eBook Design and Usability

I was reading a blog post by Emily Watts, an editor at Deseret Book (http://emilywatts.com/) about the importance of your book having a hook. A hook being something that grabs the reader and separates it from the rest of the noise on the shelf. As she mentions, sometimes that is simply the author’s name. I will read anything from Gerald Lund or Dean Hughes, or Dostoevsky—but he isn’t writing much these days. My daughter will wait in line all night to buy a Stephenie Meyer book. Watts suggests that sometime the hook is the book title. And admit it—how many of us really do judge a book by its cover?

Then two friends on Facebook, sisters actually, began discussions about favorite books and the Kindle. That got me thinking about e-books. eBooks have a unique potential to create a hook. They also have to guard against the temptation to go too far. Bruce Barton suggests:

"If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world, it will come through the expression of your own personality, that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.”

There is much discussion about websites having personality and how that attracts or detracts readership. Books also have personalities and quickly bond with some readers and repel others. With e-books, personality goes beyond titles and content and into the realm of visual design, dynamic graphic art, and usability, not just readability.

Sometimes the problem is that the author or publisher does it because they can. But they really can’t. Just because someone owns PageMaker, or FrontPage or even Quark or DreamWeaver doesn’t make the amateur a professional. Putting a bunch of great graphics in an e-book may detract more than help. In a 2006 interview with Luke Wroblewski , he quotes Curt Cloninger as saying, “usability experts are from Mars and graphic designers are from Venus. They are simply different animals and it takes great talent to bring the two together.

Without picking on some terrible designs, I will use an example from an ebook designer, Steven Schneiderman (http://www.designingebookcovers.com/). So which cover do you like? How do the fonts and layout and colors work together or against each other?



I have read several ebooks that have had potential but the design was terrible and the eye strain finally caused me to close the book. Navigation, download, and construction are important elements for any book, but especially an ebook.

Instead of providing some bad designs, I will offer one well done e-book design that tells the story and leverages the strengths of design and usability, while not creating a monster. Alex Dukal is a n illustrator of children’s books. You can see some of his work at http://www.circografico.com.ar/. I will admit I am a little partial because he is Argentine and I spent three wonderful years there, including Patagonia where he lives (although I don’t know him and only discovered his work recently). His design is rich, interesting and appealing. He uses a range of visual techniques to draw your attention, make you interested and to give you a warm feeling about the quality of the work. “But it's also simple, because it uses its pixels/ink/busyness with care and sensitivity. It's not gratuitous, it's economical and rich,” according to author Ben Hunt.

If ebooks are going to carve a significant portion of the market space we are going to need more than 3G Kindles. I look forward to the progress, even though I will still be buying physical books.

When Less is More

I just got back from a long two-week trip helping a daughter and son-in-law move from Provo, Utah to Atlanta, Georgia. It was a great trip, but with some long hours on the road. I mostly drove the moving truck, so the mph rarely broke 65. There was only a radio in the truck, so no books on tape to help pass the time. That gave me plenty of time to think, but little time to write. I have two books that I think about every day that are partially written and screaming for my attention. They seem to take turns at being the loudest. Meanwhile, quietly lurking in a dark corner, never screaming for my attention, but with an confident and sinister muahahaha, my dissertation reminds me of my responsibility, not necessarily my desire. Of course I want to complete my PhD in International Business, and I have promised my wife Vicky to take her to Paris with me to defend my dissertation when that time finally comes. The planned date is mid November. My son leaves for Mexico for a two-year mission in early November and we want to be home for Thanksgiving at the end of the month, so that leaves little flexibility.

I originally drew up a plan where I could work on a book (the one closest to completion got the nod) and still work on my dissertation. What I have discovered is, I can’t write a quality academic paper of this magnitude (somewhere around 350 pages) and the Great American Novel simultaneously. I suppose some of you great writers are mentally ambidextrous and can switch from precise academic style to rich and dynamic novelistic style (or so I like to think at least). On my long drive I finally decided that the quickest way to a quality completion of any of these projects was to focus on one and work in series instead of parallel.

I seem to remember from my one and only electrical engineering class (1976 in think) that the resistance (my challenges) through a series circuit is higher than through a parallel circuit (assuming the same resistors). Thus for the same amount of volts (energy) you get more amps (work) through a parallel circuit. Hmmm... That doesn’t seem to work for my present metaphor. Then I realized, (you can tell I had a lot of time to think on the drive) that for resistors in series, the current (amps) is the same for each resistor, and for resistors in parallel, the voltage is the same for each one. In other words, I could exchange the same energy working on multiple projects simultaneously, but the work would go down—that is the output, the quality would diminish. It will possibly be less efficient to complete one project and go on to the next, but the quality is what I am looking for, not efficient volume.

That got me thinking about the present generation of youth who do everything in parallel. I was waiting at a restaurant in Atlanta with my family and a young married couple came in and waited near us for a table. Both pulled out their i-phones and began doing multiple things while also holding something I assume they thought was a conversation. It was punctuated by a lot of single syllable sounds and I am not sure, if given a test whether either would really know what the other had said—perhaps they wouldn’t even had passed a test on they themselves had said. I love parallel operations, but give me quality anytime. When it comes to communications, I think less can actually be more and more can be less.