A Simpler Page
7th January 2018
Tablets are in many ways just like physical books—the screen has well defined boundaries and the optimal number of words per line doesn’t suddenly change on the screen. But in other ways, tablets are nothing like physical books—the text can extend in every direction, the type can change size. So how do we reconcile these similarities and differences? Where is the baseline for designers looking to produce beautiful, readable text on a tablet?
One of the very nice things about the Kindle (and the Kindle app on digital devices) is that they consistently look for ways to make your reading experience better. I see them sitting down in a big room on Monday around a whiteboard with a page-full of text and saying ‘What would a user want to do from this point? Okay, let’s implement that.’ They are constantly making improvements, to the point where they are adding things I didn’t know I needed until I saw them. That’s innovation. I now prefer reading on the Kindle (app) to reading an actual physical book.