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An industry needs a redesign: the publishing business

Alexis Brion — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:53:55 +0000

Design vs Art is following very close the developments on the electronic paper (epaper) industry. We think it is a great technology that is about to explode. Specially ebook readers could be the next big thing. Epaper is making the revolution that will change everything unstoppable. For that reason, the publishing industry needs a redesign.

After hearing about the Amazon-George Orwell incident (article on the New York Times), I decided to try to buy Orwell’s Animal Farm ebook in its original language and to write down on my Moleskine details about that experience. From the beginning the task was set to be difficult; I had an Amazon Kindle and I live in Germany, meaning that I can not buy ebooks at the Amazon/Kindle store.

The above described exercise took me to the following impressions:

Amazon would not sell me the ebook with a European credit card, so I went to Mobipocket.com and bought the digital version of Animal Farm. The Mobipocket software does not work on Apple Macs so I directly downloaded the book and send it to the Kindle using Calibre, an ebook management software. I tried to open the ebook and I got a disgusting message saying that the file was protected and could not be displayed in an unregistered device. Of course, I didn’t know that I could not register a Kindle on Mobipocket.

In case I was not clear enough, I would like to say again that I paid for the book I was trying to open. The whole user experience was totally frustrating.

You are not allowed to read this ebook on this unregistered device.

What I discovered while looking for ebooks is that copyright laws are actually preventing publishers to make more money. Many ebooks are available only for some countries; if the user is connecting from another place she might not be allowed to buy and download the book. That’s a model that used to work fine in the past, but the future is digital and people want to buy from different resources.

For copyright reasons you can not buy this ebook from your country.

I tried to find Animal Farm in a German ebook store but I found only the German version of it. I wanted to buy the book in English language but it was not available. A lot of people love reading books in different languages, if this kind of restrictions continue customers will lose, students will lose, publishers will lose.

Even worse, somebody could eventually decide which version of a book a whole nation should read. This is something that might be already happening somewhere in the world, but readers have the chance to travel, buy books somewhere else and smuggle them if necessary; something that is not going to be possible in a digital publishing industry controlled but old copyright laws.

You have to use our German store, buy the German version of this ebook.

In a completely digital publishing industry the control over what people should read could be managed in an easier way. Amazon showed its customers how dangerous its proposed design is. I am not blaming neither Amazon nor publishers. But what if an untrustworthy government buys a piece of Amazon and controls what Kindle users read? A book could be deleted or a paragraph could be changed to benefit somebody. Recently, Barnes & Noble announced it would team up with Plastic Logic to mimic the Kindle experience, enforcing a trend started by Amazon but that could (actually, hopefully) fail.

Yes, the user experience of buying an ebook at Amazon and have it delivered to a Kindle is great. Everybody loves that. But I have also read comments on forums from panicking customers promising not to activate their Kindle wireless feature anymore, worrying that the ebooks they bought in the past could disappear. The user experience is broken, the system is not trusty anymore.

Delete that ebook from all the devices in this country.

We have to help the publishing industry to survive. We should pay for our music and for our books. Publishers are in disadvantage in comparison to the music industry, they can not make money selling concert tickets. But illegal copies of books are already there and they will be there for ever, it can not be stopped. It is also impossible to stop the ebook reader revolution.

I looked for the electronic version of Animal Farm on a torrent search engine. The book was there. I could have downloaded it for free in a few seconds. It could have been so easy…

I have to say this again: I tried to get a legal copy of the book. I actually paid for the book, but I was not allowed to read it on my device.

To download an ebook illegally is already easier than buying it.

The publishing business needs a redesign in order to keep making money and to sponsor writers. The danger is big but the future could also be brighter for publishers. This new technology offers the possibility of a better, faster, cost-effective distribution system. They only have to make it happen before someone else do it for them, sooner or later.

Article by Alexis Brion.

5 Design Examples To Organize Data Alphabetically

Alexis Brion — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 05:09:01 +0000

Organizing data alphabetically might not be the most common way to get data together but it could be a good solution for particular web designs.

In which cases organizing and browsing data alphabetically could be an interesting option?

- If the items listed are not related (e.g. no categories)
- If those item names are well-known
- It could help users to find items very fast if it’s well design
- Placing all items in one long page will allow users to search using the browser search function, saving a lot of time

Organizing data alphabetically could have some problems too:

- Looking for an entry for "For Whom the Bell Tolls"; would you look at the F or at the W section?
- It’s not going to help users if their mental model sort those items into known categories
- If the design is placing one letter per page users will have to look for items in several pages, being this a time consuming task

I wouldn’t recommend to have an alphabetical index as the only way to browse content but I would have it as an option that could help users an save them a lot of time.

