Kindle Fire offers ‘disappointingly poor’ user experience, UI expert says

User interface expert Dr. Jakob Nielsen, who describes himself as an author, researcher and consultant on user interfaces, recently studied the user experience of the Kindle Fire and dubbed it “disappointingly poor.” Nielsen said the lack of physical buttons impeded the reading experience, the device was too heavy and was “unpleasant to hold for long periods of time,” and while there was potential for a good magazine reading experience, Nielsen said the result was “miserable.” Nielsen even proposes a bit of a conspiracy theory to why the web browsing experience on the Kindle Fire might be inferior to other devices. “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,” he said. “Amazon’s own built-in shopping app has great usability, so they clearly know how to design for the tablet.”

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