A Little history
In 1979, Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston created the first spreadsheet application, VisiCalc, which helped launch the Apple II. Steve Jobs once said about VisiCalc, “That’s what really drove and propelled the Apple II to the success it achieved, more than any other single event.” It paved the way for the application software industry. Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs, who worked on VisiCalc, developed a new spreadsheet software named Lotus 123 which disrupted the spreadsheet application industry and eventually replaced VisicCal.
By October 1983, there were many spreadsheet programs on the market, including VisiCalc, Super Calc, Microsoft’s Multiplan, and Context MBA. Despite Lotus 123 being a little late to the game, Lotus 123 dominated a significant part of the market. It was very quickly reported to be outselling VisiCalc. Lotus 123 provided a 3 in1 integrated solution: spreadsheet calculations, database functionality, and graphical charts, it became the standard spreadsheet application throughout the 1980s-1990s. Many companies purchased IBM PCs just so they could get their hands on the integrated software.
While Lotus 123 was dominant through the 1990s, like all great empires, eventually gave way to Excel starting in the 2000s. Part of the reason for Lotus 123’s downfall was Microsoft totally took over the operating system market and, eventually Excel, which specifically developed for Windows, overtook Lotus.
Software design
Mitchell Kapor was a founder of Lotus 123 and also the UX designer. He worked on all levels of the Lotus 123 design, from the broad architecture to the naming conventions.
Kapor also championed the idea that it was important to integrate design into the overall software development process. In 1996, Kapor wrote a chapter titled “A software design manifesto” in the book Bringing Design to Software authored by Terry Winograd:
In general, the programming and design activities of a project must be closely interrelated. During the course of implementing a design, new information will arise, which many times will change the original design. If design and implementation are in watertight compartments, it can be a recipe for disaster because the natural process of refinement and change is prevented.
Many people may be familiar with IDEO’s three lenses of innovation, feasibility, desirability, and viability. What you may not know is that more than 15 years prior Kapor gave a similar definition of what is good software. He borrowed the definition of well-designed buildings — Firmness, Commodity, Delight — from the Roman architecture critic Vitruvius. Kapor wrote that good software design should exhibit:
Firmness, it doesn’t break, and should not have bugs.
Commodity, a program should be suitable for the purpose for which it was intended.
Delight, it should be a pleasure experience for users.
UX Overview
1. Worksheet tab:
Back in the 1970s, in order to engage more users to use personal computers, the idea of desktop metaphor emerged from Xerox Parc. It extended real desktop items like “Trash can”, “Folder”, “Files” to computer GUI. Popular applications like Lotus 123 leveraged this metaphor, users could create a “worksheet, if you take a closer look, the shape of the header looks like a folder label.
As computers have become part of people’s daily lives, “folder” in Google sheets has evolved into a tab that is placed at the bottom of the UI. “New Sheet” function is reduced to a plus icon as users have got used to the concept that the “plus” icon means “add”.
“A1, B1, C1” row/column naming was DNA that Lotus 123 inherited from VisiCalc, this naming convention is a lot easier for users to understand compared to techie “R1C1” that appeared in other similar applications.
2. Spell check:
Do you remember in the early Windows operating system we saw non-stop pop up window notifications? We can find it in Lotus 123 as well.In Google Sheets, these submenus appear in a form of dropdown. modal on modal is a pattern that is largely avoided in modern UX.
Lotus 123 provides more options than Google Sheets in spell check, users can choose the region of spell check: Entire file/Current worksheet/Range.
In Google Sheets, the option of spell check regions is skipped since it can automatically detect the selected region that users want to apply the speck check functionality.
What was surprising was that Google Sheets doesn’t have language options on the spell check panel itself. To perform a spell check in a different language the user must go to the main screen, click the menu in the blue bar, and then click “Settings.”
3. Font editing:
The first thing I noticed was the placement of the font editor. We can find the editor toolbar at the bottom of Lotus 123, where the default font size is 12px, whereas Google Sheets places the toolbar on the top of the UI and the default font size is 10px.
I’m curious as to why the editor toolbar and worksheet tabs switched places.
4: Auto fill
I can find this interaction in Lotus 123, Excel and Google sheet, when a user needs to enter sequential information like months and days, the user just needs to click and drag the selected cell to neighboring cells horizontally or vertically.
5: Formula
On the base level, this interaction didn’t change. Let’s take a simple function “Average” as an example, in both Lotus 123 and Google Sheets, the user can select “AVG” from the function list in the desired cell and then specify the range by dragging. Lastly, press “enter” to confirm.
After 30 September 2014, IBM stopped supporting Lotus 123. Lotus 123 was a very important step that brought personal computers into the office and onto the desks of workers. Over the past 37 years, through many generations’s update, new polished features, new font, colors, but it’s underlying layout from Lotus 123 has not.
