When designing the Kindle, Amazon capitalized on a known weakness of the biggest piece of consumer tech at the time: the iPod. The iPod was a global phenomenon with a huge point of user friction that taught us what NOT to do.
Readers will remember that the iPod required “sideloading”—you bought or uploaded music into your iTunes library on your computer, and then you had to plug your iPod into the computer to transfer the music.
In our research, we learned that the average number of sideloading sessions per iPod user was two per year. In other words, the average user only added new or different music twice per year. Users were getting bored with their libraries, but the friction was sufficient to discourage more frequent sideloads.
This is the exact issue we wanted to avoid.
This informed our decision to make the Kindle e-reader always connected to the source of e-books. We wanted users to be able to download new books whenever they wanted, as long as they had internet.
The process needed to be easy, direct, and immediate—something that required a minute or two; not something that required a large chunk of free time like sideloading.
The lesson is that our design principle came directly from a customer insight. They weren’t our customers, but we saw a pattern among the users of a similar product. The pattern was supported by data and indicated a clear way that we could improve on the user experience in a way that would likely lead to more use and more downloads (purchases).
When designing products using the PR/FAQ process, it is important to make sure the details of the product are based on real customer insights, not assumptions. This is exactly what we did with this element of the Kindle.
To learn more about the PR/FAQ process for new product ideas, you can view our PR/FAQ course, and all of our other courses, here: https://lnkd.in/esCENxuN
