The whole iPhone vs Android debate is reminiscent of the Mac vs PC discussion, with the same types of issues. With iPhone (and I include iPad) you get the so-called walled garden, in which you can do anything you want as long as it is approved by Apple. This is is similar to the dearth of application available for the Mac compared to Windows. In recent times, that has changed some, but the overwhelming majority of new application are created for the PC. It will only be a matter of time before there are exponentially more Android phones than there are iPhones, so the two situations will be twins. It turns out that just like Windows being more likely to get a virus or to get hacked (not because of any design flaw, but it's a numbers game for hackers), Android devices are already seeing hacks and viruses propagate throughout their ecosystem.
If one were to advise a computer buyer about purchasing a laptop, one would usually ask if the computer was to be used at work or as a personal machine, whether it was for business (number crunching, correspondence, etc.) or for graphics, movie editing, photos, ease of sharing, etc., the advice would almost certainly be to buy a PC for business and a Mac for personal. This argument seems reasonable for the iPhone/iPad vs Android debate. Part of the reason, perhaps the main reason, that a Mac "just works", as opposed to a PC, is that Apple only has to design for a single platform, and they control all the variables in hardware and drivers. Whereas Windows must account for thousands of different hardware configurations, thus it requires more work on the part of the consumer to make it all work.
In the coming months I believe we are going to see an analogous situation between iPhone and Android. Those who like getting their hands dirty are going to opt for Android, while those who just want their device to work as advertised will opt for the iPhone. It comes down to what I have been saying for years--do you want the computer to work for you, or do you want to work for the computer?
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
What People Want From Products
This article is a great metaphor for implementing technology into the classroom, the office, or the home. Follow the link for more from the authors.
Published: January 16, 2006. What Customers Want From Your Products
Authors: Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall
Editor's Note: Marketers have lost the forest for the trees, focusing too much on creating products for narrow demographic segments rather than satisfying needs. Customers want to "hire" a product to do a job, or, as legendary Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt put it, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!"
With Levitt's words as a rallying cry, a recent Harvard Business Review article, "Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure," argues that the marketer's task is to understand the job the customer wants to get done, and design products and brands that fill that need. In this excerpt, the authors look at designing products that do a job rather than fill a product segment.
With few exceptions, every job people need or want to do has a social, a functional, and an emotional dimension. If marketers understand each of these dimensions, then they can design a product that's precisely targeted to the job. In other words, the job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that customers will buy.
To see why, consider one fast-food restaurant's effort to improve sales of its milk shakes. (In this example, both the company and the product have been disguised.) Its marketers first defined the market segment by product—milk shakes—and then segmented it further by profiling the demographic and personality characteristics of those customers who frequently bought milk shakes. Next, they invited people who fit this profile to evaluate whether making the shakes thicker, more chocolaty, cheaper, or chunkier would satisfy them better. The panelists gave clear feedback, but the consequent improvements to the product had no impact on sales.
A new researcher then spent a long day in a restaurant seeking to understand the jobs that customers were trying to get done when they hired a milk shake. He chronicled when each milk shake was bought, what other products the customers purchased, whether these consumers were alone or with a group, whether they consumed the shake on the premises or drove off with it, and so on. He was surprised to find that 40 percent of all milk shakes were purchased in the early morning. Most often, these early-morning customers were alone; they did not buy anything else; and they consumed their shakes in their cars.
The researcher then returned to interview the morning customers as they left the restaurant, shake in hand, in an effort to understand what caused them to hire a milk shake. Most bought it to do a similar job: They faced a long, boring commute and needed something to make the drive more interesting. They weren't yet hungry but knew that they would be by 10 a.m.; they wanted to consume something now that would stave off hunger until noon. And they faced constraints: They were in a hurry, they were wearing work clothes, and they had (at most) one free hand.
The researcher inquired further: "Tell me about a time when you were in the same situation but you didn't buy a milk shake. What did you buy instead?" Sometimes, he learned, they bought a bagel. But bagels were too dry. Bagels with cream cheese or jam resulted in sticky fingers and gooey steering wheels. Sometimes these commuters bought a banana, but it didn't last long enough to solve the boring-commute problem. Doughnuts didn't carry people past the 10 a.m. hunger attack. The milk shake, it turned out, did the job better than any of these competitors. It took people twenty minutes to suck the viscous milk shake through the thin straw, addressing the boring-commute problem. They could consume it cleanly with one hand. By 10:00, they felt less hungry than when they tried the alternatives. It didn't matter much that it wasn't a healthy food, because becoming healthy wasn't essential to the job they were hiring the milk shake to do.
