September 7th, 2006
Judging a product’s user experience
Yesterday Ed Brill (Lotus) and Peter de Hass (Microsoft) both blogged about the consistency, or lack of in the user experience of Microsoft products. Ed mentions the perception amongst some customers that Microsoft products are "easier for our users" and "we won't have to do training". He highlights several examples where this is not true, and how Microsoft products can be very different, and often difficult to use. Peter of course expresses the opposite opinion, and states "opinions are being formed out there by people who have not actually seen, let alone worked with the new Office 2007 UI (and ribbon)." I agree with Peter. I don't think people should make final judgements on things based on speculation, rumour, or uninformed opinions.
So with that said, I wanted to blog today about my experiences with Outlook 2007, a product I do know a lot about. It is not my intention to stir up an "Outlook versus Notes" debate. My goal to simply provide Lotus Notes customers with some facts about Outlook 2007, which they can use when having discussions with people who insist that Outlook's UI is better than Notes.
The first thing most reviewers point out about Outlook 2007 is how the user interface (UI) for the inbox differs from the UI when creating a document. Below is the UI in Outlook 2007's In-box. There is no Ribbon, instead the pre-2007 menus and toolbars.
Here is the UI when composing a mail message. There is a Ribbon.
I don't think this is a huge deal, but it does provide a tangible example of inconsistency, something Microsoft loves to take issue with Lotus about. I expect Microsoft will fix this at some point, perhaps even for the gold-release.
My top concern about using Outlook, is that in the main screen, there are more than a dozen different "widgets" which users need to understand. Many of them seem to do similar things (open/close, drop down, flyout, etc), so why are so many different conventions used?
Taking a closer look.... Double arrows, plus/minus, and triangles?
Here are four different shapes all next to each other. What is the difference between a solid triangle and a triangle with a line over it? Don't they both cause drop down boxes to appear?
When composing a message I see the solid down triangle (under Account), the down triangle with a line over it (at the top), as well as new shape, an arrow pointing down and right. (next to Clipboard)
Why do the dots here mean drag to Resize?
While here they indicate to me that I can Move (not resize) the toolbar?
I love this screen. "Calendar, My Calendars, Calendar, Browse Calendar, Send a Calendar, Publish Calendar..." Do you think the developers get paid by the number of times they use the word calendar per inch? :-)
I am not pointing out these things in an effort to bash the Microsoft user experience. Honestly, for some things I think it is fine, while for others I personally find it very un-intuitive, and inconsistent. But it is obvious that there is a lot for users to learn/understand. My hope is that people will simply be fair, and not bash the Notes UI while claiming how great Microsoft's is without looking at the true situation. The above examples only took me five minutes to point out, and they are from a single product, Outlook. I hate to think what I would discover doing an in depth comparison of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Messenger, Groove, InfoPath, OneNote, SharePoint, etc.
