Mary Beth Raven is the lead product designer for the "Hannover" project, a redesign of Lotus Notes. She joined the Notes team in 2005. Prior to joining the Notes team she was the lead designer for the IBM Workplace Managed Client and Workplace Messaging. Before joining the Workplace team, she was the Lotus Sametime designer for five years. Mary Beth has a Ph.D. in Communication from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

So, I can really remove "More Bookmarks" and "Databases" from the launcher?

The replies to my previous posting about the Launcher have been excellent to read, please keep them coming.

Yes, I'll have several future postings about the re-designed workspace.

And in general, I wholeheartedly agree with Nathan that it's too complicated.  But Notes is a victim of its own success. With 125 million users, there are bound to be  people who use those items on the bookmark bar. I do admit that I'm very concerned with the  "new user" experience for the Hannover release-- since everyone will be a new user. I don't want people to freak out because they can't find ANYTHING.

If Samantha had 25 items in her " More bookmarks" we'd have to put them someplace. I bet most of you are workspace-only users (I can say this because the results of a survey we did indicated that most of our users still are.) It would be much eaiser to design a product from scratch (oh, wait, that's what I was doing  until my management asked me to work on Notes...).

 The design team could produce something that is light-years better-- just like research indicates that the Dvorak keyboard is better.... but who uses that? So, we're  focusing on more of a "stepping stone" model... nothing too radical... but an improvement, we hope.

Having said that, though, I am very interested in some of the other comments made.. and in potentially exploring them, like the "Work Centres" from Colin. ...  On the one hand, the new Composite applications might be considered  work centres. I'll post more on composite apps another day.

Feel free to give me more opinions about what to remove from the bookmark bar/Launcher. I'd like to be able to detect if Samantha ever clicks on any of them, and if not, just remove them.  The several of you who said to remove things like IE favorites and More Bookmarks-- you never use them? If people did use them, what do you recommend that we do with the items in them? One giant flat list?

From Bookmark Bar to Launcher: Are We Ready?

 One of the biggest changes for all Notes users of the Hannover release will be that the bookmark bar has been replaced by a "Launcher" button.

Just in case you are not sure what the bookmark bar is (since we don't label it), it's the yellowish vertical bar that runs down the left-hand side of the Notes window. In the picture below, the first item is the Contacts (Personal Address Book), but I think for most people it's Mail, Calendar, and then Contacts

There were only a few issues with the bookmark bar that we're trying to address with the Launcher.

The first is that some users just don' t seem to see it or understand that it's clickable. The second is that it does not scale well. After Samantha has added a few more icons over there, she runs out of space and we give her some arrows to scroll.

So, take a look at one of our initial designs for a Launcher instead. Samantha now clicks the "Launch" button and down comes a menu, complete with pull-rights for nested items. We're not finished with this yet; we plan to do some usability testing over the summer.

The plan was to have the first level of items be exactly the same items that are on your bookmark bar. Now that we're also adding support for three IBM producitivity tools (Spreadhseet, word processor and presentation tool), we'll have to put those choices on there somewhere as well.

Samantha should be able to drag and drop them to re-order them. And she'll have a context menu on each, with choices such as

• Open
• Open Replica ->
• Open in New Window
• Always Open in New Window
• Database ->
• Replication >
• Copy
• Remove
• Rename
• Change Icon (we hope AA's liek this so they can change the icon of the 6 different mail files they manage)
• Set as Home page

If you look carefully at the picture above, you see 3 dots next to the selected item "Favorite Bookmarks". That is supposed to be the visual to tell you you can float that pull-right, as shown in the following picture.  I think the floating is a really cool feature, especially if we succeed in being able to let users dock such a thing in the toolbar. But I am worried that the dots might not be enough to let users know they can float it. We're trying very hard to use that consistent visual throughout the UI to let users know they can float something.  Opinions?

Programmer Logic Meets Real Users: Sort Order

Several of you have asked if we will fix how we show sort order in the Inbox and other views.