Here I have five examples:

The Internet Movie Database website gives us an example of both when to use and when not to use alphabetical order. First, looking for films by country works perfectly. On the second example, the "A" section is listing several thousands of films. That crushed my browser and makes the search almost useless.

TechCrunch, the blog, provides an index of companies and products. This solution works well here as users visiting this section might know the name of the specific company or product they are looking for. Maybe dividing the list to indicate the beginning of each letter would have been better.

7 Eleven might not have the most appealing design but has a nice product index. Most users visiting this section might be looking for an specific product. This product index works well, listing all products in one page with direct links to letter sections and a "back to the top" link.

The United Kingdom Parliament uses an index to put in one place links to all the content provided by the website. They have one page per letter but the user still has the possibility to see the whole list together clicking on the "view all" link located under the letter index.

The Today in Literature website provides an alphabetical index of authors. This is a nice example how browsing alphabetically can help users.

Do Not Include Too Many Links, Usability

Alexis Brion — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 05:15:44 +0000

Links are used to give users more information, details, context. They also are a way to show what is important. They could also be use to drive traffic to other parts of the same website. But abusing could have a negative effect, if your web design has too many links, like this very same article, the effects of linking would be mostly annoying. See here more Design vs Art articles about Links.

Use links, but don’t abuse.

Embedding Links Into Content

Alexis Brion — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:14:09 +0000

Embedding links into your content encourages users to visit other sections of your website. Placing links into articles also gives more context and value to users.

"A common problem is that users do not understand where the link could go…"

It’s important to pay attention on the way these links are done. A common problem is that users do not understand where the link could go. On the example below, taken from News.com, it’s clear for most users that clicking on "struck licensing agreements" would link to an article about that. On the other hand, clicking on "Imeem", would take the user to the company’s website or to other news about it?

The New York Times goes one step forward making embedded links more understandable, predictable and user friendly. As the user hover over the candidates’ names in this politics article, the link label appears telling users that they would be taken to more articles about that candidate. Using proper link labeling improves usability and avoid confusion. (Mouse arrow is not displayed).

The Netvibes Ajax User Interface

Alexis Brion — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 05:06:52 +0000

What’s your home page? I was using iGoogle for a long time but I decided to try Netvibes, an Ajax based personalized start page.

The whole thing is Ajax and it works perfect. You can add as many modules including RSS/Atom feeds and other widgets, then you can sort them in personalized tabs, for example, I have a tab for “Web2.0″ feeds, another for Web2.0 feeds in German language and another more for the ones in Spanish. Changing tabs is fast as the news are loaded and reloaded only from time to time, and not every time you go to that tab.

My personal Netvibes home page

You can also choose among many third party “universes”, those are like Netvibes home pages designed and customized by other companies. Like this one made by The Financial Times:

I like so much to have a module with my Remember The Milk tasks, another with my Gmail and another one with a Google/Yahoo! search box. clicking on a small arrow that appears on the module title as you hover over, allows you to open and close that module, an important feature for privacy reasons too.

The whole design is very slick and adding modules is extremely easy. For example, to add a feed just paste the site address and Netvibes will list the available feeds for that site. It also has a very useful “In my page” search that searches only among your feeds. Fantastic.

They also have a reasonable amount of documentation on their Netvibes’ Developer Network home page. Their Universal Widget API (UWA) from Netvibes allows developers to build widgets that will work on every platform or blog system. Your personal Netvibes home page is also reachable through your mobile device at m.netvibes.com

Picture taken from the Netvibes blog

I really like the Netvibes User Interface and don’t have complaints so far

40 Years Old BBC Radio 1, More Updated Than Ever

Alexis Brion — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:08:31 +0000

The BBC Radio 1 is celebrating its 40th anniversary being one of the most attractive radio services on the net. They put online a new section for this special event with a lot of interesting content, like video interviews, old shows and stories, Myspace badges and a section where long time listeners can post memories.

The BBC and, specially, the Radio 1 have proved to be updated with the last technology and design. The Radio 1 site was recently redesign with a quite clean organization. For example, right at the top the current show information is displayed with very clear links to start the online radio listening and webcam:

Getting the information you are interested in is very easy as the shows and featured stories are sorted by genre.

There are also quick links to entertainment news, UK Singles Chart and to the Radio 1 Playlist. They know what the users want and they put it on top:

More Technology
They have a broad technology offer, with a lot of information about the BBC audio podcast sorted by show, digital, mobile and satellite radio. They also explain how to listen to the radio with the Freeview, satellite and cable television. It makes me happy that the feeds are organized by genre and board topics.

The Bad Thing
I wonder why the BBC put a widget in the main page displaying the most texted words. Why? Who cares? Well, nothing is perfect…

Anyways, the BBC Radio 1 site has nice design with a lot of information and they are celebrating the 40th aniversary with great technology and design. Cool.