Missing Features

Microsoft Outlook is easily the best desktop email client on the market. (Yes Thunderbird, your 2.0 release is a big step, but you are still just a late 90s email client. Sorry.)

But the 2007 version of Outlook contains a usability bug akin to the mile high menu bar (thank you Tog on Software Design) gaffe in the original Windows Start Button.

Take a look at this screen shot of a typical preview pane on bottom configuration of the Inbox view:

A user wants to search for an email. So much like a web page might, Outlook has cleverly placed the search box in the upper right area of the application, where users tend to look first for that kind of thing.

But the placement isn’t perfect. Look carefully. There is a search help function also in the right corner, just above the search email box.

There are two problems here:

1. The search email and search help boxes do decidedly different things (from a work flow perspective), but look the same; and,
2. A user is likely to only see the top right corner search help box and completely miss the intended search email box.

A combination of bad placement and insufficient control dissimilarity leads to a careless, common frustration for the user.

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