---
# System prepended metadata

title: Eink UX - High-level questions that need answering
tags: [ux, general, psych-ux]

---

# Eink UX - High-level questions that need answering

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This is a document to gather a high-level overview of what knowledge we need to gather in regards to the UX of e-ink. Please contribute and add anything you think relevant.

Document structure:
* Open questions
    * This section serves as a place for gathering a list of the open questions about eink UX that we will need to answer as a group

* Hypotheses
    * This section essentially rewrites the questions as hypotheses: our assumptions about eink that we will need to falsify/validate and explore

* Use cases
    * This section begins to gather information and ideas (at a high-level) about possible use cases.

* Design Principles and Considerations
    * Interaction Design
    * Visual feedback
    * Visual clarity
    * I (@tom) am planning to talk to @rob about this section to get a better understanding of what he means here




###### tags: `psych-ux` `ux` `general`

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## Open Questions - UX of e-ink

This section gathers a list of what we believe are the most important open questions about eink UX (Our hypotheses about the answers to these questions are listed in the following section).

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### Possible benefits of eink over traditional display tech

Here we can distinguish between *psychological/health* and *technical* differences that might exist between eink and traditional emissive displays

#### Psychological/health advantages of e-ink over traditional display tech?
* See [psych overview doc](/E8rWCY4rSRmjyLjn_rIBfQ)
* Facilitates [calm computing](https://calmtech.com/)
    * 
    * Technology should respect our attention and remain in the background most of the time 
    * Relevant information should be presented calmly and make use of the periphery.
* Eye strain? Readability? Connection to headache, etc? Ability to use for longer periods of time?

* What use-cases is this applicable for? Which use-cases overlap with the use of the technology (e.g. not for watching video)
    * People with medical problems re: eye-strain headaches. 
        * Otherwise, it's not "applicable", it's just nicer. I think the core implication here is that we're ultimately pushing a premium product, as there's usually no app that an e-ink screen can run that e.g. an LCD can't do.
            * (@tom): i disagree with this assessment. i wouldn't want to write off the possibility that if you undertook psychological research you might find a significant difference in productivity, fatigue levels etc at the end of a full day for an eink user vs lcd >> i.e., making eink more applicable for work than lcd in certain cases.
    * "Tech addiction"? (Check for research on color vs. b/w display usage)
        * Some Android versions have support for this already IIRC, it's just not enforced like B&W is on a B&W e-reader.
        * ^though depends on whether there is a difference between LCD in black + white vs eink in black + white
        * This needs more research, as there may also be a difference between vibrant color and muted color in terms of attractiveness, etc. My hypothesis would be that the impact is a combination of animation & movement, bright colors, and overall visual stimuli, which would be muted even on a color e-ink screen

    * Use at night & impact on sleep patterns?

#### Technical benefits of e-ink vs. traditional display tech?

* Battery life: 
    * being unable to use phone when it is out of battery is frustrating, eink is bistable, therefore provided the display is not updated too frequently, it has a much longer battery life 
    * However, if the device is updated frequently enough, the battery life in fact becomes worse
    * (@someone): battery life in lcd can be mitigated by "optimising software" or by attaching a charger and/or getting a bigger battery. Or perhaps more practically, recharging the device more often. Outside of camping trips, I don't think this is realistically a problem; just a minor annoyance.
        * (@tom): I disagree with this assessment; frequent minor annoyances make good opportunities for innovation

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### What are the top usability issues/benefits regarding e-ink
* What are the top UX issues reported for e-ink devices? Are these tied to the tech or the implementation?
    * e.g. low refresh rate & ghosting

* What are the top UX benefits reported for e-ink devices? Are these tied to the tech or the implementation?
    * e.g. Long battery life, low-glare screen
    * (@teh_codez) This sounds suspiciously similar to the "what effects does e-ink have on the user vs traditional display tech?" question.

