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One Thing Amazon Must Get Right With Its Kindle Tablet

27.09.2011
If Amazon , it needs to nail one thing really well if it wants to succeed--and that is to make the tablet's look, feel, usability, and design rock-solid. Why? If the new tablet doesn't nail the interface from the get-go, it will have a hard time being anything more than a me-too tablet. This is a big challenge for the e-commerce powerhouse whose lack of either aesthetics or well-presented user interfaces has been its Achilles' heel.

With its e-commerce platform, its hooks into selling digital media, and its own Android app store, you'd think success would be a given. Well, not so fast, Amazon.

To begin with, let's just say I hope a Kindle tablet doesn't take design cues from the Kindle e-book reader.

Nothing about Amazon's screams style. Nor does the interface make it easy to do things. With the most recent version of Kindle, some options seem buried under menu layers, or require more clicks than you'd expect. And for years, I've been surprised by how much Amazon has gotten away with, be it in the text-heavy design of the Kindle menus, or the stark navigation of its website, which makes the experience of finding and managing digital content a tedious click-fest.

Interface aesthetics have always felt like an afterthought for Amazon. By comparison, the fresh, visual interface of makes the (circa 2010) feel flat and staid--even though one would have thought that by this third generation, Amazon would have been able to turn its attention to niceties like interface aesthetics.