I had a meeting today with the Mail interaction designer (Margo Ezekiel), and two developers to discuss how we plan to show sort order in the "Hannover" release. In general, one of our "rules of thumb" is that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Is the current  method of displaying sort order broken? Some would say no, others would say yes.

Here is the situation that causes the most consternation. A user such as Samantha clicks to sort her inbox by date, and she sees that she is sorting it in descending order.

So, she thinks, "I want to sort is in ascending order now", and clicks that little downarrow in the Date column header and she expects the solid triangle to point up, and the mail messages to be sorted in ascending order. Instead, when she clicks, she gets this:

 "Hum," she says to herself,  "The little arrow still points down. But it's not filled in. None of the little arrows are filled in. So how is it being sorted?And how can I get it to sort in ascending order by date?" She looks closer and it seems to her that it IS sorted ascending by date ... are the column headings lying to her?

THE ANSWER (I think). The  Date  column can be sorted descending or use the "default" order, which in this case is the order in which the mail messages arrived (Oddly enough, in this case, I think, most of the time, that equates to ascending, which might add to the confusion). So, I think that in my example above, the "Date" column is still the one that's being "sorted", except that the sort order is the "default order", which is not necessarily a "sort order", it's just an "order".

Samantha, however, just wants to find the blasted email from Ted about how she needs to make end-cap displays of toilets appeal to homeowners so that they sell all the overstock toilets that they have. Thus, she has neither the time nor the inclination to figure out email sort order. She just needs to find that mail, or her career is, almost literally, in the toilet.

A FIX?

Now, strictly speaking, any user of Domino Designer could fix all this confusion by going to the following box and selecting "both."

When I discovered this, I ran gleefully to the cafeteria in search of the dude who owns the mail template (it was lunchtime), to get him to pick "both." Ha. It appears that turning on "both" to sort ascending and descending is a big impact to performance and increases the size of the mail file because it creates a separate index. (I might not have this entirely right, so don't quote me.) The bottom line is, from a developer's standpoint, there is a perfectly logical reason why we don't allow ascending and descending sorting. From a developer's standpoint, it's also perfectly logical that if none of the little arrows are filled in, then the view must be using the "default sort."

But the majority of our users are NOT developers. So what should we do for the Hannover release?

I doubt very highly that we can make the changes so that it does not impact performance and mail size.  Do we just continue the way Notes 7 shows sort order (or not)?  Do we highlight the "sorted" column, even if the sort "order" is "the default order", and then display some other graphic that is neither an up or down arrow? (in addition to or instead of the v to mean that "this is a sortable column"??)

Our current plan is to indicate the column being "sorted by" with a highlight as shown below, and to indicate the sort order (if any) with an arrow. We do not plan to show the little v to indicate if a column is sortable. We thinks this produces less visual clutter and has the potential for less confusion.

I look forward to your comments.

What Else I did at the Deutsche Notes User Group Conference

 My primary reason for attending the "DNUG" conference last week in Karlsruhe, Germany, was to gather user feedback on the  "pre-beta" build that I brought with me on my laptop. I also had 5 different options of the "Getting Started" page to show people to gather feedback. (I'll show you those options in another posting.)

I also gave a talk on the "Hannover Top Ten" -- Two top fives, really -- the top 5 features that  we haven't already shown, and 5 features on which I wanted to gather more feedback. I'll post the top 5 of each here in a little bit of a different format. Sometimes it's much easier to explain a feature in person than  in writing.

Overall, I was pleased with the trip. The talk was well attended and I received a great deal of feedback -- some very clear direction on a feature in the personal address book, and, as always, many new feature ideas.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the trip was hearing the reaction to the announcement that the Hannover release of Lotus Notes will include the IBM productivity suite of a word processor, a presentation tool, and a spreadsheet. I began working on those about 2 years ago before I joined the Notes team.  We now have a team of three designers, a usability engineer, and some visual designers working on them. I want to "introduce" them here once I corral all their headshots.  

I'd like to extend a particular "thank you" to Denise Shaw of the visual design team, who worked many long hours under a tight deadline to produce the press-ready screens you see in the announcement I linked to above.

You'll be hearing a lot more about the productivity tools here in the near future.

