Subject: Well here’s what I’ve found
People don’t care about technology…they only care about getting their work done.
If the technology helps get their work done, it’s an asset.
If the technology doesn’t help get their work done, it’s a hindrance.
Users don’t have the time, nor do they want, to learn Notes. To demonstrate by example, users want to click on the icon on the desktop and be in their app. They don’t want to open an app, select “open application”, find a server, find the db, and then open the app, just to open their apps. Obviously, that’s an extreme example, but the point is valid. The menus are filled with options that users don’t know exist and likely couldn’t use properly if they did. IBM knows this. When was the last time the Import/Export functions were updated? I’d be surprised if it was less than 10 years ago.
Users don’t know and don’t care what a replication/save conflict is, they don’t understand why their updates are gone, and they don’t want to be bothered by having to resolve updates from two different documents. They’re response is that they have work to do and the system should take care of these things.
And you know what? They’re absolutely right. They don’t get paid to deal with Notes’ screw-up’s. They get paid to work. And when Notes “loses” their work, they have to waste their time getting it fixed.
At my current location I have an app that accesses data from several other databases. I also have an error tracking system in all my LotusScript. In one particular action, the very first step is to get a handle to a database and then check to see if the db is Nothing. Out of a thousand uses per week I’ll get a handful of failures. Now…I know the db is there…it’s working for everyone else. I can open the production app, click the action, and it always works for me. But for some reason, every so often it fails. Along with several other functions that just simply shouldn’t fail…but yet they do.
The user gets a nice error message saying a problem occurred and please try again and contact support if the problem persists. It usually works the second time. But it annoys them. And it annoys me that Notes can’t be depended on to operate reliably.
The users who drive design are annoyed the most. “Why can’t the view be sorted by Totals? I’d like to see which customer made the most purchases.” “Because Notes can’t do that.” “If it’s a number field, why does it even let me put letters in there?” “Because Notes can’t do that.” “Why can’t the data on the form refresh itself when the other database is updated?” “Because Notes can’t do that.” “Why can’t I copy this data to the clipboard in edit mode when I can do it in read mode?” “Because Notes can’t do that.” I could go on at length on the limitations of Notes that makes the interface a hindrance for users.
If one says that the solution to these problems is 8.5.1 and XPages…to me that the same as saying the solution is to rewrite the app in a completely different system. And if we ever go that route, it won’t be Notes.
Now, if you ask the users if they like our primary app, they say yes they do. But the reasons given are based on the major functions that the system performs that makes their job easier. One small example…for some reason we always get addresses for stores with no zip code. So there’s a “ZIP” action. Put in the address, click, and you get your zip. Users like functions like that because it makes their lives easier. But just because they like the functions, doesn’t mean they like the road they travel to use those functions.
My sister uses Notes 8 and she hates it.
