“Change aversion” and Amazon’s solution to the renaming problem

If you’re like many people, you hate it when the user interface of a site changes. You’re accustomed to one thing when suddenly it switches.

Some people in the tech industry shrug off users’ complaints about this as “change aversion”. Christina Wodtke’s article,”User’s don’t hate change. They hate you“, refutes this belief and explains why users are justified in their frustration. Here’s a choice quote:

Users don’t hate change. Users hate change that doesn’t make their life better, but makes them have to relearn everything they knew.

I urge you to read the rest of the article as well; it lays out a compelling case for restraint on the part of developers, and sets a high bar for the benefit that a change should bring.

Still, sites will keep changing and some do a better job than others at informing you. Unlike the gratuitous tours and full screen popups that the article calls out, I found Amazon’s solution tasteful. They renamed a few items in their navigation bar, but rather than making the change wholesale, they left behind the old labels underneath the new ones. This allows you to find what you’re looking for more easily. Until you become accustomed to the new label and that one changes too.  Ahh, software.

Why You’ll (Rarely) Catch Me With a Printed Book

kodumut via Flickr under Creative Commons license

I love books. I love book stores. I worked in a library for four years. But when I read Ali Wunderman’s post entitled Why You’ll Never Catch Me With An E-Reader, I was not convinced. In almost all cases I prefer to buy and read digitally. I’ll discuss her argument, my reasons for preferring digital in most cases, and cases where e-readers and digital books are worse than their paper alternatives.

The two main points of Ms. Wunderman’s argument are:

• She likes the sensations of reading a physical book (touch, smell, sight)
• She values the serendipity of meeting new friends who love the book that she’s reading. Had she used an e-reader, those people would not have been able to see what she was reading, and thus she would have missed out on such encounters

I can’t argue against the first point – it’s a matter of opinion whether or not holding a book feels good. Since e-readers are such a recent invention, I think this argument is rooted in nostalgia more than anything else. It would be interesting to see whether children who grow up with a choice between e-readers and physical books end up with such a physical attachment to books. I do like the touch and smell of books, but it’s not enough to make me buy paperbacks exclusively.

The second point is also subjective. I’ve never had strangers comment on what I’m reading, but I can imagine it would be a fun experience. I am willing to bet that it’s rare. On the other hand, I have heard that some women are more comfortable reading romance novels on their e-readers than physical copies. I don’t really care one way or another; I don’t read books with the intention of showing others what I’m reading.

I have had the experience of bonding with new friends over the contents of our respective bookshelves. If there were no books for us to look at, we would have missed out on some level of connection. While this makes more sense to me than the serendipity argument, I still don’t think this is a reason to stay slavishly attached to dead trees. Once you have established a relationship, it’s easy to converse about books you’ve read, no matter the medium.

Digital preference

The reasons I prefer digital books are price, convenience, ergonomics and lack of physical clutter.

Price

E-books are often cheaper than physical alternatives. This makes sense – the price of publishing and distribution is virtually zero.

Convenience

E-books are incredibly convenient. Let me count the ways:

• Instant gratification – purchase, download, and start reading a book in less than a minute. No need to wait for a book to be shipped to you, or to go to a store
• Instant definitions – no need to break the flow of reading to learn the meaning of a word. Tap and hold on the word to get a quick pop-up definition
• Read free samples of a book before committing to buying it
• Free lending library – check out one free book a month to read

There’s a saying that the best camera is the one you have with you. It’s the same with books. I rarely bring physical books with me, sometimes I have my Kindle Paperwhite, but I always have my phone with me, and that phone has all of my Kindle purchases on it. When I used to use an iPhone it was uncomfortable to read on such a small screen, but I recently switched to a Nexus 5 and have happily consumed entire books on it. The progress I make on one device is instantly synced with all of my other Kindle compatible devices.

Ergonomics

I find it more pleasant to read digitally. I can control how big the font is, I can turn pages one-handed, I can read in the dark with no external illumination, and my devices are light to hold. For example, I bought Cryptonomicon on Kindle to replace a hardcover version partly because I was tired of reading such a bulky book.

Clutter-free

Most importantly, buying digitally frees me from physical clutter. If you’ve ever moved, you know how heavy and unwieldy books are. If you’re traveling, they add weight and bulk to your luggage.

“Rarely”

Unlike Ms. Wunderman, I am not absolute in my preference. I often prefer digital, but I acknowledge that there are some real problems with digital books. These include ownership, longevity, batteries, screens, and the distractions of reading digitally.

Ownership

When you buy digital content, what do you actually own? In 2009, Amazon deleted unauthorized versions of Animal Farm and 1984 straight off of owners’ Kindles. As the article says,

Digital books bought for the Kindle are sent to it over a wireless network. Amazon can also use that network to synchronize electronic books between devices — and apparently to make them vanish.

When you deal with DRM (digital rights management) content, there are very strong restrictions placed on what you can and can’t do with the content. It’s more like a limited license to view the content rather than outright ownership.

