I’ve been a little tapped out recently due to a rising tide of work projects, side projects, writing projects, UX Australia, UX Book Club, and preparing to head to the US for IA Summit 2009 in Memphis, and my visit to SCAD in Savannah, Georgia. The work projects have been interesting (more on those some point in the future), but running concurrently and taking up a big chunk of time.
All of which is by way of explanation for not writing anything substantive here for a little while. Time to rectify that.
I wrote here a little while back about what I’d like to see in an eBook reader before I’d buy one. The recent release of the Kindle 2 from Amazon has reignited interest in the topic so I thought I’d revisit one of the points from my earlier post.
“I can ‘loan’ my copy of a book to a friend by transferring it to their reader. If I do that, it’s no longer on my reader. This could also act as a way to give people Gifts.”
Earlier today Dave Malouf lamented the range and cost of eBook titles available for the Kindle and we got onto the topic of loaning books. Books are something that I take a great deal of pleasure in. Not just reading them, but the feel of them, smell of them (dry & musty, I know), and keeping a collection of them on the shelves.
Most of all, though, I like to share them with other people; you can see why UX Book Club came about, can’t you. But sharing a book can occur in a number of ways. I can talk about the story or topic with other people; or I can give a copy of the book to someone else as a gift; or I can hand over my copy of the book for them to read.
And this is something that’s completely missing from the eBook concepts we’re faced with today. You can’t loan someone a copy of an ebook you’ve bought. And that bothers me. I want to carry that sharing from the physical over to the digital world. And I’m sure the reason that it’s been done this way is because of money; the notion that my friend or family member should buy their own ebooks – and pay $359 for the Kindle 2 so they can read it – a large investment for someone who may only buy the occasional book.
This is one of those design decisions that only really turns up through design research; deep contextual research about the use of the object (the book) and it’s broader context. And it’s surprising how few companies use it to inform their design.