The researcher observed that at other times of the day parents often bought milk shakes, in addition to complete meals, for their children. What job were the parents trying to do? They were exhausted from repeatedly having to say "no" to their kids. They hired milk shakes as an innocuous way to placate their children and feel like loving parents. The researcher observed that the milk shakes didn't do this job very well, though. He saw parents waiting impatiently after they had finished their own meals while their children struggled to suck the thick shakes up through the thin straws.
Customers were hiring milk shakes for two very different jobs. But when marketers had originally asked individual customers who hired a milk shake for either or both jobs which of its attributes they should improve—and when these responses were averaged with those of other customers in the targeted demographic segment—it led to a one-size-fits-none product.
Once they understood the jobs the customers were trying to do, however, it became very clear which improvements to the milk shake would get those jobs done even better and which were irrelevant. How could they tackle the boring-commute job? Make the milk shake even thicker, so it would last longer. And swirl in tiny chunks of fruit, adding a dimension of unpredictability and anticipation to the monotonous morning routine. Just as important, the restaurant chain could deliver the product more effectively by moving the dispensing machine in front of the counter and selling customers a prepaid swipe card so they could dash in, "gas up," and go without getting stuck in the drive-through lane. Addressing the midday and evening job to be done would entail a very different product, of course.
By understanding the job and improving the product's social, functional, and emotional dimensions so that it did the job better, the company's milk shakes would gain share against the real competition—not just competing chains' milk shakes but bananas, boredom, and bagels. This would grow the category, which brings us to an important point: Job-defined markets are generally much larger than product category-defined markets. Marketers who are stuck in the mental trap that equates market size with product categories don't understand whom they are competing against from the customer's point of view.
Notice that knowing how to improve the product did not come from understanding the "typical" customer. It came from understanding the job. Need more evidence?
Pierre Omidyar did not design eBay for the "auction psychographic." He founded it to help people sell personal items. Google was designed for the job of finding information, not for a "search demographic." The unit of analysis in the work that led to Procter & Gamble's stunningly successful Swiffer was the job of cleaning floors, not a demographic or psychographic study of people who mop.
Why do so many marketers try to understand the consumer rather than the job? One reason may be purely historical: In some of the markets in which the tools of modern market research were formulated and tested, such as feminine hygiene or baby care, the job was so closely aligned with the customer demographic that if you understood the customer, you would also understand the job. This coincidence is rare, however. All too frequently, marketers' focus on the customer causes them to target phantom needs.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Published: January 16, 2006. What Customers Want From Your Products
Authors: Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall
Editor's Note: Marketers have lost the forest for the trees, focusing too much on creating products for narrow demographic segments rather than satisfying needs. Customers want to "hire" a product to do a job, or, as legendary Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt put it, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!"
With Levitt's words as a rallying cry, a recent Harvard Business Review article, "Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure," argues that the marketer's task is to understand the job the customer wants to get done, and design products and brands that fill that need. In this excerpt, the authors look at designing products that do a job rather than fill a product segment.
With few exceptions, every job people need or want to do has a social, a functional, and an emotional dimension. If marketers understand each of these dimensions, then they can design a product that's precisely targeted to the job. In other words, the job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that customers will buy.
To see why, consider one fast-food restaurant's effort to improve sales of its milk shakes. (In this example, both the company and the product have been disguised.) Its marketers first defined the market segment by product—milk shakes—and then segmented it further by profiling the demographic and personality characteristics of those customers who frequently bought milk shakes. Next, they invited people who fit this profile to evaluate whether making the shakes thicker, more chocolaty, cheaper, or chunkier would satisfy them better. The panelists gave clear feedback, but the consequent improvements to the product had no impact on sales.
A new researcher then spent a long day in a restaurant seeking to understand the jobs that customers were trying to get done when they hired a milk shake. He chronicled when each milk shake was bought, what other products the customers purchased, whether these consumers were alone or with a group, whether they consumed the shake on the premises or drove off with it, and so on. He was surprised to find that 40 percent of all milk shakes were purchased in the early morning. Most often, these early-morning customers were alone; they did not buy anything else; and they consumed their shakes in their cars.
