Kindle Fire Usability Findings:
The most striking observation from testing the Fire is that everything is much too small on the screen, leading to frequent tap errors and accidental activation. You haven’t seen the fat-finger problem in its full glory until you’ve watched users struggle to touch things on the Fire. One poor guy spent several minutes trying to log in to Facebook, but was repeatedly foiled by accidentally touching the wrong field or button — this on a page with only 2 text fields and 1 button.
Sounds jarring doesn’t it? If you just quote the same part of the “study” – like John Gruber did – this might seem so. But the real gem is just one paragraph before this (emphasis mine):
Test participants had between 1.5 and 2.5 years’ experience using touchscreen devices: half used Android phones and half used iPhone. This was a small study, with only 4 users, but qualitative studies often generate deeper insights than bigger, more metrics-focused quantitative studies.
Yep, a study with 4 (four) users. CNET’s Brooke Crothers has some additional reporting about this so called “study”.