An e-textbook “Designing for People: An introduction to human factors engineering”: A good thing?

An e-book version of “Designing for People: An introduction to human factors engineering” is now available on Amazon for pre-order. The good news is that it is free for those with Kindle Unlimited.

Beyond the lower price, the book provides accessibility options that aren’t possible with a paper book. The e-book format also allows annotation and search. The e-book is an exact replica of the paper version, and so it benefits from the same sidebar annotations and page layout.

One drawback is that the typeface is better for a paper book. A sans-serif typeface would be better for a digital version because low-resolution screens don’t render details of the letters well. A more important drawback is the finding that people remember more when reading a paper book. Also being a print replica it is hard to read on a smartphone because the text does not scale like a typical Kindle book.

Like all designs, taking the print textbook to an electronic version involves tradeoffs. Analysis of these tradeoffs would be a good student exercise for an introductory human factors engineering class.