The researcher then returned to interview the morning customers as they left the restaurant, shake in hand, in an effort to understand what caused them to hire a milk shake. Most bought it to do a similar job: They faced a long, boring commute and needed something to make the drive more interesting. They weren't yet hungry but knew that they would be by 10 a.m.; they wanted to consume something now that would stave off hunger until noon. And they faced constraints: They were in a hurry, they were wearing work clothes, and they had (at most) one free hand.
The researcher inquired further: "Tell me about a time when you were in the same situation but you didn't buy a milk shake. What did you buy instead?" Sometimes, he learned, they bought a bagel. But bagels were too dry. Bagels with cream cheese or jam resulted in sticky fingers and gooey steering wheels. Sometimes these commuters bought a banana, but it didn't last long enough to solve the boring-commute problem. Doughnuts didn't carry people past the 10 a.m. hunger attack. The milk shake, it turned out, did the job better than any of these competitors. It took people twenty minutes to suck the viscous milk shake through the thin straw, addressing the boring-commute problem. They could consume it cleanly with one hand. By 10:00, they felt less hungry than when they tried the alternatives. It didn't matter much that it wasn't a healthy food, because becoming healthy wasn't essential to the job they were hiring the milk shake to do.
The researcher observed that at other times of the day parents often bought milk shakes, in addition to complete meals, for their children. What job were the parents trying to do? They were exhausted from repeatedly having to say "no" to their kids. They hired milk shakes as an innocuous way to placate their children and feel like loving parents. The researcher observed that the milk shakes didn't do this job very well, though. He saw parents waiting impatiently after they had finished their own meals while their children struggled to suck the thick shakes up through the thin straws.
Customers were hiring milk shakes for two very different jobs. But when marketers had originally asked individual customers who hired a milk shake for either or both jobs which of its attributes they should improve—and when these responses were averaged with those of other customers in the targeted demographic segment—it led to a one-size-fits-none product.
Once they understood the jobs the customers were trying to do, however, it became very clear which improvements to the milk shake would get those jobs done even better and which were irrelevant. How could they tackle the boring-commute job? Make the milk shake even thicker, so it would last longer. And swirl in tiny chunks of fruit, adding a dimension of unpredictability and anticipation to the monotonous morning routine. Just as important, the restaurant chain could deliver the product more effectively by moving the dispensing machine in front of the counter and selling customers a prepaid swipe card so they could dash in, "gas up," and go without getting stuck in the drive-through lane. Addressing the midday and evening job to be done would entail a very different product, of course.
By understanding the job and improving the product's social, functional, and emotional dimensions so that it did the job better, the company's milk shakes would gain share against the real competition—not just competing chains' milk shakes but bananas, boredom, and bagels. This would grow the category, which brings us to an important point: Job-defined markets are generally much larger than product category-defined markets. Marketers who are stuck in the mental trap that equates market size with product categories don't understand whom they are competing against from the customer's point of view.
Notice that knowing how to improve the product did not come from understanding the "typical" customer. It came from understanding the job. Need more evidence?
Pierre Omidyar did not design eBay for the "auction psychographic." He founded it to help people sell personal items. Google was designed for the job of finding information, not for a "search demographic." The unit of analysis in the work that led to Procter & Gamble's stunningly successful Swiffer was the job of cleaning floors, not a demographic or psychographic study of people who mop.
Why do so many marketers try to understand the consumer rather than the job? One reason may be purely historical: In some of the markets in which the tools of modern market research were formulated and tested, such as feminine hygiene or baby care, the job was so closely aligned with the customer demographic that if you understood the customer, you would also understand the job. This coincidence is rare, however. All too frequently, marketers' focus on the customer causes them to target phantom needs.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Princeton Tests Kindle DX - Could the iPad Do Better? by doug_mclean@tidbits.com (Doug McLean) on Jun 6, 2010 6:28 AM
Between 2008 and 2009, Princeton University students and faculty printed 50 million sheets of paper. Depending on how you want to look at it, that equals about 100,000 reams of paper, 5,000 trees, or $5 million. Worse, that shocking amount of paper is merely the latest in a nearly decade-long trend of paper usage climbing 20 percent each year at Princeton.
