Quote:
Originally Posted by capidamonte
It's me-too-ism.
Have you noticed how much modern devices look either like a Sony, a Kindle or an iPad? Over and over again, designers all over the planet do the same thing someone else did. The PB360 at least ripped off a good design and added an excellent feature (the cover).
Boring.
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It's a function of which product is *perceived* as the industry leader.
When Sony was the *Big Name* everybody did rows of buttons and 4-way control pads. (Need we name them?)
Once Kindle took over, everybody moved to side-mounted paging buttons (good) and alphanumeric keyboards (way bad).
Sony came out with touchscreens, everybody does touchscreen even when their software can't do anything particularly useful with then.
Hardly a day doesn't go by that a China-sourced generic Kindle-wannabee isn't "introduced" somewhere on the planet. Which is good in that ebook readers are spreading to all corners but bad in that the Kindle design makes sense for connected readers with an attached bookstore, a browser, and growing social reading features but not much at all for generic ADE readers.
Now it seems were in for a horde of iPad-inspired rounded-corner, curved rear panel, wide-bezel designs. Again, they make sense on a heavy-all-screen product like iPad to provide a place to hold the things, but less so on light, one-handed devices.
The phrase "what were they thinking" tends to come to mind.
Or, maybe, "how much time did they spend on it"?
There are known principles for ergonomic product design that explain why some products work better than others, why some product dimensions feel good in the hand while others feel awkward, why some screen sizes work better than others.
If I had to guess, I'd say too much thought is going into what the product does and not enough thought is going into *how* the product is going to be used. Too much into competitors and not enough about the user. Somewhere along the way somebody forgot Pocketbook aspires to be an industry leader and not just a close follower.
Which is where the PB360 is such an anomalous product; it is a near-perfect combination of size, shape, balance, controls, and software that effectively vanishes in your hand when you're reading. It loses a few points by the stiffness and noise of the wing flaps (floating buttons would've been better) but it gains them right back with the inspired cover and back panel design.
Given that PBG has now shown two succesor waves of products after the 360 it is starting to look like the magic of 360 was more of a happy accident than willful intent. Which is sad; the 360 design embodies an ergonomic philosophy of compact one-handed use that few other products offer and which, sadly, the new Pro line has abandoned.
Doesn't meant they may not be good products; everything suggests they are likely to be very good.
But *Great* products?
Not so sure about that.
Hopefully their virtues will outweigh their looks, but first impressions matter. And the ergonomics of those controls...
(sigh)