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IBM Verse

ibm.com

21–30 of 32 posts

Re: IBM Verse

#21
post #13

There is a "call to action" but nothing to let me know why I might want to act (a brighter space? me to we? I don't know what those mean). At least with Google's Inbox there is enough actual information for me to evaluate, consider, and eventually arrive at a considered "no, thank you". With Verse, well, I don't know why I've even devoted the cycles it took to write this, let alone why I would evaluate Verse. Maybe n…

Bold claim: if you're on HN, you're not IBM's target demographic

Definitely, but that doesn't mean the messaging shouldn't make sense.

It seems they're hitting on the problem that Email and Calendars are too stupid, cluttered, and have contacts all over the place.

If you're the type of person who agrees with that problem, what do you think you're going to do when faced with the idea of learning an entirely new product like this?

Re: IBM Verse

#24
1. I'm having flashbacks to Google (Apache) Wave. That is not a good thing.

2. How much would it cost to have a professional voice over artist record that spiel? Less than $500 right? That has to be better than the product manager using his laptop's microphone for the official YouTube video (or whatever it actually was.)

3. "Every decision in the design process was made with the user in mind." Way to meet the base-line requirement for user design: "Consider the fact that there is a user."

Re: IBM Verse

#25
post #10
post #4

This is such a confusing product page. One of the email examples halfway down the page actually has Lorem Ipsum in it. The first demo video, showing a "Client Meeting" at 10am, doesn't make any sense from a design perspective - a user taps on the meeting, only to receive a modal dialog that has no more information than what was already on screen. Worse yet, the "Options" button opens a nested modal with more options,…

If IBM is trying to show their aptitude for designing frustrating user interfaces This is basically the latest version of Lotus Notes. The UI might not be great, but anything is an improvement over the old versions.

I'm pretty sure they'll be able to sell it because of credibility anyway so it's worth a shot for them aye.

Re: IBM Verse

#26
My requirements for email are really simple.. NLP and analytics will probably just annoy me.

For example, when a calender invite arrives it should show up on my calender (and give 10 minute warnings, etc.) even if I did not accept it. Why? Notes makes me feel like an idiot when I miss a meeting just because I didn't look at the email.

Another: search should be instant, reliable and clear. In Notes, regular search doesn't cover the domain name.

Suppose I want to send mail to everyone on a calender invite. To do this I have to cut and paste the names from several fields and then delete my own name from the list.

They should address every single issue on http://www.ihatelotusnotes.com/ before worrying about analytics.

Re: IBM Verse

#27
post #8

After looking at the IBM info, I've put some thoughts into what this product is about from two perspectives: #1 technology and #2 comparison to older products (Lotus Notes, MS Outlook, etc) Perspective #1: the tech. Sometimes a new product is driven by progress in technological gadgetry. In this case, I believe that gadgetry is the "analytics". The new algorithms (NLP natural language processing, semantics engine, et…

I think it could be one of the IBM Bluemix services in future. It is very likely that most of the IBM SaaS services will be hosted in there.

Re: IBM Verse

#30
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If IBM is trying to show their aptitude for designing frustrating user interfaces This is basically the latest version of Lotus Notes. The UI might not be great, but anything is an improvement over the old versions.

I'm pretty sure they'll be able to sell it because of credibility anyway so it's worth a shot for them aye.

Who exactly does IBM still have credibility with? I don't know about the rest of the world but here in Australia they're an absolute laughing stock. They're the company you call to mind when you want an example of laughably bad, Dilbertesque corporate behaviour.

Six, seven years ago my circle of friends had all heard rumours about how bad it was. None of us believed it; then one of the circle got a gig at IBM and the report back was "it's worse than you've heard". Still - even with intel from a trusted source - the rest of us said no, it can not be.

Then another one got a gig. "It's worse than the first one said", said he. And again, the rest said, no, this is impossible.

Then it was my turn. And I swear to you it was worse than the guy who said it was worse than the guy who said it was bad was. Or whatever that sentence is meant to look like, I don't know.

Perhaps if you buy mainframes or Watsons from IBM they're half-decent, but for professional services I have never seen anything like it in my life. Woefully poor.

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