The cause of this increase in printing? For the past decade Princeton has digitized ever more of its required course readings, with 62 percent of all required texts now available in PDF format. With no charge for printing - though each student account does have a printing quota - it's no surprise that student print clusters account for more than 20 percent of all the printing. Also, since 38 percent of Princeton's library holdings have yet to be digitized, it's likely that the university's printing problems haven't even plateaued.
It hardly needs to be pointed out that like every other major business, non-profit, and government organization during this recession, university budgets are stretched thin from falling endowments. The combination of a belt-tightening financial climate, a larger cultural shift towards sustainability, and the explosion of the e-reader market led researchers at Princeton University to launch an experiment testing whether e-readers present a viable alternative to traditional print media in academia.
Princeton's Office of Information Technology was awarded $30,000 by the High Meadows Foundation to help with the costs of the pilot program, which entailed purchasing 54 Kindle DXs ($489 new) for 51 students and 3 faculty members. Researchers selected Amazon's Kindle DX largely due its 9.7-inch screen, which provided much greater legibility with regard to PDF files, charts, maps, and images, compared to its smaller brethren and pre-iPad competitors (the pilot program took place during the Fall 2009 semester)
The Pilot Program -- Three classes at Princeton were chosen for participation in the pilot program: two graduate level courses - one in classics, the other in political science - and an undergraduate course in public policy. The classes all shared the characteristics of having a heavy reading load and of making extensive use of "reserve readings" in digital format, what Princeton calls "e-reserves." Participating students (only one student opted out) committed to making a serious effort to refrain from printing for the pilot classes during the semester, and to do as many of their course readings as possible on the Kindle DX. For their effort and cooperation, they got to keep their Kindles when the semester was over - not a bad deal for just doing your homework!
The study had three stated goals: to determine whether the use of e-readers could reduce the amount of printing on campus; to determine if e-readers could replace traditional reading materials at no scholastic cost to the student; and to provide feedback to e-reader manufacturers regarding what features and strengths they wished to see in a device for an academic context.
The pilot program's first goal was easily achieved: on average, students using the Kindle DX for classroom readings printed just under 50 percent less material. However, before we attribute that number solely to students owning an e-reader, it's worth looking at the other reasons students said they cut back on printing. Some students cited a newfound awareness of paper waste (77 percent of the students said merely participating in the program increased their awareness of their own paper consumption), some noted that they felt pressure to follow the study's criteria, and many others said they were more apt to try the Kindle DX because their grasp of the readings which required the use of the device didn't weigh heavily on their final grade.
Additionally, in an end-of-term survey, 44 percent of students in the pilot said they would cut down on printing if they had to pay for it (though 31 percent said they would print whatever amount they needed to to succeed in class). In other words, the reduction in printing comes from a combination of factors, though using the Kindle DX was key in triggering some of the behavioral changes.
All this could be good news for the university's budget (especially if they could require students to purchase an e-reader, or roll it into tuition costs), since it could result in a $500,000 per-year savings (half of the student-driven 20 percent of the overall $5 million bill). With nearly 7,600 students, it would cost $3.7 million to outfit all students with Kindle DXs at retail prices, though volume discounts would be likely.
Harder to determine is exactly what the overall environmental impact would be if all students switched from printouts to e-readers. While printing at the university would decrease, the larger environmental effect of the manufacturing and shipping of these devices for the entire student body - and how that would stack up against heavy paper usage - is exceedingly complicated. Yet, the complexity of these broad environmental issues - which surpass the scope of both the Princeton study and this article - needn't keep us from asking how the adoption of the Kindle DX actually affected student learning, preparation, and class participation.
Regarding that goal, the Kindle DX proved to be a moderate success in engaging students with course readings. In responding to both mid-term and end-of-semester surveys, students said they were quite pleased by the Kindle DX's battery life, text resolution, internal memory, screen size, and physical weight. In particular, the device's E Ink technology impressed users across the board with many students saying they found the Kindle much easier to read than their laptops or computer screens. Students also made frequent use of the text-to-speech feature which enabled them to get "reading" done when in transit or fatigued.
Beyond the Kindle DX's specific attributes, most students said having an e-reader simplified their academic life - that packing for class was merely a matter of dropping the e-reader in their bag. Additionally, students appreciated the ease and lightness with which they could travel with all of their readings.
