Is the Lotus Notes Crowd Really Listening?
Last week I asked three simple questions, trying to determine whether end users preferred IBM’s Lotus Notes/Domino Email or Microsoft’s Outlook Email.
I figure the poll needs 10,000 respondents before we can start to trust to the results. So far, only a few hundred have replied.
However, the early results have surprised me because they lean so significantly towards one of the solutions. Considering that the two solutions have about even market share, I expected the results to be a little closer. Lotus Notes is in the lead at the moment.
Lotus Notes Bloggers are Driving the Results
I can, at least partially, explain the results. My site has received a lot of traffic from a few prominent Lotus Notes Sites, including:
So… Is the Lotus Notes Crowd Really Listening?
One could argue that by driving Notes developers to vote in the poll, they are ignoring the feelings of the end customer, and trying to skew the results.
On the other hand, one could also argue that by participating in the ebb and flow of blogosphere discussions, they really are listening.
I wonder if any MSFT / Dot Net sites will drive some participation from there end.
In the mean time, please help increase the participation level. Regardless of the outcome, I would love this to get to some numbers that will really convince CIOs.
Here are the same voting widgets (they link to the same database and results):
I have never seen a more painful piece of software than Lotus notes. I have used it for 5 years now, only because my company wont listen and let me move to other email clients. Everyday it makes me cry. The result that you see here definitely points to rigging. If the results were true, I am sure the graph for Lotus notes would be reversed.
Couple of things here (and I haven’t sent you any traffic…. yet :-).
1) The Notes crowd is listening. We know about the “Lotus Notes sucks” website. We know about the long-ago “interface hall of shame” (which was on Notes 4.6, from 8+ years ago, but OK). If you read my colleague Mary Beth Raven’s weblog, you’d see that there is huge focus on user interface and user satisfaction for the next version of Notes, codenamed “Hannover”.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/marybeth
2) While there are a lot of Notes detractors out there, I believe the usually-silent majority is satisfied. When we do focus groups, market surveys, and usability tests, we see the same kinds of patterns — good and bad — in both products. And for Notes users who do more with Notes than mail, with good quality applications, they really do love the product’s ability to make them more productive.
(Speaking of usability, you could use a bigger comments box, very hard to edit with only 28 characters across).
As a longtime, 12+ years messaging and wireless person, I can safely say Exchange still leaves a lot to be desired as an admin/manager.
From a client side all being equal, lotus is much more user friendly for those of us that live in our inboxes.
Yes, we’re listening. I found your post through a Blogdigger search feed, which is one of several that I monitor daily to pick up on references to Lotus Notes and Domino in the blogosphere. Bear in mind: love it or hate it, you have to admit that Lotus Notes did more than any other software package to legitimize the idea of on-line collaboration and community as business tools, so nobody should be surprised that Notes’ fans are pre-disposed to collaborate and participate in communities!
Are we rigging the results as alluded to by commenter Ritesh? Well, point one: it’s an unscientific survey, so one could argue that there really are no results to rig. Point two: you didn’t announce a time limit, either, so if we get in early there could still be plenty of time for the Outlook fans to jump in. Final point, you said “encourage your friends”, and that’s all we did. I happen to know that a couple of Microsoft employees read my blog pretty regularly. They can tell their friends, too.
Are we ignoring the feelings of end customers? I am an end customer! I’m an Outlook user right now. It’s not my choice, but I use what my employer mandates even though I’m developing products that integrate with Notes. With 20+ years in the messaging industry under my belt, and 13 of them specializing in Lotus, I’m not a typical end customer, obviously, but I don’t choose or run my own messaging system now so I am an end customer. And I do think that my background and current situation do give me a claim to at least some level of objectivity — and while there are some admirable things about Outlook, overall I find it just as painful as Ritesh above says he finds Notes. In some cases, it’s because I just don’t know the “Outlook way” of doing things, but there are others where it’s just plain lack of functionality that makes it painful. E.g., I find it unbelievably painful that with Outlook I can’t even reliably search for a phrase and find messages I sent last week! And if I do (with the aid of the Lookout plugin) manage to find a particular message I still can’t easily find the context of the phrase that I searched for. It’s incredibly painful having to live with this when I know that with Notes I can quickly and easily find any phrase in any message I have sent for the past 13 years! And that once I’ve found the message, the phrase I searched for will be highlit for me so the context just jumps right out at me. I could go on, of course, but that’s not the point.
The real point is that yes, we’re listening. We’ve been listening for longer than most. We’ll probably be listening for longer than Ritesh thinks we will be or should be.
