Mary Beth has been taking on the critics

With all the kick up last week about theNotes user interface, it's important to understand how focused Notes architects,engineers, and developers are on building a leading edge, world-class userinterface for the Notes "Hannover" release.  One of thelead designers, Mary Beth Raven, appears to have made it her personal missionto find all Notes user interface critics worldwide and engage with them,quite publicly, one at a time. For example, on joe lamantia.com, Mary Beth posted a comment asking forJoe to help IBM recruit end-users to participate in usability testing. Joemade a new blog entry out of it:Provingthat a well-developed sense of humor is required for success in productdesign -- especially for Lotus Notes -- Mary Beth Raven, who leads thedesign team for the next version of Lotus Notes, recently posted a ratherfunny comment in reply to my suggestion that the Notes Design team offercustomers a choice of unpleasant but related user experience themes. Sheused this as the occasion to invite all members of the community of Notesto users to register as volunteers for usability testing. Thisseems like as good a time as any to remind you that Lotus seeks end-users(NOT the IT developers and admins in your organization) for Notes usabilitytesting.  Full details are on the Usabilitypage at IBM developerWorks: Lotus.