down on our huge appetite for paper. While I'm sure that Amazon will sell many more Kindles to a range of consumers and get this process started, as a designer, I am not going to put my money down for the current model.

Does good design make a product "successful"? Does bad design kill the chances of succes? Above, we have a UI and Experience professional saying the ergonomics of the Kindle are bad. Walt also confirms this in his review. We've also got someone pointing out that "ecosystem" is what is making this successful. And finally, the host of this column says its Oprah and Bob's great design work, which once again, some folks aren't happy with. And now we can go back to the start and continue to debate the Kindle's success.

What also makes this interesting is that we've got some very qualified folks speaking to the pros and cons of this device. Of course, they probably haven't debated in person on this topic, but all present a different POV on the product's success. So what is the missing component here in this dialog of design? According to Amazons figures, 240,000 consumers who have bought this thing. What I wonder is, how many of these consumers are "design saavy or qualified" like the columnist and the posters here? And, as Rob points out, I'll bet that those 240,000 people trust Oprah more than any of us "designers". I would bet that some have complained to Amazon. And some have probably returned the device as well, but in the end, they are the ones putting their hard earned cash down.

I'm a product designer as well, I know Andy and Bob and they both do great work. On a similar, yet off path...What I've always wondered about is the Designer/Consumer taste barometer, that is when the consumer wants something that most designers don't. Like fake wood grain for instance, the designers fight it, "oh my god, there is no way I'll put fake wood grain on a product". Yet, somehow, with all those designers fighting it, that fake wood still gets out in the market! See this link for some fake wood! http://design-crit.com/blog/2008/12/successful-kindle.html#links

I guess the other question is, is a commercially successful product, always well designed? Seems like, not.

I enjoyed the comments more than the initial entry, in part because - if I'm not mistaken - Brunner left Lunar for Apple, and then left Apple for Pentagram.