On the downside, there were plenty of issues and missing features that frustrated the study's participants. The lowest ranking attributes of the Kindle DX included the Web browser, navigation between books and documents, highlighting capabilities, the keyboard, and text annotation capabilities.
One of the most-beloved features initially, highlighting to "the cloud," soon became one of the most frustrating, as students realized that only 10 percent of any given book could be highlighted and exported. The realization came not by any obvious warning or indication, but by students eventually noticing that newly highlighted passages simply pushed out and replaced older selections! Thus, highlighting any serious quantity of text was tantamount to throwing away notes. Additionally, the actual method of highlighting on the Kindle DX was found to be frustratingly difficult.
While several students enjoyed the percentage-completed feature for gauging reading mileage, most bemoaned the vague methods of pagination in the Kindle DX. Students had a hard time adapting to the Kindle location numbers in lieu of traditional page numbers, both for citations and for quick navigation. In particular, students said location numbers became problematic in class seminars when many had trouble locating the sections being discussed. Overall, students wished for industry standard internal navigation controls, such as chapter divisions, and 69 percent of participants said they wanted pagination that was tied to the print edition of the book the e-book was based upon.
The problem of in-book navigation was further compounded by the variety of ways publishers of e-books handled it. Some books came without table of contents, while others provided ones that weren't interactive and failed to indicate the location numbers that corresponded to the page numbers where chapters began.
A final source of major complaints was the generally slow speed of the Kindle DX, in particular, the long load times when moving through the text. Students found they had a hard time maintaining focus through a dense text with such delays between pages. It also made flipping through the text, or skimming the text, nearly impossible - an action many of the students cited as being essential to successful academic reading.
While students were pleased with their Kindle DXs overall, they cited many areas that could stand improvement. Lucky for them, or future students toting e-readers, Apple's iPad might just fit the bill.
The iPad in Academia -- Where the Kindle DX failed students - navigation, internal organization, speed, and highlighting - the iPad is positioned to succeed. With its 9.7-inch color touchscreen, the iPad's viewable area is the same size as the Kindle DX, though it is noticeably heavier (24 ounces/680 grams versus the Kindle DX's 18.9 ounces/536 grams). In terms of price, Apple's Wi-Fi-only base model is similar to the Kindle DX ($499 versus $489), and the base model of the 3G iPad is $140 more expensive at $629 (plus at least a $15 per month data plan). For those slightly higher prices, iPad customers get quadruple the storage space (16 GB versus 4 GB), and vastly more power and functionality that goes far beyond reading.
Although the Kindle DX has a Web browser, it suffers from glacial load times and clumsy navigation, such that it doesn't even begin to compare with the iPad's version of Safari. Given the necessity of Web access in academia, coupled with the iPad's broad array of apps, it's hard to see students preferring the single-purpose Kindle to the far more capable iPad.
And though the Kindle's E Ink screen technology was one of the group's favorite features, many desired a touchscreen for easier navigation and highlighting. In particular students sought the ability to flip through a text easily and speedily, and as anyone who has picked up an iPad knows, Apple has nailed that kind of tactile interactivity.
Also, the iPad's color screen, while not mentioned by these particular Princeton students as a must-have feature, is key for many fields. The courses testing the Kindle DX at Princeton were in classics, political science, and public policy, none of which rely heavily on graphics. Courses in the sciences and other fields frequently utilize graphs, charts, and maps whose legibility greatly improves with the inclusion of color, and it's obvious that art history, architecture, and design classes rely on color materials as well.
Additionally, with its touchscreen technology, Apple makes highlighting and bookmarking sections in texts incredibly intuitive and easy. Between the slick navigation of iBooks, and the extensive PDF support and organizational capabilities in the popular app GoodReader many of the student wishes would are met. (For more on reading on the iPad see "Reading Books on the iPad: iBooks, Kindle, and GoodReader," 5 April 2010.) Some colleges have already seized upon the iPad's possibilities in academia. Reed College is planning a formal experiment to see how the iPad compares to its previous experiments with the Kindle DX, and the University of Maryland at College Park's Digital Cultures and Creativity program is going one step further, providing every incoming student with an iPad (PDF link).
