I’ve been thinking more and more about the Kindle DX and why I don’t find it particularly useful for myself. This then got me thinking about it from a student’s perspective and how it could be useful. At the end of my internal brainstorm, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. In order for the Kindle DX to be something amazing and useful for students I came to the conslusion that more functionality and interface tweaks should be added to the Kindle instead of simply releasing the same model with a larger screen.
One of my favourite features of the Kindle is highlighting and noting capabilities. This becomes useless in a student setting because you do not currently have the ability to export any highlighted texts or notes. It would be great to be able to import and interface with your notes and highlights via PC. Another thing that strikes me about the Kindle DX is that it is the size of regular notepad. A touchscreen to actually be able to take notes on the screen or capability to record voice notes would be a cool addition for any university student. Think Livescribe stuff.
In addition to just adding functionality, some tweaks to the UI should be considered. I have purchased several reference books for the Kindle and I find the navigation for this type of reference book is giant pain in the ass. Kindle is great at reading in a linear fashion, but when you are attempting to “flip” through the book to get to another part, it is not very friendly. This is liketly to be an issue for textbook users.
That is all for now. In my little dream world, I don’t think tons of new features need to be added, but tweaks for the right demographic would be pretty cool…
