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April 8th, 2008
 | 05:54 pm - User interface grumbles ...
Ok, now maybe user interface design isn't my area of expertise, but I've been using, programming, operating and building computers for 25 or so years now. I'd like to think that some things are fairly obvious. One of those things would be the idea that keyboard shortcuts should stay the same throughout different areas of one application ... say, an e-mail client, just to pick something not quite at random. So how on earth did the so-called "designers" of Lotus Notes decide that it would be a good idea to change shortcuts around from screen to screen ? In the main inbox view, Alt-1 is "New Memo", but if you're viewing a message, it's "Send". How did that ever seem like a good idea ?
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Yes, guess what bit me this afternoon at work. Fortunately, it was just a half-baked draft consisting of some pasted-in output from SQL queries and such-like, and didn't contain anything embarrassing, abusive or other wise career-threatening. It did go to about 30 people, though ... And there's no way to cancel or recall messages in Notes. Bah.
Current Mood:  angry
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There's no way to cancel or recall messages in any email client, but a few of them pretend that there is. Which is probably worse. every time I get annoyed with Outlook, I remember my time dealing with Lotus Notes, and then go for a beer...... Also one of my pet peeves. The vast majority of programs fail in user interface design. Almost nobody puts a great deal of time in it, and if they do bother, they end up with an interface that is readily understandable by the programmer but not neccessarily the user. I used to have to spend ages explaining how to use programs (to quite technically skilled users), because the interface was "intuitively" understandable by programmers but not by the people it was designed to be used by. But it's almost always considered a minor element in any programming project. After all, you can always train the user. Can't you? |
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