Doing a Bit of "User Research" in Germany....

I am representing the Lotus Notes design team at  a conference in Germany this week (Deutsche Notes User Group),  and some colleagues and I took a few minutes to conduct some informal "user research" by by engaging in a popular German pastime, as shown below.

But seriously, it has been great for me to be surrounded by people who use Lotus Notes in different languages and in varying cultural situations. I'm trying to make sure that I see things through the eyes of others.

"Hannover" is just a code name for the next release of Lotus Notes

   Yesterday, I had the pleasure of co-presenting with  Ed Brill  for the first time, at the Admin 2006 conference in Boston. We talked about the next release of Lotus Notes, code-named Hannover. Now, of course, that's what I've been blogging about all along, but based on questions that people asked me yesterday I realized that it is not clear to everyone that "Hannover" is simply a code name for the next release of Lotus Notes.

There will be plenty of improvements to Lotus Notes in this release-- my team and I are focusing on improving the user experience in a big way. But you can still rely on things like secure e-mail and robust replication.

Speaking of replication, I have had many conversations with our design partners, business partners, marketing team, and developers, about  improving the user experience for replication.  At times, the improvements have included changing the term from "Replication" to "Synchronization".

Reactions to such a terminology change tend to fall into 2 camps:

1. The "It's about time" camp

2. The "no, way, you can't dilute the power of the replication message by using the same term that other companies use for something not as robust!!!!! <argh!! ack!! apoplectic noises from the constituency!!>"camp

At the moment, the marketing, development and design team have agreed that the term will remain "Replication." Stay tuned, though. You never know, maybe we'll start using the term "Synchronization" and just tell everybody it's a code name for "Replication" 

Reviewing the New Designs for Mail

Today, the design, development, and QE teams reviewed 4 User Interface Specifications about mail.

Margo Ezekiel, the user experience designer for mail, had prepared clear documents about re-designed forms and views, among other things, and, to their credit, it was clear that the developers and quality assurance testers had already read them and were prepared for questions.  You'd think that after all these years of sending e-mail that a "New Message" form would not be difficult to design, or that there would be much heated debate, so I was a bit surprised at the number of questions and the range of comments.

Several developers even invoked our design personae and talked about "what Samantha can do."   In the end,  Margo and I walked off with a few "e-design" action items.  We all know that it is impossible to make millions of people happy and productive with exactly the same "New Message" form... and one of the most powerful things about Notes is the ease with which the forms and views can be customized.  Almost every big customer says they "customize the mail template". But how many customize the form?  Does your organization customize the form? What do you change and why?

For some of you end-users who read this bolg (I hope there are a few anyway!), did you know that  your organization can customize the form-- a person who knows Domino Designer, and maybe even your Domino administrator??

And last, strictly speaking, the form of which I speak is a "New Memo" form. Have any of you noticed that? Does it matter to you if it's called a "New Memo" or a "New Message"?

Multiple Monitor support... well, OK, 2 monitors

On May 2nd, Stu Downes asked if we could look at improving our support of multiple monitors.

He's not the only one. Ken Norland of Countrywide has been asking for 2 years, and John Head of PSC spent a great deal of time with us during Lotusphere 2006 (our yearly "user group" type conference in Orlando), discussing the importance of making Lotus Notes easy and useful to use when a user has 2 monitors hooked up.

I'm happy to say that we maybe able to address improving our support of multiple monitors. I cannot provide any specifics or  make any promises, but the IBM Distinguished Engineer in charge of the Hannover release (Jeff Eisen) has taken an interest in Lotus Notes on multiple monitors lately, and he's been looking into making some improvements.

Including Outlook users

On May 1, Angel Sagredo asked if we could include Outlook users in our requirements and user research.

We already do!

One of the primary ways we do that is by working with IBM employees who come from recent acquisitions. That is, IBM buys a company, and if the company had previously deployed Outlook, they switch to Notes. It's a great opportunity to get a fresh perspective by interviewing and sitting with new users of Lotus Notes--people who until recently had used Outlook. 

