Writing on a moving page
How we brought handwriting to life on reflowable text and made it feel natural on Kindle Scribe.
Role
Lead designer
Product
Kindle Scribe
Areas
Strategy, Design
Launch
Dec 2024
Background
When Kindle Scribe launched in November 2022, it included two main note-taking features: "Sticky notes", which allowed users to attach handwritten or typed notes to specific words in reflowable books, and "Notebooks", a separate space for free-form drawing and writing.
However, customers couldn’t write directly on the pages of reflowable books—something many expected from a stylus-enabled device.
This was due to technical limitations with how the system handled page history (backstack), which prevented on-page annotations. Freeform writing was only supported on static formats like PDFs. While users appreciated the large screen and flexible notebook tools, they consistently voiced frustration over the inability to annotate directly on book text, revealing a key gap in the reading and writing experience.
Existing annotation experience on Scribe. All notes were contained within a sticky note that was anchored on a book text.
Why can't we just write on the book?
One of the core technical challenges in designing annotation experiences on E-readers is the dynamic nature of reflowable text. Unlike static page formats, reflowable content adjusts to user preferences such as font size, margin width, and device orientation. While this flexibility is a key benefit for reading, it introduces significant complexity for anchoring user-created notes.
For annotations to remain meaningful and revisitable, they must stay tethered to the specific content they reference; even as that content shifts position due to reflow. This required us to design an interaction model and system architecture that could preserve the logical anchor of each note in a fluid text environment, ensuring consistency and reliability without compromising the reading experience.
While writing directly on page could work initially, these notes starts losing their context as soon as the text reflows.
Approach
To address the challenges of fluid content and constrained writing surfaces in reflowable books, we introduced a three-part annotation experience that balances flexibility with structure.
First, we enabled structured annotations; allowing users to highlight, underline, and outline directly on the text using a stylus, with each hand-drawn stroke automatically cleaned up into structured, consistent markings to preserve readability. Second, we designed an active canvas interaction, letting users insert writable space between lines or paragraphs by tap-and-hold with the stylus; the canvas is dynamically anchored and sized, offering a natural and responsive way to write inline without disrupting content flow. Finally, we added a side panel that can be activated with a tap to expand the book’s margin. This provides a dedicated space for notetaking and reviewing, integrating both handwritten annotations and reimagined stickynotes into a single, scannable context.
Together, these solutions respect the flexibility of reflowable content while giving users more control and visibility over their annotations.
We started designing by defining the types of annotations users can create inside a book.
Readers can underline, highlight, circle text selections, which will get structured and saved to their Annotations notebook.
Once readers start writing anywhere on the page, an active canvas will appear as an overlay on top of the book text. It will then get inserted into the page.
Readers can open the side panel to take notes in the margin space and see existing sticky notes
Active canvas notes are available to view on mobile devices.
Active canvas notes are available to view on mobile devices.
Impact
The post-launch experience drove meaningful impact on both product quality and customer satisfaction—reflected in a higher star rating (from 4.1 to 4.3), increased monthly active users, and a noticeable rise in in-book annotation engagement.