The slides of my talk at UX Camp Europe '12, on Designing for E-ink devices. Focuses mostly on the set of design guidelines I've devised for E-ink devices.

1. Designing for E-ink devices:
challenges, best practices & guidelines.
Hany Rizk
@myExpDesigned - hanyrizk.com

2. E-ink

3. Strong points
• Readability
• Portability
• Battery life

4. Issues
• Ghosting
• Interaction
• Design

5. Study
• Heuristic Evaluation
• Usability Test

6. Results
• IA on the readers’ OS
• Touch interaction
• Long response times
• Little visible feedback

7. Guidelines -
General Design
• Links should be underlined.
• Use font faces with slightly contrasting
stroke weights.
• Use highly contrasting shades of gray
together.
• Use black for the main text, and grey
(italics) for secondary text.

8. • Use bold & bigger font sizes to highlight
text importance.
• Display each page’s content in one
screen, no scrolling.
• IA should be intuitive and similar to that
of familiar tech devices.
• Be efficient with screen space.
• Don’t fill the screen with clutter.

9. • Optimize your design for e-ink.
• Use clear, intuitive graphics.
• Leave no room for user-error.

10. Guidelines -
Interaction
• Show a change in color to highlight an
element’s change of state.
• Tapped keyboard buttons should pop-
up magnified, for visual feedback.
• Visual feedback should be given after
actions (such as loading indicators).
• Button sizes on touch-screens should
be large enough for easy access.

11. • Have sufficient space between
interactive elements, to reduce
imprecise tapping.
• Respect & apply Fitt’s law!
• Double pressing a navigation button
should speed up navigation.
• Button-based devices should follow
mobile usability guidelines.
• The cursor should be displayed in
selected input fields for easy text editing
editing.

12. • Filters & other sorting methods should
be provided for faster browsing in
pages.
• Provide signs of orientation to the user.