A member of our user studies team, Deb Maurer, just arranged 8 interviews with users at Datapower (a recent acquisition) 2 weeks ago.

The other way we get Outlook users (besides asking friends and relatives) is from people who register to participate in various feedback activities. When you register, you can choose all sorts of activities, not just usability testing. And we ask what mail programs you use, so we can specifically find people who can provide us with perspectives other than the Lotus Notes one. So please, get all YOUR Outlook-using friends and relatives to register, too!

Thanks in advance.

Meet the Hannover Design Team

The Hannover release includes team members from many disciplines, including the following design-related areas:

• Interaction designers (I'll introduce to to them today!)
• Visual designers
• User studies and usability
• Management

My subsequent posts will introduce you to the various team members. Today, I'll concentrate on the interaction designers.

What is an interaction designer?  Well, an interaction designer is someone who thinks about the order of operations, the primary tasks, and the utility of the product in general. I am an interaction designer.  We have several interaction  designers on the Hannover project who focus on different areas.

Before I introduce them, I'd like to let you know that  there are more interaction designers on the Hannover release than any other release of Lotus Notes. Also, none of the interaction designers has worked on a previous Lotus Notes release ( the closest  thing is that I worked with Jim Hart and other Notes developers on the Sametime integration in the Calendar for scheduling online meetings). I'd like to think that this means new blood for a new era of increased attention to user experience.

I'm the team lead, you already know a bit about me from the blog. We also have the following interaction designers working on Hannover:

Margo Ezekiel - Mail ( no picture could ever do her justice!)  - She's been spending the bulk of her time not only designing a new "threads" experience, but also prototyping it for  early usability testing.

 - John Lance - Calendar  - He's been working hard at many aspects of the Calendar, including improved ways to do free-time lookup. John is also a published author of fiction ( not to be confused with his user interface designs!)  He's too shy to provide a picture of himself, so I'm providing  a picture of the cover of his book.

 - Anuphinh (Noy) Wanderski - Contacts - She's totally redesigned the Contacts form and many of the Contacts views to provide a  totally fresh look at the whole "contacts management" experience.

Yao P. (Alex)  Song - He's concentrated on providing a consistent search experience across both the rich client and the web, spanning all of the IBM Software group end-user products.

Me, I'm working on "framework" issues like menu s, toolbar, bookmarks, Workpace, and so on.

Back to discussing the UI from the top down

I said I'd start with the menus and "work my way down" the user interface, with regard to posting. Well, as you can see, I didn' t get very far before your comments took me in the direction of  complete policy-driven menus and preferences.  We are investigating what to add to the current policy-driven preferences.

(And the "international" settings might not make our list of the preferences to be policy-driven. I know a few of you listed "international" as some of the preferences you'd like to see driven by policy. So speak now in a response or you might have to wait for a future release.)

I should have known that making the toolbar buttons policy-driven would have been your next request. My current and much smaller goal is to get the "Debug Lotuscript" icon out of the "universal" toolbar so that Samantha, Ted, and Betty won't have to look at it all the time.We won't remove it entirely, but I at least want to allow them to use the "print" toolbar button without having to see "Debug Lotuscript" if they don't have to.

A new generation spends a day learning what it's like to work on Lotus Notes

 Thursday, April 27 was "take your sons and daughters to work day" at our IBM facility in Westford, MA. I brought my 2 kids. On the drive in we were talking about what they wanted to be when they grew up, and my eldest said that she never wanted to do what I do because it's boring, all I do it sit in front of a computer, and that I rush my kids through bedtime so I can do a concall with China or India.

Imagine the "mommy guilt"  I felt.

Then we arrived at work. This same child saw three 8X10 glossies of Samantha, Ted, and Betty --our three Hannover design personae--on my shelf. (Yes, I really do have 8X10 glossies, in acrylic stand-up frames, in my office). "Who are these guys" she asked. I explained. "You go and interview people? and then make up stories about pretend people? I never knew you did that." 

