May 23, 2010

Fixing the Kindle Leather Cover

Like a lot of people who picked up a Kindle, I also bought Amazon’s Kindle Leather Cover. It works quite well, but it has one obvious flaw: the Kindle is attached to it by two hinges along its left side. Every time I accidentally open the cover from the wrong side, I feel like I’m yanking the Kindle right out of its hinges.

Opening the Kindle Cover from the wrong side causes it to flap around like a fish out of water

Fortunately, there is a simple solution. The leather part of the cover isn’t actually stitched to the soft cloth part. Using a carpet cutter, it’s easy to pry the two apart.

Prying open an edge of the Cover

Next, I glued in a small piece of elastic band into the cover’s top-right corner.

Thanks the the new elastic band, the Kindle is now firmly attached to the Cover

Problem solved. The Kindle is now firmly held in place.

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If you liked this, you'll love my book. It's called Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web. In it, I cover the whole design process, from user research and sketching to usability tests and A/B testing. But I don't just explain techniques, I also talk about concepts like discoverability, when and how to use animations, what we can learn from video games, and much more.

You can find out more about it (and order it directly, printed or as a DRM-free ebook) on the Pragmatic Programmers website.