Tech usability advocate: Kindle Fire user experience is 'poor'

Technology critic and former Sun Microsystems engineer Jakob Nielsen isn't impressed by Amazon's first shot at the tablet PC market. The expert awarded the Kindle Fire low marks across several key areas, calling its general usability "disappointingly poor" and Silk web browser "clunky and error-prone."

Tell us how you really feel, Mr. Nielsen.

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Using a unique, four-person test panel to help root out successes and shortcomings, Nielsen learned the tablet's biggest issue stems from something small.

"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," said Nielsen. "You haven't seen the fat-finger problem in its full glory until you've watched users struggle to touch things on the Fire. One poor guy spent several minutes trying to log in to Facebook, but was repeatedly foiled by accidentally touching the wrong field or button - this on a page with only two text fields and one button."

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Nielson called Amazon's decision to push full websites into the Kindle Fire's smaller 7-inch display a "prescription for failure." The group also tested the iPad, but reported no major issues with site browsing on the 10-inch screen.

"Using designs intended for a full screen on a 7-inch tablet is like squeezing a size-10 person into a size-7 suit. Not going to look good," he explained.

Browsing mobile sites on the Kindle Fire, however, fared much better. "Using sites optimized for 3.5-inch mobile screens on the bigger 7-inch screen felt luxurious - somewhat like using a regular website on a 30-inch monitor," Nielsen said. "You have all the space in the world and can see the entire page with little (if any) scrolling."

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So impressed was the expert that he recommended all Kindle Fire owners switch to mobile view. Desktop viewing is turned on by default.

Nielsen also beat on the device's form factor, specifically its weight. A perfect e-reader the Kindle Fire is not.

"The Fire is a heavy object," said Nielsen. "It's unpleasant to hold for extended periods of time. Unless you have forearm muscles like Popeye, you can't comfortably sit and read an engaging novel all evening. The lack of physical buttons for turning the page also impedes on the reading experience for fiction."

Despite that issue, he claimed it was superior to Amazon's dedicated e-reader for "light nonfiction," but gave the nod to the lighter vanilla Kindle's for longer fiction-reading sessions.

Before loyal Amazon fans (or stalwart Apple haters) throw a fit, Nielsen revealed that his test subjects had at least 18 months prior experience with touchscreen-operated mobile phones. The implication being that their criticisms were not the result of general technological ineptitude, but of some consumer-unfriendly design choices.

You can read Nielsen's entire Kindle Fire usability report here. (via All Things D)

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