When she returned to my office late that afternoon after some wonderful group sessions, she noticed my new iMac with the built-in camera, and spent a very long time taking pictures of herself using the "photo booth" application and applying all sorts of visual effects. We talked a little about visual design. At 5:30 I forced her to leave.

"But Mom,  this is soooo much fun! You have the COOLEST job!"

I think so too.

Meet our Hannover Business-user Design Personae

I'd like to introduce you to:

• Samantha, a Promotions coordinator at "Renovations" (a fictitious company)
• Ted, the VP of merchandising at "Renovations"
• Betty, Ted's AA

Samantha's Work goals

As promotions coordinator, Samantha's main job is to create and manage promotion programs that boost sales and customer loyalty for the Renovations stores. She also has to increase brand awareness of a line of power tools called "Power Renovations". Promotions programs include Web site content, newspaper inserts, catalogs, exhibits, in-store displays, and special events, and may feature purchase incentives such as discounts, rebates, and contests.

Her interpersonal work goals include:

•        Staying in touch with her team and customers, staying organized and having good relationships with the people on her team and with customers.

Samantha is responsible for:

•        Designing promotions programs and producing promotional material. Samantha works closely with a visual designer; a copywriter, and the web master and outside consultants.

•        Coordinating promotional activities with goals of the advertising and marketing departments

•        Collaborating with Renovations store managers on the display and administration of in-store promotions.

•        Evaluating promotions by ROI (Return on investment)  and brand recognition

•        Budgeting and financial reporting

Samantha's Work Day

Samantha's day is frequently full of meetings. She and her colleagues meet regularly to discuss the status of their projects, and she attends planning and status meetings with Marketing management. She also meets with Renovations store managers to collaborate on promotion plans, placement, and execution.

Samantha's Tools

Samantha uses an IBM Thinkpad T30 laptop running windows XP, and a Mac  PowerBook G4 (15 inch monitor) . The IS department loaded the IBM Thinkpad  with the following:

•        Lotus Notes 6.5 client with mail, calendar, and contacts applications. She's a bit frustrated with mail and contacts compared to Outlook, which she used at her last job. She uses seven other Lotus Notes databases (She has local replicas of the first two). The IS dept created the local replicas and the replication schedules for her; she has no idea how to make a local replica of any of the others or how to change the schedule)

•        IE 6.0, to keep tabs on competitors' web sites as well as the Renovations site. She uses Google Maps when she needs directions for visits to store locations, and is also a veteran online shopper.

•        Microsoft Word 2002 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2002. She is a real power user of Powerpoint.

•        Lotus Sametime 2.5

The IS department put Lotus Notes and several Adobe products (Illustrator, Photoshop) in the Mac so that she could work closely with the visual designers in her department.

In addition to her laptop, Samantha has her own computer at home, on which she uses Hotmail, MSN Messenger, AOL Intant Messenger, and Skype IP phone to keep in touch with friends. She also has a personal cell phone and a PDA, which she often uses for work-related activities. And, of course, she never goes anywhere without her iPod.

Ted’s Work Goals

As VP of Merchandising and Marketing, Ted’s main goal is to increase profitability and generate new revenue streams through delivering excellent promotional activities, both inside the Renovations stores and in outside media and special events.  He sees his role as setting longer-term strategy and doing whatever is needed to keep his direct reports successful implementing projects such as improving store atmosphere, developing and delivering advertising, promotions, special point of sale displays, etc.   

Ted manages by motivating and leading his employees.  He seems to know everyone, and uses his relationships to accomplish business goals.  He is often the “face of the company” to outsiders, and enjoys the spotlight.

Ted’s Work Day

Ted arrives at work around 8 am.  He first scans email to “check the pulse” of his responsibilities.  Ted gets over 100 email messages a day and many include large attachments.  Ted attends to as many as he can and sorts them into folders for Betty to handle, projects he’s working on, and people he needs to meet with.  Often there are phone calls, voice messages, or Sametime chats about urgent items.  Ted keeps track of his work by making sure everything is on his calendar.  He checks to make sure he’s ready for today’s meetings, checks an email folder named “Urgent” and occasionally prints out information he’ll need.  He also looks ahead at the meetings for the rest of the week.