For instance, let’s look at lending. With physical books, you can lend your book to whomever you want for as long as you want. With Amazon’s titles, not all publishers allow digital lending in the first place. Of those that do, there are Draconian limitations. From the Amazon Kindle help page:

You can lend a Kindle book to another reader for up to 14 days… A book can only be loaned one time.

Until you can freely loan or give away your digital copies of books, paper wins hands down.

Longevity

Even if you buy DRM-free content, you take the chance that you won’t be able to read that content in a few years or decades. There is a strong precedent of technologies dying and data being trapped on obsolete devices; see Lost Formats for examples. If Amazon goes out of business, what happens to all of the Kindle content you’ve amassed? Hopefully if that were to happen, Amazon would offer a service like Google Takeout to transfer the books to you. (Full disclosure: I work for Google.)

Trav1085 via Wikipedia

The other aspect of longevity is the e-readers themselves. I haven’t had the best of luck with my Kindles so far – I am on my fourth Kindle in about as many years. Three of them died quickly, but as of yet I’ve had no problems in the past 2.5 years with the Paperwhite. It makes me wonder how long these devices last. If you have to buy a new $100 device every 3-5 years, this changes the calculus of whether e-books are more affordable.

Batteries

Digital readers run out of batteries; books don’t. Standalone e-readers typically don’t need charging very often, but phones do. If I were traveling and didn’t have ready access to electricity, this would be a concern. In practice this isn’t a big problem for me.

Screens

Some people prefer the look of a book to an e-reader screen. The e-ink display on the Kindle has improved with each generation, both in resolution, sharpness, and refresh speed. I don’t think there’s an objective winner here. The display on my Nexus 5 is incredibly sharp and I can read it in the dark, just as with the Paperwhite. My only objection to the screen is that it contributes to my spending 90% of my time staring at a glowing rectangle. I mitigate this somewhat by changing to the white text on black background on my phone, and keeping the light low on the Paperwhite.

Distractions

It’s easy to get distracted if you are reading digital books on a multi-purpose device. Reading takes time and concentration. Sometimes it’s hard to stick with that when there’s the allure of games and an infinite expanse of Internet content that’s a few button presses away.

Standalone e-readers offer a more focused reading experience that’s closer to that of reading a book. Since there’s fewer things you can do on it, there’s less temptation to do something other than read. Depending on your level of willpower, this point could be completely moot.

Conclusion

I vividly remember seeing the first clunky version of the Kindle just a few years ago and wondering how its owner could enjoy reading on it. The technology has improved so much since then that I’m a happy convert. While I acknowledge the superiority of physical books in some ways, it often makes sense to buy digital. Doing so avoids physical clutter and is extremely convenient. Most of the technical problems with digital books and e-readers have been solved; the remaining hurdles of consumer-unfriendliness are sociological problems that we can combat. For example, Microsoft changed its restrictive DRM in the Xbox One due to overwhelming negative response. If consumers showed as much passion for their rights to the book publishers and Amazon, perhaps we’d see a loosening of the reins as well.

Kindle Paperwhite – Touching is good

When I was in college, one of the students had the original version of the Kindle. It was big, clunky, and slow, but I instantly saw its potential. I’ve since owned three copies of the gray Kindle with keyboard (don’t ask), and that was a huge advance in terms of form factor, speed, and resolution.

I recently bought a Paperwhite to replace my most recently broken Kindle. Here are my initial thoughts after having used it for about 2 weeks.

Video clip of pressing to define

Video clip of dragging to select text

 

Good

• Refresh rate is noticeably faster
• Resolution is better – text is very crisp
• Getting definitions of a word is much easier – takes one long press on the word rather than navigating through the whole page with the directional pad
• Extremely small; fits easily into a jacket pocket
• Light works very well and does not strain my eyes
• UI has improved – navigating through books stored on the cloud vs on the device is very straightforward
• Highlighting is very intuitive and easy to do
• High quality virtual keyboard – very responsive
• All the games I tried have been updated to support virtual keyboard – including the New York Times crossword puzzles
• Much easier to find the books to borrow in this version – use the same unified Kindle store to search, then if it’s available, will show up as a download/borrow option
• Nice option to see how much time is left in the chapter vs book – tap in lower left corner or access from the menu
• Really great walkthrough of the different tap zones and what they do when you first turn on the device

Bad

• For both the highlight and define gesture, you need to hold your finger on the start word for a fraction of a second longer than I’d like. If you move your finger or remove it before that time, you’ll turn the page. I’ve accidentally turned the page a few times.
• Since the only way to turn the page is by tapping the screen, it’s easy to accidentally click on a link. When the link is external, it’s easy to undo – hit back on the browser. If it’s internal, to a later chapter, you get dumped later in the book with no way to get back. This is extremely confusing and disorienting. If you only read novels, this is a non-issue, but for tech books it can be a problem.

Ugly

• Light is uneven at the bottom; more evident in a dark room

Conclusion

This device is amazing, and any negatives I’ve highlighted are far outweighed by the positives. Everyone I’ve shown it to has loved it, and even those who were concerned about a touch screen on an e-reader have appreciated its responsiveness and UI.

This is by far the best e-reader I’ve ever used. Here’s hoping I have better luck with this version than the last three.