Monthly Archives: March 2011

Overdrive nonsense

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The Overdrive nonsense continues. Overdrive, for those who may not be aware, is a vendor that provides access to ebooks and audiobooks for library patrons to check out, similar to print library books.

I’ve been pretty critical of them in the past. I wish they had improved enough to warrant some good words. One of the biggest criticisms I have of them is that their site does not allow users to automatically search or browse available ebooks or audiobooks. In other words, there is no easy way to just look at ebooks or audiobooks that are available to check out. Instead, this inane approach of theirs forces users to check each and every ebook or audiobook to see if it is checked out or not. Think of a “real” library experience where this issue doesn’t even exist.

Well, imagine my pleasant surprise when I noticed that their mobile site recently was enhanced to include this feature. The photo below is a screenshot taken from my iPhone to show what this looks like. My pleasant surprise quickly faded to irritation when it became obvious that this feature was implemented only for keyword search, not browse. How lame is that? It is hard for me to comprehend how the persons who thought this up and implemented it could possibly think this was a fix? Overdrive, if you are listening, please, please put more thought into feature enhancements in the future. Especially try to think of how regular library users might use your service. You have clearly not done your homework.

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Mobile access should not be an afterthought

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I’m a heavy user of mobile devices including an iPhone 4 and a first generation iPad. I am also a very heavy consumer of news and information. Most of that consumption these days is via one of these mobile devices. So a long overdue realization really hit me, finally, this morning as I sat on my couch, trying to pore through as much news coverage of the huge, multiple tragedies in Japan as I could. Why on earth should articles, media, and other online information content still be created for the desktop PC browser first, and mobile devices as a distant afterthought?

I know, I know. There are many good reasons why this is the case. but frankly, I don’t care. As a mobile device user, I am fed up with the poor user experience I am forced into when consuming information that is not created with mobile devices in mind. I think that content creators and providers should by now think FIRST about making their content friendly for mobile devices and THEN for desktop PC browsers, not the other way around.

Every recent technology trend or study about adoption of mobile vs. desktop devices supports this. Mobile devices, broadly defined, are the present as well as the future. We need a sea change NOW in terms of content creator/publisher thinking! It is crazy, from a user perspective, that we are building and distributing content, still, based upon what is quickly becoming the tip of the iceberg.

I’ve experimented with lots and lots of different methods that try to ameliorate this situation: apps like FlipBoard, Zite, Google’s Mobilizer service, Readability, and many others. Each one is clever, inventive, and useful, but each has its limitations and doesn’t present a complete solution. I believe that the real answer lies in building for mobile first and primarily. Only then will the user experience improve.

Like many others, I am quite used to dealing with a poor user experience when trying to consume information, news, etc. on my mobile devices. But increasingly I ask myself, why should I have to put up with it?