Ted spends at least 80% of his usual work days in meetings.  Betty schedules the meetings, taking care to allow time for Ted to get from one to the next.  She understands his work and priorities well, and therefore knows which meetings and people to squeeze into his schedule.  In any day, Ted may have 10 or more meetings scheduled, but that may change drastically during the day as new issues arise that require Ted’s attention.

When Ted travels, Betty takes a more active role in scheduling, monitoring Ted’s email for important issues, routing or handling any she can, and alerting Ted to anything he might need to know about immediately.

Ted hates surprises and makes sure he’s up to date on business and consumer trends.  At free moments during the day, he peruses newspapers, trade publications, analyst reports, websites, etc., and forwards interesting items to his staff, often with a request for an individual to follow up or get more information.  

Ted's Tools

Ted uses an IBM Thinkpad T41 with the standard Renovations set of software, including Lotus Notes 6.5 with mail, calendar, and contacts applications.  Ted also has access to several Notes databases with sales, corporate finances, project management, and Ted’s specialized database of merchandising vendors; some have reports or views tailored for his personal use.  Ted often depends on others on his staff to create summary slides and status reports based on information in these databases.  If anything goes wrong, he calls his IT person to fix it.  This is not because he’s uncomfortable with the technology; it’s that it’s just not a good use of his time.

Ted also uses PowerPoint and Excel.  He has a cell phone and Palm Pilot.    

Betty’s Work Goals

Betty supports Ted Amado in whatever capacity he needs, managing his calendar and inbox, providing support information for meetings, making travel arrangements, etc.  She supports Ted and his senior managers by helping to create spreadsheet reports and presentations.  Betty also leads the team of administrative assistants, and makes sure their hardware, software, and training needs are met. 

Betty really wants everyone to be well taken care of.  She is highly efficient, trusted, and knowledgeable about Renovations’ business and Ted’s responsibilities and priorities.

Betty’s Work Day

Betty arrives in the office around 7:00 am.  Her low-walled cubicle is right outside Ted’s office.  She has a large paper calendar on her desk and yellow stickies on and around her monitor.  Betty checks her voicemail, scans Ted’s mail and calendar, and then her own.  She makes sure there are no changes to Ted’s calendar since last night and updates it if needed.  Meeting changes come via the phone, email, or Sametime rather than as Notes calendar invitations since Ted has little free time and other entries must shift to accommodate changes.   

When something urgent comes up, Betty contacts Ted right away.  If he’s offsite or not in the office yet, she calls his cell phone.  If he’s in a meeting, she uses Sametime or walks to the meeting and speaks to him directly when the meeting ends.  When Ted’s schedule changes for later that day, Betty makes the change in Notes and also contacts Ted if she thinks he might not see it there in time. 

Aside from all the calendar work she does, Betty helps make sure that Ted has everything he needs for his meetings, such as information from email, lists of attendees, and directions if he’s offsite.  She prepares monthly report spreadsheets and transforms Ted’s draft PowerPoint slides into more polished presentations.  She sets up meetings with other management team execs, suppliers, analysts, and other people inside and outside Renovations and she organizes larger meetings by doing everything from managing materials to ordering lunch.  Betty also sometimes routes email or replies to it on Ted’s behalf (cc-ing Ted), especially when he's traveling.  She sorts email he needs to take care of into folders: “Urgent”, “Read”, and “Personal.”  She also deals with email Ted has sorted into folders for her: “Edit” or “Print.” 

Betty is Notes savvy in both mail and calendar but hates repeating meetings.  She wishes she could use the group calendar but needs something that would allow her to see what everyone is doing all at once.  Her own mail isn’t as organized as Ted’s.  She uses her inbox as a to-do list and only files items when they are finished.

Betty's Work Tools

Ÿ         Betty’s primary computer is an IBM ThinkCentre desktop workstation running Windows XP.  She also has an IBM T30 Thinkpad that she uses when she is out of the office to keep all of Ted’s information current. 

Ÿ         Lotus Notes 6.5 is her email and calendar tool.  Betty loves Sametime Instant Messaging and could not live with out it.

