Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity. In exhibit 001-I we see how Notes wastes your time by managing your time.

Try this in your Notes calendar: click an entry.  That entry will be highlighted as expected.  Now click it again.  Fun game: what do you think will happen?  Good software will do nothing – a single click is “highlight” and as the item is already highlighted there’s nothing more to do.  Poor software might (wrongly, but at least somewhat sensically) actually take action on the item – open it, present a context menu, etc.  Notes says “Nuts to that!”  When you click on an item already highlighted Notes assumes that you want to edit the item.  But it doesn’t let you.  Instead you get the following confirmation message:

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Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity. In exhibit 001-H we see how Notes tells you that’s something wrong by telling you nothing.

You know when you do something that you’re not supposed to do?  Or when the application encounters a problem?  You get an error message.  In a good application you get information that will help you to fix the problem.  In a poor application you might get something less than useful.  However as applications age and become more mature this aspect tends to improve (being something that most developers don’t give much attention to in initial versions).

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Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity. In exhibit 001-G we see how Notes is unable to commit.

“Notes isn’t JUST an email program,” its proponents will crow, “it’s a full-featured highly capable application platform!” Of course it is. The idea that email is really just an afterthought and not a core competency seems somehow positive, almost comforting to them. It probably also explains why Notes often forgets what version you’re actually using and takes you down little walks on memory lane.

My current email toolbar looks like this:

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Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity.  In exhibit 001-F we see more of Notes contempt for your children and values.

There’s an “Actions” menu in Notes.  In there there’s an ambiguous little item called “SmartPad Posting Options”.  It sounds promising, doesn’t it?  I like smart things.  I’d love to see something smart in Notes.  In reality it’s just another example of Notes fraud; click it and you’ll see:

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Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity.  In exhibit 001-E we see more Notes slight-of-hand.

Notes provides an email message – I’m sorry, “Memo” – preview function. The preview is separated from the message list by a message header containing common information:

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Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity. In exhibit 001-D we see how Notes tricks you, like used car salesman, into thinking it’s actually going to help you.

The Notes Workspace. Versatile as a brick and almost twice as smart. When you open it up all of your database shortcuts are presented for you:

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Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity.  In exhibit 001-C we see how Notes inflicts purposeful psychological damage.

You accidentally delete something (easy to do in Notes). So you open the “Trash” folder, find your item and drag it back to the Inbox. Then this appears:

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Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity.  In exhibit 001-B we see how Notes makes it’s first impression.

Lotus Notes is unashamed of its crimes. In fact it begins its attack on usability before you even enter the application! At first glance the Lotus Notes login screen seems somewhat inoffensive but this is deceptive:

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Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity. In exhibit 001-A we’ll explore how Notes greets those unfortunate enough to forced to use it.

Notes attempts to construct a conversational labeling system on the login screen, one that walks the user through the process effortlessly. In this it fails utterly.

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