Straw Dogs

While a mate was banging on about the new Half Life Team Fortress mod I was getting excited about IBM’s new Lotus Symphony office app. I know - I’m one step away from slippers.But when I was trying to download it this morning I couldn’t! Why? Because IBM seem to want to make it as difficult as possible to download their new app. Scrapping the now common ideas of reduction and pulling back the veil so users can get to the meat of the matter - IBM stuck up an assault course of twists and turns to make life ‘interesting’.

Login or Register with your “IBM ID”
First you need an IBM ID. I had one from a few years back but couldn’t remember my “IBM ID”. After some routing around I find out the ever-cryptic “IBM ID” is an email address - well why didn’t it just call it that then?

Ignore the Internal Server Errors
I can understand a small-time developer or enthusiast beiung taken down by the Digg effect but IBM? IBM?! I was held off for a further 10 minutes while their server gasped back into life.

Download….. using DownloadDirector!!
IBM are clearly unhappy with the usual click and save operation so loved by virtually every organisation and site on the planet. So they force you to download and install a Java download manager. Which is presumptious enough to have a default download directory in your root folder. Great - another flaky app I plan on uninstalling once I get my download.

Verdict
Well I gave up this morning and left it until I got home. After finally getitng it installed my verdict isn’t much better than my downloaidng experience. Its….’nice’ I suppose. Considering IBM once had the full blown Lotus Office Suite I expected it to be packed with features but instead its more like a cut down open office with a very strange UI. One of the best moves OOo made was to make their interface more MSOffice familiar so as to not put users off. Thoguh IBM has chosen to do away with such fancy ideas and has completely re-written the office UI book.

So all in - IBM really, really need to sack their entire user interface team and employ a selection of aesthetically shrewd monkeys.

Related

• April 21, 2008 -- User’s Bill of Rights?