* What design principles are particularly relevant when designing for e-ink? (Q: how specific should we be here?)
    * Visual: e.g. increased contrast, no use of shadow, minimalist design language
    * Interactive: e.g. minimize use of scrolling, prefer more on one screen(?) to minimize screen refresh
        * Minimise any sort of movement whatsoever. If you need to put something on the screen, keep it still. If you need to move something, teleport it directly to it's destination without any tweening.
        * When possible, paginate instead of scrolling (per above principle of teleportation)
        * See my stuff about text editors. I more-or-less used that to workshop (theoretical workshop? I didn't test any of it.) what would work for e-ink in general.
* What observed patterns and standards from traditional non-e-ink devices do not work well for e-ink? 
    * e.g. scrolling, touch-screen responsiveness (real vs. perceived), use of touch-screen keyboard, mouse movement

* What use-cases are most applicable to be combined with e-ink tech? Which not?
    * e.g. Not watching video
    * e.g. Reading a book, programming terminal, sales/trading desk in a bank(?),working with text

* What "dark" pattern design elements that promote over-/unhealthy-use of technology do not apply to e-ink devices? Which still do?

* What design principles are particularly relevant to the use cases(?)
    * E.g. minimising notifications/distracting stimuli if device is for productive work

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## Hypotheses - UX of eink
These are essentially rewrites of the above questions, but imply our assumptions that we need to either prove or disprove. These should be listed in the form of a specific hypothesis that can be proven or disproven, but indicate our belief(s)

* e-ink screens are better for eye-strain and eye-health than LCD/traditional screens
* e-ink screens cannot fully replace LCD screens for all computer/phone tasks
* e-ink screens require different interaction paradigms/design principles, particularly for specific use-cases
* e-ink screens are particularly suited to certain task types 
    * (List of task types)
        * ...

* e-ink screens are particularly unsuited to certain task types
    * (List of task types)
        * ...
* e-ink screens promote more rationed usage of the applied technology as they inherently allow for less "addictive" design practices
    * (A note to this one -- this only applies to certain things: color, animation, video, etc, as being simpler and thus less visually appealing in certain ways. Addictive design practices can still be applicable (feedback loops, extrinsic motivation, behavioural economics)
    * as a strategy, we ought to design around use-cases that emphasize the strengths of the tech and not focus on use-cases where we need to improve the weaknesses - for instance, improving video playback (a weakness) so that e-ink can function as a general-purpose laptop.
All e-ink use-cases boil down to "slow-paced and doesn't have high image requirements" - e.g. "comics work while photographs perhaps don't", or "static text works while moving text doesn't"

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## Use Cases for e-ink
This section is for gathering which use-cases we believe should be supported. Please consider also what user problem this is intended to solve.

A higher-level view of this can be taken using "jobs to be done" (JTBD) - we can also consider what the core "jobs" are that the device should solve. The tool of JTBD can be a bit tricky as there are very different levels to look at them from, thus I would suggest tackling this separately.

Note - this is something that I think we should involve the entire group in, however we can start and consider how best to gather input (e.g. through a survey, which would be simpler if we have already a set of inputs rather).

Anything specific here would clearly require custom UI for the device. I have no idea if that is at all possible for this project. Even if not, it is at least an interesting though experiment :)

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### Device goal
This would be to describe what the device is intended to do in general, its high-level goal. Likely this is too early, but feel free to provide suggestions.

#### Goal suggestion 1 - robooneus (example):


*Core JTBD / functions:*

* Write - contents of all kinds
    * [Text editor case study](/YpI3eg2mTkSxtAb1aTw0Hw)
* Code
* E-mail
* Chat? (e.g. Zulip)

*Secondary JTBD / functions:*

* Read articles, books, written content
* View images
    * I see this as something that is a "necessary evil" in some cases, for example graphs and images in papers, textbooks, etc. Or in books, other things.


*Excluded JTBD / functions:*

* Watch videos


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## Design Principles and Considerations

### Interaction Design

* How does the user interact with the product
* Flows, e.g., does an action all happen in one motion, or are there multiple steps
    * E.g., scrolling vs pagination
        * What happens when you reach the end of the page and new line, does it scroll down or do you get a new page or do you get a page with a small portion of the previous text

### Input feedback

* What feedback does the user get from an action, can be e.g., haptic 

### Visual clarity

* How can we design the interface such that it transmits information in a clear manner
* how can you guide the eye towards relevant information
* e.g., icon size, font size, use of contrast, shading etc
* Gestalt principles