Ÿ         She uses MS Word, PowerPoint, and Internet Explorer 6.0.

Ÿ         Betty also has to use “Reserve” an internal room scheduling application (web-based).

Hannover is Using the Design Personae Technique

For the Hannover project, we're employing a design technique called "Using Personae."  (Personae = Latin plural of Persona, a voice or character representing the user) My summary of the technique is that we create one or more believable fictional characters based on a bunch of interviews with real users, and then try to keep those characters in mind throughout the design of the product.

This idea was first popularized by Alan Cooper in his book The Inmates are Running the Asylum. (1999). We have used this technique before for the design of Sametime 2.0 and 2.5. We started by holding a reading group of the book.

(Conducting the reading group was in itself an interesting exploration of geographically dispersed collaboration, since the development teams were in Kentucky, Israel, and Massachusetts.  We'd pick a person to summarize a chapter each week, make a few slides, and put them on the whiteboard of our Sametime meeting room. We'd also ONLY use the IP Audio available as part of the Sametime product. I think one of those reading group meetings was also the first time I had a Sametime video meeting. At any rate, by the time we finished the book,  we felt like we should give this "persona" idea a shot.)

Using personae appears to be a popular technique right now. At the annual ACM CHI (Computer-Human Interaction)(http://www.chi2006.org/ )conference taking place this week, there's a panel discussing the use of this technique.

Since a focus for Hannover is improving the end-user experience, we focused on creating several business end-user personae. Yes, the Domino administrator and App dev Designer users are very important to us. But we get to hear from you a lot-- at Lotusphere every year, at the Notes user group meetings, and so on. I have never met a real, live business end user at Lotusphere. So we decided we needed to concentrate on those business end users. (You know, the ones who look at you funny when you say the word "replicate".)

We (Betsy Comstock, Sheri Branco, Deb Maurer, Jennifer Smith) set about to conduct a series of interviews with real business end users. Based on the Hannover goals, we knew we wanted to interview several executives and their AA's so that we could create an "executive/AA pair." We know that this type of "work dyad" has special Notes usage and needs. We also wanted to create an individual contributor.

Thus, three personae - "Ted Amado, VP", "Betty Zechman, AA" and "Samantha Daryn" were created. Now, we know that it's virtually impossible to boil down 125 million users into 3 fictional characters. But keeping 3 specific people in mind is sometimes a LOT easier than keeping the "mass of 125 million faceless users across the globe" in mind.

And we also know that these characters are very "Western-culture centric". We've worked with some of our user research colleagues in IBM Japan to have them conduct  interviews of Japanese end users and share that information with us.

In my next posting, I'll introduce you to  my "three imaginary friends" (as some of the developers have called them). In the mean time, feel free to read more about this technique at the following web sites:

http://www.cooper.com/newsletters/2001_07/perfecting_your_personas.htm

http://www.stcsig.org/usability/newsletter/0310-personas.html

Asking the Right Questions

Nathan Freeman of OpenNTF.org commented on his blog that he doesn't think I'm asking the right questions. http://www.openntf.org/nathan/escape.nsf

If I may summarize, he doesn't want to have to answer questions about each little menu item. He just wants complete control over all menu items. And preferences. I can understand that, and given Lotus Notes' role as an integration platform, it is a reasonable request.

So, we hear ya. If we were to embark on such an endeavor, we might not be able to provide you with the ability to customize all of everything all at once.

Which is most important to you:
1. Controlling all user preferences via policy?
2. Controlling all menus via some mechanism (may or may not be via policy?)

 If we had to deliver policy-controlled preferences in chunks across various releases, which ones are the most important?

• Template ones (mail and calendar)
• Basics
• International
• Instant Messaging
• Ports
• Replication
• Location preferences
• Status bar preferences
• Toolbar
• Security

 If controlling the menus is more important,  do you want to control each menu item via Domino policy?Or would it be wiser to have "menu sets"  where you turn on "the mail menus" or things like that?

Let me know. Cause if we can make it happen, we want to start with the things that matter most to you.