One of my early entries here was titled "Bad Design".  My opinion remains much the same:  the number one problem facing Notes/Domino environments is bad design.  Some recent discussions in the Lotus Notes/Domino Blog Universe seem to focus on IBM's part in this.  IBM, it  is said, gives us lousy templates, which can't stand up to what else is out there in the marketplace.  I'm thinking, though, that we developers need to take ownership of the design process, and start dazzling our customers.

The first thing we think of when we think "design", of course, is the appearance of something.  I tend to dismiss appearance, myself, but that's a personal bias.  I know it's important, but I have a hard time bringing myself to care much about whether a particular background is this color or that, or whether Arial is a better font than Helvetica.  Frankly, as long as I can read it with my bad eyesight, that's enough for me.  If everything were black or blue text on a white screen, I'd be satisfied.  That's not enough for everyone, though, and so it's important for me to be able to get help prettying things up when I need it.

The more interesting part of design to me, though, is the Structure.  What are the parts?  What comes in?  What goes out?  How do all the moving parts fit together?  These are the things that, to me, make it possible to tell a good design from a bad one.  Does the application do what it's supposed to do?  When I click on this button, what happens, and is it everything I expect to happen?

Quite frankly, I don't expect IBM to know how to do this for me or my company.  Sure, it'd be nice if IBM had, say, a Notes/Domino template for project management, but just try deploying one in most companies.  The arguments start.  Which project management methodology to use?  Which pieces of the method do we really need, and which are a waste of time?  Can we really afford to train everyone to use a PM tool?  And so forth.  If the IBM tool differs from the method the company decides to deploy, what then?  The great thing about Domino is the ability to customize, or even to throw out a design completely and build from scratch.

I get more value, quite frankly, from OpenNTF and the Notes designer forums than from the templates IBM builds for me.  I also experience a lot of frustration dealing with the out-of-the-box tools some companies throw at me; whenever I get an upgrade of MS Word or Excel, I end up having to switch off a bunch of features someone half a continent away decided I need.  I'm not so sure I want IBM spending a lot of time going down the same path.

To me the New Black is collaboration, and that includes collaboration with other designers and professionals who are out here doing business and building tools to do business.

1. Andy B07/27/2006 11:09:57 PM
Homepage: http://andy.the-broyles.com

The 'normal' templates are bad, especially for web facing applications. However, I have found a gem in the template for DDM.

IBM/Lotus add a 'tabbed' paradigm (ugh) to this design and made it work great.

A little digging into the design and you will find that it is quite modifable, but there are quite a few moving parts to keep track of...now if I could only figure out how to make it work on the web