The Pentagram designers, both British born, began by studying the actual physics of reading—the physical aspects of the pastime, such as how readers turn pages and hold books in their hands. They forced themselves to read on existing e-readers, like the Sony Libre and the old Rocketbook, and on PDAs like the iPaq from Compaq and Palm’s Treo. They brought in focus groups, conducted phone interviews, and even went up to Seattle to talk to Bezos himself, trying to deconstruct a process that for many hundreds of years people had taken for granted.
