Rocky Oliver's call for a "Show & Tell Thursday" on his blog wakes up a thought I've had recently:

The number one problem facing Notes/Domino environments today is bad design.

I'm a designer myself, and I've been responsible for as many bad designs as anyone.  Common excuses:

• "The business partner gave me bad requirements."
• "Who cares about the interface?  The backend functionality works fine!"
• "Well, I understand it.  You just aren't trying hard enough."
• "Notes/Domino doesn't do that"

All of these things might be true, but do they excuse an application design which, though it might meet the business needs, doesn't charm and excite the user?  If I'm going to make the case that Notes/Domino is a world-class tool, that it's "more than just email and calendaring", et al., then I need to make my applications not just functional, not just sufficient.  They need to sing.  They need to be better than just "good enough".

This is true no matter the tool.  One of the justifications I've heard for some of the Microsoft tools (SharePoint, for example), is that, basically, it's easy for anyone with limited ability to generate working applications using the SharePoint design templates.  I'm sure that's true, just as anyone can design Notes/Domino apps using the templates.  For those of us who flatter ourselves that we are of more than limited ability, though, the bar is higher.

How do we clear that bar?  That's what I'll be looking for on Thursdays!

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