That's not to say Apple has the academic market completely figured out. There remain ways in which the iPad does not currently meet student needs. While it offers bookmarking - an improvement on mere highlighting because of the navigable list of bookmarked passages it creates - iBooks currently lacks any option for annotations. Better annotation capabilities was one of the highest features on the students' wish list, and iBooks currently comes up completely short.
Also, iBooks suffers from the same sort of page number correlation problems as the Kindle DX. The page count of a book changes substantially depending on whether you're holding the iPad in landscape or portrait orientation, and the user-chosen font size and font face. Furthermore, there's no connection between these page numbers and the original source, requiring either two sets of page references for every assignment or that everyone use the same electronic version.
The only thing that makes sense is to use paragraph numbers, a common approach in classics texts where students are often correlating a chunk of original text in Greek, for instance, with one or more translations of that chunk. It shouldn't be too difficult for Apple to enhance iBooks to enable users to navigate by paragraph numbers.
Finally, while various core apps (notably Safari and Mail) can view PDFs on the iPad, iBooks doesn't currently support them. This means users must rely on third-party apps such as our favorite GoodReader. Although GoodReader is inexpensive and easily purchased, having to do so presents a hurdle for academic adoption, given the prevalence of PDF for electronic reserve readings.
If Apple wants the iPad to succeed in the academic market, it needs to address these current oversights of annotations, page references, and native PDF support.
The Future of the Classroom? Academic reading is a unique genre in that a text is raw material - to be pulled apart, tossed around, chewed up, and reassembled in your brain. It's quite distinct from pleasure reading, demanding a different kind of engagement that is actually very physical. In order to remap the information laid out in a linear text, a kind of non-linear movement is required to flatten out the data and better understand the connections through returning to sections and gaining a broad overview.
The Kindle DX's greatest weaknesses, at least in the realm of academia, is its slow page-to-page load times, poor internal navigation, and lack of color. The iPad, with its mimicry of physical pagination, interactive bookmarks, and easy-to-use table of contents is a clear win in this department, though the current apps available for reading need enhancements to meet the needs of students and academics. That e-readers will replace traditional books and papers altogether in the near future is unlikely, but if I had to pick the device that was more likely to succeed in doing so, I'd pick the iPad hands down.
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- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
The cause of this increase in printing? For the past decade Princeton has digitized ever more of its required course readings, with 62 percent of all required texts now available in PDF format. With no charge for printing - though each student account does have a printing quota - it's no surprise that student print clusters account for more than 20 percent of all the printing. Also, since 38 percent of Princeton's library holdings have yet to be digitized, it's likely that the university's printing problems haven't even plateaued.
It hardly needs to be pointed out that like every other major business, non-profit, and government organization during this recession, university budgets are stretched thin from falling endowments. The combination of a belt-tightening financial climate, a larger cultural shift towards sustainability, and the explosion of the e-reader market led researchers at Princeton University to launch an experiment testing whether e-readers present a viable alternative to traditional print media in academia.
Princeton's Office of Information Technology was awarded $30,000 by the High Meadows Foundation to help with the costs of the pilot program, which entailed purchasing 54 Kindle DXs ($489 new) for 51 students and 3 faculty members. Researchers selected Amazon's Kindle DX largely due its 9.7-inch screen, which provided much greater legibility with regard to PDF files, charts, maps, and images, compared to its smaller brethren and pre-iPad competitors (the pilot program took place during the Fall 2009 semester)
The Pilot Program -- Three classes at Princeton were chosen for participation in the pilot program: two graduate level courses - one in classics, the other in political science - and an undergraduate course in public policy. The classes all shared the characteristics of having a heavy reading load and of making extensive use of "reserve readings" in digital format, what Princeton calls "e-reserves." Participating students (only one student opted out) committed to making a serious effort to refrain from printing for the pilot classes during the semester, and to do as many of their course readings as possible on the Kindle DX. For their effort and cooperation, they got to keep their Kindles when the semester was over - not a bad deal for just doing your homework!
The study had three stated goals: to determine whether the use of e-readers could reduce the amount of printing on campus; to determine if e-readers could replace traditional reading materials at no scholastic cost to the student; and to provide feedback to e-reader manufacturers regarding what features and strengths they wished to see in a device for an academic context.
