A recent study by usability guru Jakob Nielsen has rated the Kindle Fire as “disappointingly poor user experience”, especially with regard to web browsing and magazine reading. The report also stated that the Silk browser was “clunky and error prone”.
He also pointed what he thought was the most striking defect:
“The most striking observation from testing the Fire is that everything is much too small on the screen, leading to frequent tap errors and accidental activation. You haven’t seen the fat-finger problem in its full glory until you’ve watched users struggle to touch things on the Fire”
He even went as far as saying that Amazon might have created the poor browsing experience on purpose:
“If I were given to conspiracy theories, I’d say that Amazon deliberately designed a poor web browsing user experience to keep Fire users from shopping on competing sites. Amazon’s own built-in shopping app has great usability, so they clearly know how to design for the tablet,”
This assessment is especially interesting considering Steve Jobs’ criticisms of 7″ tablets, stating that the content would be to small, and users would need to “sand down” their fingers to make it work.
I’m getting ready for about four or five Fandroids to leave comments as to why this person is an idiot and why he tested it wrong or some other excuse. Fair enough, but remember these aren’t my words, they’re his, and he (Jakob Nielsen) is one of the top gadget usability experts. You’ve got a lot of arguing to do, Fandroids.
