The most interesting thing about the Kindle announcements

I found Amazon's announcement Wednesday to be very interesting. Almost unexpected. And I don't mean the Fire or Silk parts. Or the pricing of the Fire. What I found really interesting was this: Yeah, just the line of new products. But that's it. A whole line of products. A new low-end, improvements to the e-Ink, removal of the keyboard (more on that later). Not just retaining the old models, and maybe lowering the price, just to appeal to cheapskates. You'd think that based on rumor, and pretty much every other review or comment coming up to this, or today.
A key reason I like seeing stuff like this is that it continues to vindicate the scope of Designing Mobile Interfaces. A year ago, when Eric and I started writing it, there was lots of discussion about how much we'd focus on iOS. "Um, not really at all." So, also Android... And Blackberry? No, there are plenty of those sorts of books. We made a mobile design book. For all of mobile. Check out this pattern on Keyboards & Keypads for one example. In there we talk not just about the best way to make a touchscreen keyboard (and we don't just say "do what iOS does" but also hardware keyboards, also keypads and triple tap, and even scroll-and-select virtual keyboards. Wait, why does that sound familiar? Not just because my PVR does it, or my GPS, or I examined a lot of products and it's just a way to do it, not that... Oh, yeah. Because the new low-end Kindle uses that exact system. And why? Hell if I know. I don't work there. I'd guess that they found people don't type as much as expected. And it helps make the price point, and so on. They don't do this stuff randomly.
And that brings up the point you actually care about. If your mobile strategy is to make an iOS app, or you are updating your product to have a color touchscreen, and you abandoned the old way, you are probably doing it wrong. Amazon is not good at everything, but they are pretty good at some stuff. And selling eReaders is one of those. I am not the sort of designer who takes everything Amazon (or Apple) does, and slavishly copies it. But Amazon is a mass-market success story, and with the Kindle they had amazing success with a pretty new class of product, which they are clearly trying to make available to everyone possible. New technology doesn't always have to be expensive, new versions don't have to be cutting edge, and the low-end is a huge market. Are you focusing on the bigger market, or just what you think is cool? If you like everything I said, and think your product needs some thinking like this, maybe we can work together. Go ahead and contact me about it.

Design of dials and doors

Check out this control setup in a new Ford truck in which I was recently riding: Ford has, thankfully, gotten out of ovals everywhere design, and seems to have replaced them with circles everywhere. Note the five actual dials below the radio controls. The far left one is the drive system (various 2 and 4-wheel settings) the center are the HVAC controls, and the right is... what? Seriously, I wasn't sure at first. 12v is the only position labeled. So I try turning it. No movement. Pretty rapidly it becomes clear it's not a dial. Tug on it (carefully, in case I am wrong) and it's a hole, a power port. In the past, this was the cigarette lighter, but now it's a power port. The only hints it doesn't turn are a little depression to the right, and a lack of an indicator line pointing to the "12v" setting. But the overall style embodies the "rotary switch" meme. What am I supposed to think this item does? I know exactly how this happened, too. For pretty much my whole career I have had to deal with the same issues. I don't know what it's called in industrial design, and even within interactive, names vary. "Visual design" is the most common, I think. Visual designers are tasked to add a style to the product. Usually, one that reflects the overall corporate brand, but always their mantra is aesthetic and consistent. My problem is when they try to common, universally-understood, design language with another set, in the name of consistency. This is a great example. Aside from communicating "rotary switch" vs. "hinging cover," I would consider there already is a design phrase for "power port." It's a particular knobby style, descended from the auto cigarette lighter itself. Within interactive, the most common cases are trying – or needing – to replace standard controls, like scrollbars or form elements. Either a stylistic change is desired, or something like Flash is used to create a large portion of an interactive element, and the design is proposed with non-standard checkboxes, or scrollbars that don't work by click-to-position or dragging. I have actually sat behind the mirror and watched such items fail users. For any designer, of any interactive element, consider the value of your design contribution. Is consistency of visual look more important than instantly communicating interactivity, and meeting user expectations, through use of well-known elements?