The pilot program's first goal was easily achieved: on average, students using the Kindle DX for classroom readings printed just under 50 percent less material. However, before we attribute that number solely to students owning an e-reader, it's worth looking at the other reasons students said they cut back on printing. Some students cited a newfound awareness of paper waste (77 percent of the students said merely participating in the program increased their awareness of their own paper consumption), some noted that they felt pressure to follow the study's criteria, and many others said they were more apt to try the Kindle DX because their grasp of the readings which required the use of the device didn't weigh heavily on their final grade.
Additionally, in an end-of-term survey, 44 percent of students in the pilot said they would cut down on printing if they had to pay for it (though 31 percent said they would print whatever amount they needed to to succeed in class). In other words, the reduction in printing comes from a combination of factors, though using the Kindle DX was key in triggering some of the behavioral changes.
All this could be good news for the university's budget (especially if they could require students to purchase an e-reader, or roll it into tuition costs), since it could result in a $500,000 per-year savings (half of the student-driven 20 percent of the overall $5 million bill). With nearly 7,600 students, it would cost $3.7 million to outfit all students with Kindle DXs at retail prices, though volume discounts would be likely.
Harder to determine is exactly what the overall environmental impact would be if all students switched from printouts to e-readers. While printing at the university would decrease, the larger environmental effect of the manufacturing and shipping of these devices for the entire student body - and how that would stack up against heavy paper usage - is exceedingly complicated. Yet, the complexity of these broad environmental issues - which surpass the scope of both the Princeton study and this article - needn't keep us from asking how the adoption of the Kindle DX actually affected student learning, preparation, and class participation.
Regarding that goal, the Kindle DX proved to be a moderate success in engaging students with course readings. In responding to both mid-term and end-of-semester surveys, students said they were quite pleased by the Kindle DX's battery life, text resolution, internal memory, screen size, and physical weight. In particular, the device's E Ink technology impressed users across the board with many students saying they found the Kindle much easier to read than their laptops or computer screens. Students also made frequent use of the text-to-speech feature which enabled them to get "reading" done when in transit or fatigued.
Beyond the Kindle DX's specific attributes, most students said having an e-reader simplified their academic life - that packing for class was merely a matter of dropping the e-reader in their bag. Additionally, students appreciated the ease and lightness with which they could travel with all of their readings.
On the downside, there were plenty of issues and missing features that frustrated the study's participants. The lowest ranking attributes of the Kindle DX included the Web browser, navigation between books and documents, highlighting capabilities, the keyboard, and text annotation capabilities.
One of the most-beloved features initially, highlighting to "the cloud," soon became one of the most frustrating, as students realized that only 10 percent of any given book could be highlighted and exported. The realization came not by any obvious warning or indication, but by students eventually noticing that newly highlighted passages simply pushed out and replaced older selections! Thus, highlighting any serious quantity of text was tantamount to throwing away notes. Additionally, the actual method of highlighting on the Kindle DX was found to be frustratingly difficult.
While several students enjoyed the percentage-completed feature for gauging reading mileage, most bemoaned the vague methods of pagination in the Kindle DX. Students had a hard time adapting to the Kindle location numbers in lieu of traditional page numbers, both for citations and for quick navigation. In particular, students said location numbers became problematic in class seminars when many had trouble locating the sections being discussed. Overall, students wished for industry standard internal navigation controls, such as chapter divisions, and 69 percent of participants said they wanted pagination that was tied to the print edition of the book the e-book was based upon.
The problem of in-book navigation was further compounded by the variety of ways publishers of e-books handled it. Some books came without table of contents, while others provided ones that weren't interactive and failed to indicate the location numbers that corresponded to the page numbers where chapters began.
A final source of major complaints was the generally slow speed of the Kindle DX, in particular, the long load times when moving through the text. Students found they had a hard time maintaining focus through a dense text with such delays between pages. It also made flipping through the text, or skimming the text, nearly impossible - an action many of the students cited as being essential to successful academic reading.
While students were pleased with their Kindle DXs overall, they cited many areas that could stand improvement. Lucky for them, or future students toting e-readers, Apple's iPad might just fit the bill.
