Software

Meet the iNotes ultra-light team

Left to right: Carrie Tracy, Blair Davies, Sai Fung Ng (Phillip), Ron Ledwich, Michelle Cooper, Janet Farrell, Sherif Boulos, Margo Ezekiel, Devin Lindsey, Linda Sharar. (Not shown: Eric Portner, Dana St. Claire, Carrie Tracy, and Jodi Rexford)

The iNotes ultra-light User Experience team

"I'm the usability specialist for iNotes. I was very excited when I learned we were going to be able to extend the product onto Apple's iPhone. Not only for the novelty of being involved in the 'cool' new product on the market, but because we are able to show that our product as a whole has changed and is keeping up with the times. As an advocate for the user, my comments and findings are generally well received and put into a timeline for implementation.

"The biggest challenge in working on the iNotes ultra-light project is that ultra-light isn't a native application, which limits some of the functionality we can implement. Users typically don't care about the technical reasoning for things, they just want it to be how they want it.

"Overall, I really enjoy working on this product. I like that we are able to offer iNotes on a device that people are interested in using and that we are providing another device option for them to choose from. As more people start using this on a regular basis, we look forward to getting richer feedback and improving it as new releases are planned."

-- Michelle Cooper, Usability Specialist

"Working with the development team was one of the highlights for me. They were small, focused, and very engaged in the design process. They realized that the success of this project was going to be on the reliability and speed of the code, but also very much on the look and feel of the product. They were heavily invested in the product being easy to use and beautiful at the same time.

"They were also very flexible. Working in an agile environment, a lot of the specs were created and revised as the project went along. We were able to use the iterations to implement our 'stretch' designs, and the developers were very open to the usability feedback and quickly addressed the top priority issues.

"Another reason for the success of this project was the management team's ruthlessness with the feature list. They agonized over it and really cut it to the bone, so that we could produce a reliable, fast, usable set of features in an aggressive time frame. Release 1 was bare bones in terms of functionality, but it was a usable, useful product and a good 'proof of concept.' It showed that IBM was in the iPhone game and showed that we were serious about making an IBM product that looked native on the iPhone. Users realized that the first release was very limited, but because they really liked what we did, they were now committed to the product and anxiously awaiting future features. First impressions (or first releases) really set the stage for our product line."

-- Margo L Ezekiel, User Experience Professional

"It was an interesting challenge to try and come up with a design that was consistent with iNotes full and lite but with less real estate. We had to choose the most important things to display and make the ui elements large enough to be activated by a finger. Until we got used to that there was quite a bit of tweaking to get things appropriately sized."

-- Jodi Rexford, Product Designer

"This was an entirely new space to work with for both the designers and developers on the team, in a sense, we were working with a blank canvas that allowed us to take some risks and be creative. I love how the iPhone's environment is a sensory experience using sound, touch and visually rich textures to engage the user. It's captivating and makes people want to use it. It also makes for a very fun environment to design for. The real challenge we were faced with was to maintain the integrity of the platform, while drawing a strong correlation to the Notes desktop experience. We went through several design iterations until it stated to all come together."

-- Carrie Tracy, Senior Visual Designer

"When I saw iNotes on the iPhone, I loved it; I felt like we were delivering Notes mail in a way that both Notes users and iPhone users could relate to. To document how to use the iPhone, we decided that the most important thing would be to describe the action of the icons, because iPhone users would understand the basic navigation controls and how to use the iPhone, and Notes users would have a basic knowledge of Notes mail and contacts. Going forward, our hope is to keep the documentation clean and simple--a true reflection of our user interface."

--Dana St. Clair, Information Developer