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.

F5 to lock the screen-- just how many use it, and how important is it?

Notes has a feature called "Lock Display" or "Lockout" (press F5 or choose File - Security - Lock Display).

Do you use it? How often?

Do your business end users even know it exists?

We are considering not having that feature in Hannover.  If we dropped support of this feature in Hannover would it adversely affect your decision to purchase or deploy it?

We're considering dropping it because Hannover allows for several different window management models-- in addition to having each document open in a tab contained in a main window, you can set a preference to have all documents open in a new window. In such a case,  implementing the screen lock feature to apply to all these windows would require more work. It's doable-- but would you rather have us working on new mail, calendar or contacts features?

OK, so we WILL NOT be asking users if they want to add databases....

OK,  so, it's pretty clear that this "ask Samantha if she wants to add a database" is a really unpopular idea. To be fair (to us designers) the mental model we'd been using was that of things like a document-- when you go to close it, you get asked if you want to save it. But OK, fine.  Browser mental model it is.

Unlike browsers, however, I am recommending that the Window menu be turned on by default in Hannover (for those of you who don't know-- there IS a window menu in Notes 7, it is turned OFF by default and you have to search some archane preference to turn it ON), and that we have a "History" menu item off the window menu. (I also thought it might be cool to have a "history" tab that's always visible across the top... but the devs gave me "yucky faces" looks when I floated the idea...so I dropped it).

The History Feature (off the Window menu)

Choosing the History… item off theWINDOW menu takes Samantha to a new tabbed window. (Labeled "History") 

It opens a List view  and lists the last 50 windows (the number is settable in a preference)  Samantha had open, in reverse chronological order. This includes windows that she has closed.

The history should persist across sessions.

The Grouping for History must be:

·        Today

·        Yesterday

·        3 or more days ago

The columns in the table must be:

·        Name

·        Currently open (With a value of yes or no)

·        Type

·        Date Modified

·        Size

·        Available Offline

All columns must be sortable.(Maybe the first one is a "navigator/outline view", not ao column)

The History List when Samantha is Offline:

When Samantha is Offline , she must still be able to get the complete (50 items) history list, however, disable

any items in the history that are not available to her, as shown in the figure above. In addition, if she double-clicks

on an item, post the message dialog below.

Double-clicking on any item in the list must bring that item to the top of the window stack or reopen it. If unable to

reopen it, post an error message box.

Is that more what most of you had in mind?

Workspace: Adding Databases Automatically

Adding databases automatically (or not)

Does Anybody Use the Bookmark Bar "Restore Defaults"?

Do you or anybody in your organization  use this item called "Restore Defaults"  on the bookmark bar? We're thinking of  removing it.

Revised Context Menus for the New Workspace

Now is the time to comment on our new Workspace design.

First, please see my previous posts about the overview of the new Workspace. We have just a few changes to the context menus that you'll get on a "chicklet" (a little square). These changes are mainly because in the new Workspace you'll be able to have not only Notes databases, but also other things like installed applications, URLs, and so on.

And here's our proposed context menus for the "chicklets" in the Hannover release. Mainly, we added the ideas of  "Add to favorite bookmarks" and "add to startup" . Being in the startup would mean that that tab gets "launched" when Samantha launches the Notes Client. Would users notice these choices?

Where are the end users?

 I am very grateful for the 26 reponses that I have recieved regarding the workspace.

However, if indeed there are 124 MILLION Lotus Notes users out there, then 26 measly responses about the thing folks use to get al all their stuff, is an abysmal response rate. A general survey gets a 3% response rate.  If we apply that to the number of Lotus Notes users, I should get AT LEAST 3 MILLION replies!!!!
So where are the end users??? the tired, the poor, the huddled cubicle dwellers, yearning to breathe free??? (apologies to Emma Lazarus and her poem about the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor).

Please... cross-post my posting about the workspace. We had over 1000 responses to our survey.... where are all those people now??

Workspace ReDesign #2

 Here are the 4 main problems we're trying to address in the re-design of the Workspace:

• Databases only – no other types of content
• Single level of tabs not very scalable
• §Can't find stuff – no search
• §Stuff is added automatically -- can be good, but contributes to the "can't find stuff" problem

The scoop on why no trackbacks

According to our blog Admins, trackbacks were initially enabled when the blogs were deployed on Roller. However, since trackbacks were open to anonymous postings, they soon became a spam magnet. Therefore, they are currently disabled.  Once the development team has time to work on it, they will customize the code so we can re-enable it.

Blog or Wiki?

Would it be more useful to you if I had a  Wiki rather than a Blog?

A lot of the information I've been posting on my blog has been useful as reference material.

However, the blog format does not lend itself well to organizing such reference information and making it available. A blog is organized chronologically, which shows when the information was documented and shows how the documentation evolves. But it makes it difficult to find all postings on a particular topic, and to browse through all postings on that topic. It makes revisions difficult, in part because a blog is supposed to be something of a historical record, and in part because the format focuses readers on the latest postings at the expense of earlier postings. When an old posting on a topic is updated with a new posting, the new one can point to the old one but the old one cannot easily post to the new one. A reader who finds the old one has no idea there's a newer one with additional information.

A wiki organizes information around topics instead of chronologically. It doesn't show as easily when information was documented or in what order, but it does show what information is related and make it easy to browse. Wiki pages can be more easily updated with newer information, so that as readers find information in the wiki, they can be confident that it's the latest the author has made available.
Many/most wikis are collaborative efforts of many people gathering together the information they know, whereas blogs are usually written by a solitary author. Perhaps with a wiki I can get more of the design team-- and even the developers-- to contribute information.