The iPad in Academia -- Where the Kindle DX failed students - navigation, internal organization, speed, and highlighting - the iPad is positioned to succeed. With its 9.7-inch color touchscreen, the iPad's viewable area is the same size as the Kindle DX, though it is noticeably heavier (24 ounces/680 grams versus the Kindle DX's 18.9 ounces/536 grams). In terms of price, Apple's Wi-Fi-only base model is similar to the Kindle DX ($499 versus $489), and the base model of the 3G iPad is $140 more expensive at $629 (plus at least a $15 per month data plan). For those slightly higher prices, iPad customers get quadruple the storage space (16 GB versus 4 GB), and vastly more power and functionality that goes far beyond reading.
Although the Kindle DX has a Web browser, it suffers from glacial load times and clumsy navigation, such that it doesn't even begin to compare with the iPad's version of Safari. Given the necessity of Web access in academia, coupled with the iPad's broad array of apps, it's hard to see students preferring the single-purpose Kindle to the far more capable iPad.
And though the Kindle's E Ink screen technology was one of the group's favorite features, many desired a touchscreen for easier navigation and highlighting. In particular students sought the ability to flip through a text easily and speedily, and as anyone who has picked up an iPad knows, Apple has nailed that kind of tactile interactivity.
Also, the iPad's color screen, while not mentioned by these particular Princeton students as a must-have feature, is key for many fields. The courses testing the Kindle DX at Princeton were in classics, political science, and public policy, none of which rely heavily on graphics. Courses in the sciences and other fields frequently utilize graphs, charts, and maps whose legibility greatly improves with the inclusion of color, and it's obvious that art history, architecture, and design classes rely on color materials as well.
Additionally, with its touchscreen technology, Apple makes highlighting and bookmarking sections in texts incredibly intuitive and easy. Between the slick navigation of iBooks, and the extensive PDF support and organizational capabilities in the popular app GoodReader many of the student wishes would are met. (For more on reading on the iPad see "Reading Books on the iPad: iBooks, Kindle, and GoodReader," 5 April 2010.) Some colleges have already seized upon the iPad's possibilities in academia. Reed College is planning a formal experiment to see how the iPad compares to its previous experiments with the Kindle DX, and the University of Maryland at College Park's Digital Cultures and Creativity program is going one step further, providing every incoming student with an iPad (PDF link).
That's not to say Apple has the academic market completely figured out. There remain ways in which the iPad does not currently meet student needs. While it offers bookmarking - an improvement on mere highlighting because of the navigable list of bookmarked passages it creates - iBooks currently lacks any option for annotations. Better annotation capabilities was one of the highest features on the students' wish list, and iBooks currently comes up completely short.
Also, iBooks suffers from the same sort of page number correlation problems as the Kindle DX. The page count of a book changes substantially depending on whether you're holding the iPad in landscape or portrait orientation, and the user-chosen font size and font face. Furthermore, there's no connection between these page numbers and the original source, requiring either two sets of page references for every assignment or that everyone use the same electronic version.
The only thing that makes sense is to use paragraph numbers, a common approach in classics texts where students are often correlating a chunk of original text in Greek, for instance, with one or more translations of that chunk. It shouldn't be too difficult for Apple to enhance iBooks to enable users to navigate by paragraph numbers.
Finally, while various core apps (notably Safari and Mail) can view PDFs on the iPad, iBooks doesn't currently support them. This means users must rely on third-party apps such as our favorite GoodReader. Although GoodReader is inexpensive and easily purchased, having to do so presents a hurdle for academic adoption, given the prevalence of PDF for electronic reserve readings.
If Apple wants the iPad to succeed in the academic market, it needs to address these current oversights of annotations, page references, and native PDF support.
The Future of the Classroom? Academic reading is a unique genre in that a text is raw material - to be pulled apart, tossed around, chewed up, and reassembled in your brain. It's quite distinct from pleasure reading, demanding a different kind of engagement that is actually very physical. In order to remap the information laid out in a linear text, a kind of non-linear movement is required to flatten out the data and better understand the connections through returning to sections and gaining a broad overview.
The Kindle DX's greatest weaknesses, at least in the realm of academia, is its slow page-to-page load times, poor internal navigation, and lack of color. The iPad, with its mimicry of physical pagination, interactive bookmarks, and easy-to-use table of contents is a clear win in this department, though the current apps available for reading need enhancements to meet the needs of students and academics. That e-readers will replace traditional books and papers altogether in the near future is unlikely, but if I had to pick the device that was more likely to succeed in doing so, I'd pick the iPad hands down.
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