Spacehamster’s Blog

I’ve been reading Joel Spolsky’s brilliant website Joel on Software. If you’re an IT Professional every single article on that website should be required reading. I’ve been re-reading Joel’s articles on useability - it’s been a real eye-opener. Especially as I recently worked on several applications where useability was a key factor.

It’s the reason why the iPod is the most popular MP3 player on the planet. Why Applie iTunes, Google and Amazon.com are so popular. Because the geniuses who designed them understood how to make their applications user-friendly.

Unfortunately, it’s obvious that the Lotus Notes developers don’t have a f*****g clue.

We use Lotus Notes as the default e-mail application in our workplace. If you want to see an example of a poor designed UI for an email application, Lotus Notes is a perfect example. For instance - have you ever noticed the countless numbers of arrows for navigating documents? And how you can’t use any of those arrows while you’re browsing webpages? Or how highlighting a section of text that goes beyond the current page, causes you to scroll to the very bottom of the document? Or how difficult it’s impossible to setup filters because they’re impossible to find. Or how difficult it is to access the help file, and when you do you can’t just type the text to find what you want. All cases of poor useability.

Now compare that to Thunderbird. My own mother and father can use this application. Businesses don’t use Lotus Notes for its email capabilities. They use it so they can easily add management and flow-based applications into an integrated environment. And that’s where Lotus excels - Domino Designer is very easy to use to create simple applications. Unfortunately, where Domino Designer falls down is embedding complex backend code into individual controls. Which sounds great in theory but horrible when you’re debugging and need to find that little piece of code hidden in 12 possible buttons. Give me Visual Basic 6 any day of the week.