Quote:
Originally Posted by jharker
Regarding keyboard vs. touch screen, you have to think of the usage model and target market. The Kindle has wireless internet and book downloading. People are either going to be searching for books, taking short notes, or browsing the web (i.e. searching Wikipedia). For all of these, a keyboard is necessary. With the slow refresh rate of e-ink, a physical keyboard is the only way to go.
And once you have the keyboard, what do you really need a touchscreen for? Scribbling? Taking notes? Maybe, but the slow refresh rate of e-ink makes these things feel clunky at best -- I know, I own an iLiad. I like it, but I almost never use the stylus except to do things that a button could do just as easily. Meanwhile, the trade-off for touchscreen capability is shorter battery life and substantially higher price. In my opinion, it's just not worth it.
Remember that the Kindle 1 had that little LCD selection bar? I thought that was a brilliant design choice. E-ink at the time was so slow that moving an e-ink menu bar felt clunky. The LCD bar was slick and fast, and they could use the e-ink display for the static menu options.
Anyway, the point is that the normal UI design paradigm just doesn't work with e-ink-based e-readers because the refresh rate is too slow. The biggest challenge when designing a reader today is figuring out how to design the UI so that the user won't get frustrated. It's very challenging. All modern design concepts assume a fast refresh rate, so there's no real prior art to work from.
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In general your conclusion seems well thought out given the limitations of e-ink. However, regarding the use of a keyboard I'll offer a different view.
The functions, other than reading, that I would use most would be search (i.e. very light typing), links, and select/highlight. For these a touchscreen would be superior to any [tap, tap, tap...] keyboard even with e-ink. I would not want to browse the internet on one of these devices at all, but if I did it would be very irritating navigating the web without a touchscreen or mouse. Likewise, for browsing or buying books I would rather go to my computer. Taking long notes or scribbling? Use a different device or paper.
In general I do not want a physical keyboard taking up space on my portable reader. The amount of typing I would be doing would be very small. Until the refresh rate of e-ink improves substantially or until another superior technology (or even good old LCD) replaces it these units will have limited functionality.