Product in Focus: Kindle
Product in Focus is a series to acknowledge some great products available to us and what improvements or features could be added to them to make them even better.
The fifth product in this series is Amazon’s Kindle.
Amazon Kindle enables users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store.
To emphasize, the product has made it more accessible, affordable and convenient for users to read books anywhere and everywhere. With e-ink technology enabling lesser stress on eyes than a regular mobile or laptop screen, it is a god-sent for book lovers and has revolutionized the next generation of readers and their book-reading behaviour, making them easily switch to digital medium from age-old paperbacks and hardcovers.
I have been using this product for quite some time and I am absolutely convinced it has made me read more and better through the years.
However, being an ardent user of this device, I always have felt that there could be some improvements and features that could be added to this product to make the user experience better and more fulfilling.
Before proceeding, I must mention, I am not affiliated with Amazon & Kindle in any capacity, and the views for this article are strictly my own.
What Kindle does best
- Revolutionizing book reading experience
Let’s be honest, Kindle has revolutionized the way book readers used to devour books. It has definitely made it more comfortable, convenient and accessible to buy and read books. With millions of e-books on Kindle store, it gives an affordable way for book readers to own books.
2. In-built Dictionary
What makes Kindle better is the access of in-built Dictionary & Wikipedia at a single click. Gone are the days when we used to underline difficult words in paperbacks and look for their meanings in dictionary or on our phone; this feature on Kindle enables users to long-press a word and the meaning of it pops up immediately.
3. Highlighting & Note-making
Did you love a poetic sentence you just read or resonated with something the author said and want to keep it forever? Worry not, Kindle lets users highlight their favourite quote to be accessed later. It also lets users drop in notes at different points in the book they’re reading.
User Personas
Talking and interviewing users of Kindle, they could be easily demarcated into two sets of user groups:
- Ardent Readers
- Lazy Readers
Ardent Readers are the ones who try to utilise their Kindle as much as they can. They are passionate readers, and read more than 6 books in a year.
Pain Points:
a. Long reads are harder to read and keep up with. Especially, when reading academic papers with diagrams, reading those on iPad is easier.
b. Apart from just reading books, they do not want much utility of the device, and wished they could extract more benefits.
c. Cannot share and collaborate with friends who are similar book readers.
Lazy Readers are the ones who read less than 6 books a year. These are usually those people who thought they’d read a lot more books if they had a kindle, or were usually gifted one, and have not been able to utilise it 100%.
Pain Points:
a. Boring and colour-less Kindle makes it harder for them to find reading a book interesting enough.
b. They prefer hardcovers and paperbacks over kindle, and since screen time is already high, they feel no point in increasing their screen time even further.
c. Book Recommendations are not personalized enough for them, with no social features, they feel reading on kindle is a silo-experience, whereas they want it to be more of a social experience.
Improvements & New Features’ Suggestions
The improvements and features have been suggested keeping in mind the users who are ardent users of Kindle and want more from the device.
- Collaborative highlighting & note-making
Kindle already have usernames and Goodreads account synced in. A feature should be introduced wherein different users can be followed and invited to make notes and highlight important text collaboratively (especially necessary for research papers, academic books etc.).
This would also enable user acquisition for the Kindle, since more users will become open to start using Kindle for collaborative work.
2. Authors’ Pages, Book Clubs — Community for Readers
Apart from Goodreads, Kindle could make its own social community including book readers as active users who can be followed, exclusive AMAs and content from favourite authors and including famous book clubs (such as Oprah Winfrey Book Clud, Reese’s Book Club, Good Morning America Book Club, to name a few). These could be excluive to Kindle readers, making it more lucrative to own a Kindle.
3. Bring Some Colour
It’s high time Kindle brings a pop of colour to its boring, dull pages and make it more interesting and fun to read books, and to give readers reasons to read more on Kindle.
4. Summaries and Critiques
Before purchasing a book, a general trend is to look up the book for reviews on Goodreads. Expert critiques and summaries in the Kindle store will make sure users buy the right book for themselves.
If you are interested in knowing the strategy of razor-blade model behind Amazon Kindle, this is an excellent post for further reading — https://www.linkedin.com/posts/munmun-mohanty-01_businesssnippets-businessmodel-business-activity-6825272168838963201-CfNb
All said and done, it is imperative to understand that critiquing a product from the outside is an easy venture. Due credit is obviously owed to the talented minds behind the scenes who have made the Kindle device this successful.
Any suggestions on improving my approach and if I missed anything in the entire process are most welcome.