And by the way… how about making your comment box a little wider? It’s barely 25 characters wide. Not particularly conducive to innovation.
Yup, we are listening. I actually didn’t bother with the survey initially but when I saw this post pop up in my Google News alerts, I figured it warranted a look.
I think, as a community of bloggers, us Lotus folks are pretty tuned in when something like this happens. Dunno if that means the results are rigged or not. I guess maybe we are just more vocal than the Exchange crowd.
*shrug*
I use Notes at work. I hate it. The user interface is terrible. Domino is a pain to debug and configure.
I much prefer it to Exchange/Outlook, because I know my fits of rage will be punctuated by the stupid thing actually working.
Your third poll question is missing an option. For an email system, I would prefer IMAP.
I have never, in nine years of using Lotus Notes at various companies, heard anyone say *anything* positive about Lotus Notes. At my current company we use 6.5 for e-mail, calendar, etc. and the usability is so bad, it’s laughable. I hate Microsoft, but I would gladly use Outlook over LN any day of the week.
I have never, in nine years of using Lotus Notes at various companies, heard *anyone* say *anything* positive about Lotus Notes. That’s pretty damning. At my current company we use 6.5 for e-mail, calendar, etc. and the usability is so bad that we laugh about it. I dislike Microsoft as a company, but I would take Outlook over LN any day of the week.
OK. Whatever Richard or Grayhawks may say, Lotus notes is terrible to use. Why there are 5-6 places where you have options? One really have to search everywhere if he wants to change something. I am using Lotus notes from last 5 years. Still now I get confused if any of my teammates ask me where to change password.
Any mail client should have option of changing the text size suiting to the user. In notes, I can’t do that by default. I have to change it after opening new mail every time. Is it such difficult to implement so easy thing?
Usability wise, I would kick Lotus notes on Ass.
The kinds of rebuttals being posted here by IBM people is appalling. You are listening, but you aren’t internalizing these thoughts. We are the end user. Your basic argument is that, yes, Lotus Notes is terrible, but it’s not as terrible as X.
Well, let me tell you what I use LN for. I use to to schedule meetings, set alarms, and to read email. I’m the definition of the power user. So when I perform a search on my email, and it find nothing, and I know the word is in one of my emails somewhere, there is a problem.
You are saying you don’t know the “Outlook” way or the “Lotus Notes” way of doing things. Well, I’ve never used a mail client until college. It took about 1 day for me to learn Outlook, Thunderbird, Edora, Evolution, etc. Why? They are EASY. They were designed for the end user.
LotusNotes is hard. I enjoy difficulty here and there, but I derive no pleasure learning to plough through this crappy, single threaded monstrosity. Who introduces TABS in a single threaded application?
Having read the previous comments, I know what you are going to say. You are either going to rebuke me on some random thing that has nothing to do with the complaint, or wine that the textfield isn’t wide enough. Are you adults or real developers trying to make something for real people? Your design philosophy is like that of a petulant child.
Get over yourself. I would much prefer ANY mail client/calendar client over this garbage.
What LotusNotes needs is a complete redesign. Throw out EVERYTHING except Domino server connection code.
If you think users have problems, then try being a developer. Been doing this since 1997 and consider Notes/Domino to be a project-in-work. It seems that with every new release, there are a few thengs that we need from the old one that have either been left out or broken. It may be that Lotus listens to the user community - although with the advent of ND8 I begin to have my doubts - but you sure don’t seem to care much about the developers. For one example, he cache problem has been with Notes since R4 and either hasn’t been addressed or addressed with an “Oh well, maybe next rev”. But that never happens.
Just started using notes after a long break (about 9 years). Started using Outlook with O2K, and found it to be a much better tool than Notes 4.6 (Which is what we had been using). From 03 forward, EX2k3 and O2k3 worked far better than former co-workers LN versions, and I found it kind of funny when they saw what I was working with and had envy. Now, for the last few months, working with Notes 8, still think it’s behind O2k3. This is SPECIFICALLY an opinion when looking at it as an email client, paired with Domino. Not sure if it’s installed or configured correctly of course, but, IBM directly supports it, so I would guess that it is. About 10 times per day we experience “lost indexes” while viewing emails, 2 to 4 times a day it simply crashes and goes away. Plus, the interface does not work as well as O2k3. Much easy to put and understand links, attachments in O2k3 than LN 8. Calendars, esp. group, work much better with Exchange/O2k3 solution. As small group with under 50 users, ALL of them are disappointed. Simply put, I have trouble finding ANYONE even with the company that bought us that thinks Notes provides a better user experience for email than O2k3/Exchange. And I am on that list.