[Lotus Notes Sucks: Example 41]
The Lotus Notes Workspace
Problem
When I open Lotus Notes, it presents the "Lotus Notes Workspace." This is where I double-click one of the large buttons to open my mailbox. I can do all sorts of other, bizarre, tasks—such as subscribe to databases—none of it useful.
Notice that you must double-click the large buttons. If you single-click, the large button takes on a pressed look, but doesn't do anything. Unfortunately, these large buttons are unlike all other command buttons as they require a double-click to do something.
The fun part of all this is watching a new user to Lotus Notes discover this "feature." The new user clicks the button that is suppose to open his mail box and then waits for something to happen. It usually takes a bit for the new user to figure out that nothing is happening. Only through luck does the user figure out how to open his mail box.
Analysis
The Lotus Notes workspace is the user's first introduction to the horrorshow that lies ahead.
To borrow a quote from the Interface Hall of Shame:
The workspace buttons provide access to "databases", such as the E-Mail Database, the Help Database, the Address Database, etc. The Help database defines a database as a single file containing multiple documents, then defines a document as a "datebase entry" consisting of "fields". The Help database then gets into a verbal joust with the user with such terms as "database libraries", "records", and "Domino Servers". While the Help database describes the steps necessary to "replicate" a database, it fails to define the word replicate."
All of these terms are meaningless to most computer users. Moreover, they should be meaningless to most users. Unfortunately, to learn to use Notes the shipping clerk, the secretary, and the vice-president of finance all have to develop a programmer's vocabulary. Computer applications are supposed to shield the user from such terminology.
One of the user-friendly aspects of Windows is the Cancel button. This allows you to explore an application to find out what it can do. Take a look at some of the message boxes that appeared while I was "exploring" the interface.
Click Discover, and the following appears:
The above suffers from EWDB Syndrome. Anyway, you read the message and guess what all that gibberish means.
Fortunately, I figured out how to instruct Lotus Notes to automatically open my mail messages. I have since forgotten how, so I looked in the Help file, thinking I could share this revelation with you, my loyal readers. I gave up after 15 minutes. Although I could not find that information, I was able to discover how to change the background color of a workspace tab—an important task indeed.
Update
Unfortunately, using the workspace does not make you immune to such error messages as:
and
Needless to say, these error messages should never appear. If there is no document to respond to, then the command that generated the error message should not be available to the user.
User Interface Guideline Violations
- Giving the user an incomplete error message.
- A program should disable commands that don't apply to the current context.
- Error messages should be constructed so that they are grammatically correct and contain punctuation.
- Forcing the user to deal with stupidity.
Conclusion
Lotus Notes sucks.