This year's Lotusphere Online is here, but I really wonder who designs these things. The first place I went is to the profiles. Here is a slightly condensed version:
Looks pretty, but several issues seem to jump to mind:
1) Why do they give you a way to jump to a page (this is 4 out of 315, so if I want to find Larry, I should try about 87, hm, that's not it...)?
2) Why don't they give you a way to jump to the letter starting the search term? That is fairly widely accepted.
3) Why do they take up the entire right hand side with two panes dealing with editing your own profile, which you will do exactly once? Making that decision means that nowhere on the screen does it indicate that there is a search screen below this list, which could have fit nicely in that same space.
4) Why do they forget every single year that providing the information this way allows somebody to extract a complete list of all 4725 attendees, from Aadne Grimsgaard to Zhi Yu Yue? Each year, it takes them a while, but they finally figure that this is not secure, so they hide all names, making people unfindable, and then allow people to make themselves visible. By then, it is too late and nobody bothers. Instead, they should ask on the Lotusphere registration whether people want their name visible and accessible.
5) If you click on somebody's name, it copies the data over to the right hand Content pane (name, e-mail address, and company and title, if you accept them, I guess), but they couldn't even make the e-mail address clickable, so you have to copy and paste it from here if you want to use it. [Update: It turns out there is a way, but not an obvious one. Click on the name, isntead of the first cliackable link, and a menu will (eventually) come up allowing you to e-mail]
6) Everything is painfully slow. Now, I guess a few people are checking in, but how can it possibly be so slow with so few people on.
Anyway, sorry to be "snarky", as my daughter calls it. Must be the nasty cold I have.
Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.
Tags: Lotusphere2007