(Many thanks to Bobby Woolf for this concise comparison of blog and wiki)

The Workspace: Getting Re-Designed in 2 Ways

In a previous posting: From Bookmark Bar to Launcher, I discussed the  move from a bookmark bar to a Launcher. We also have plans to improve the Workspace as well.  There are 2 ways in which we're re-designing the Workspace.

1. Making the items on your workspace more findable in the Launcher (the subject of this posting).

2. Re-designing the traditional "spatially-oriented" workspace tabs. I'll cover that in future postings, but don 't worry, you'll still have "chicklets" (little squares)

The following picture illustrates how we plan to continue to use the "Databases" item from the bookmark bar, and put a folder for each of the Workspace tabs-- and actually grab the color of your workspace tab and make the folder that color.  In Notes 5,6, and 7, we do have folders to correspond to each Workspace tab, but we lost the color, and we know that cognitive research tells us that the eye is attracted to color more than anything else except movement). (And yes, I'm painfully aware that the folders and databases from the bookmark bar do not stay in synch with things that get added to the workspace-- I believe that's the biggest usability problem.  And we plan to fix that.)

Meet the Sametime Team

I have been remiss in blogging about the "other half" of the title of this blog: Sametime. My baby. I joined Iris in 1997 as the second person on a new team to take a research project called "Praire Dog"  and make it into an Instant Messaging product.  The hiring manager/director of the project was sufficiently influenced by Irene Greif (Group manager for the Cambridge -- then Lotus-- Research group) to pay attention to user experience from the outset, and thus hire a user experience designer early on.

Of course,  Sametime has had is user experience challenges. Soon after I joined, the plan changed, and IBM purchased 2 companies at the same time (heh heh, get it??) Ubique in Rehovot, Israel provided the instant messaging portion of the product and Databeam in Lexington, Kentucky, provided the application sharing/web conferenging portion.  So I didn't get to design a product from the ground up. I got to shove 2 very differnet products together.

After working on Sametime for about 5 years, I was ready for a change, and I think, Sametime was ready for some fresh design blood.  So please, allow me to introduce the new Sametime user Experience Team to you.

 Amy Travis is the designer for the web conferencing portion. She sits in Westford, MA, and comes to us with design experience on a variety of products, including portal team spaces. Amy hs an amazing attention to detail, and terrific usability testing stamina-- at our annual Lotusphere conference in January this year, she personally conducted something like 30 usability tests in 4 days. She didn't even get up for lunch--we'd have to bring her food. She was mobbed with people who wanted to test Sametime and she wanted to give everybody a chance!

 Josef Scherpa is the designer for the instant messaging portion. He sits in some room in his house in Colorado (with a fabulous view, I suppose, but I can't be sure). He used to sit in Westford, MA, but he fell in love and got married and somehow that took him to Colorado. He's also a great skier. Before he moved to Colorado we were on a racing team together.  We had a lot of fun, and, thanks to him (the only actual fast skier), our team did not come in last. (I, however, won free wax because I had the slowest racing times of anybody!)

The new Sametime 7.5 Connect client, which is in beta right now, was heavily influenced by an internal instant messaging project. Joe had the opportunity to start with that design and refine and improve it.

 Michelle MCdevitt is the designer for the real-time gateway/administration for Sametime.  I think this is Michelle's first admin design project. She is, however, an installation design guru, because she also works on both server and client install.  She can quote you chapter and verse from the IBM install guidelines. (Pity that Lotus doesn't follow more of them, like the install directory.)

I hope to be able to introduce you to the visual designers and user researchers in another post.

Changing the Selection Model Also Means Changing the Deletion Model (maybe)

What to do when Samantha clicks the column header the second time?

A while ago I posted about the sort order.  Our Mail designer Margo would like  feedback on our proposal for "what to do when Samantha clicks the column header the second time."

Notes 7 Sorting Behavior

In Notes 7 (and before), Samantha clicked on a column header to sort the Inbox on that column. Most columns can only be sorted one way (i.e. ascending). When Samantha clicked on the column again, sorting on that column would 'turn off' and revert back to the default sort column (which is 'Date') in Mail. To further complicate the experience, when Samantha sorted on a column other than date, then when she clicked on the Date column, the Inbox would re-sort according to the Date, in an ascending order. If she clicked on the Date again, the code did a 'no sort' on the 'default' sort column, which is basically a descending sort order on the Date column. This funky implementation is manifest in the various up, down, up/down, and solid arrow combinations on the column headers today.

Proposal for Hannover Sorting Behavior

6. Sam will no longer be able to click on the currently selected sort column to return to the default sort column (i.e. if they're sorted on Name, then they can't click on Name again to return to a Date sort). She'll have to click on "Date" to do that.

I think this is an important, but potentially confusing (at least initially) change. We can hardly wait for your thoughts on this.

Are we requiring 2-click access to mail with this new Launcher?

John Goldt asked if this new Launcher design means that we are requiring 2-click access to mail instead of one click.

In some cases, yes, it might. However, what we're trying to build is a server-managed client that will allow an admin to specify  which applications get launched at startup so that tabs for them already appear-- thus allowing 1-click access to important things.  We plan to allow  Samantha or Ted or Betty to do this as well by putting things in their startup folder. Now, Notes has a startup folder today-- do you think anybody uses it? Why or why not?  

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?