Next year there will be a new e-reader in town to give a little competition to Sony and Kindle. A company called Plastic Logic in the UK will be offering a touch-screen e-reader. The reader is the size of a regular sheet of paper, very thin, and weighs less than a pound. You turn the page by swiping your finger across the screen.
From the sound of it, Plastic Logic is targeting traveling business people by touting the e-reader’s document annotation features. But as I read the article I wondered why any person with lots of documents to read and annotate wouldn’t just use their laptop or a netbook?
A person quoted in the article says that e-reader companies are still trying to figure out the best interface. That made me wonder if the e-reader companies are talking to readers at all. Because to me it seems that designing a reader for business documents and designing a reader for actually reading books calls for two different sets of criteria. And as far as the best interface goes, if you ask people who read books what would tempt them to use an e-reader, how they would want to interact with it, how they would want to use it, what they would want it to look like, they’ll tell you.
It will be interesting to see how Plastic Logic’s touch-screen e-reader does when it hits the market. If nothing else it will keep Sony and Kindle from getting complaisant.
My sentiments exactly: I keep wondering why it seems that nobody is asking those of us who read books what WE’D like to see in an e-book reader. (They must be, really, right? How could any company justify putting money into such things without conducting focus groups. They just must not be listening.) I’m hopeful, though, that with all these companies playing around with it, someone will eventually hit upon the perfect thing for me. Yesterday, I read about the Cool-er, which allows the reader to share books with up to four friends.
My husband nearly worked for Plastic Logic, and their founder (well, ex-founder now, I think) is a fellow at my college and I’ve sat with him at lunch (he is very nice). This is the problem – scientists come up with something and look for an application. Then they tell us we want it. It would be so much better the other way round, but things aren’t likely to change just yet.
Litlove’s explanation of what happens makes sense, but why in the world don’t they go about it in a more logical way? Anyway, it’s interesting to see all the experimentation going on, and I’m very curious to see how things progress.
I’m probably not the audience for these readers since I think I’m not ready to set aside my books at all yet, but I know you read both paper books and eBooks. What would you like to see them do? I’m so behind the times, but this touch reader sounds like those phones they are always touting that do everything with the touch of a finger. Are they just riding the wave of its popularity? I do think you are right that they are coming at the question from the wrong end. Are not the people who design these machines readers themselves?
Emily, I’d think they were talking to readers, but sometimes I wonder. I hope that more variety will mean more innovation. The Cool-er sounds interesting.
Litlove, maybe you can pull some strings and get one of the e-readers and give us a review?
Dorothy, I’m glad to see experimentation. Hopefully it means that eventually someone will get it just exactly right.
Danielle, I’d like a little bigger screen, I don’t think thinner is better, I’d like be able to use memory cards (Kindle 1 had this but Amazon changed this), and I’d like to be able to share books. We’ll get there eventually.