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Re-Designing the classic email client

vanschneider.com

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Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#61

Post by dmlorenzetti »

podperson wrote: post #36

Don't fix email. Fix communication. Why, on my iPhone, do I have: 1. An email app (which required a major update to unite mail boxes) 2. A "messages" app (which abstracts out two different message systems) 3. A phone app 4. A contacts app 5. Twitter 6. Facebook 7. Skype What I want to do is (a) send messages to people (I don't care how), (b) check messages I've received (from anyone, using any method), (c) manage my…

How will initiating a phone call through the same interface as writing an e-mail solve these problems?

You phone somebody and don't leave a message, so they get an empty voicemail. How can the interface on your device possibly solve that problem? (By the way, I have a $30 answering machine at home that's smart enough to not record empty messages, and for day-to-day use its interface is a button for "play" and a button for "delete". The interface is not the problem.)

Then you send an SMS and immediately turn around and send an e-mail as well. How will a user interface prevent the person from getting both the message and the e-mail?

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#62

Post by blhack »

podperson wrote: post #36

Don't fix email. Fix communication. Why, on my iPhone, do I have: 1. An email app (which required a major update to unite mail boxes) 2. A "messages" app (which abstracts out two different message systems) 3. A phone app 4. A contacts app 5. Twitter 6. Facebook 7. Skype What I want to do is (a) send messages to people (I don't care how), (b) check messages I've received (from anyone, using any method), (c) manage my…

In my kitchen I have:

1. A fridge

2. A coffee machine

3. A stove

4. A microwave

5. A blender

6. Mixing bowls

7. Measuring cups

All I want to do is feed myself. Why on earth do I need to have so many different things to do it?

To...most people, having a separate "app" for things that do wildly different things is a good. Skype and email fill completely different roles to me, and I suspect they fill completely different roles to other people as well.

You might want to send a message to somebody and not care how, but I do care how.

If it's late, I might send my friend an email instead of an SMS because I know that the SMS will probably wake her up, and the email won't.

Being able to control this is a good thing.

Did you notice the descention of immediacy in your example of phone->sms->email? You went from the most demanding contact method "stop what you are doing and talk to me!" to the middle "stop what you are doing and read these 160 characters!" to the least "eventually look at this piece of text".

If you didn't care as much about your message, you probably would have done this in a different order.

If something major in my life happened (I'm having a baby! I'm going back to school! I got into YC! Somebody is buying one of my projects!), I would call my best friends to tell them, I wouldn't SMS them.

So would you.

And this is good.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#63

Post by reidrac »

ThomPete wrote: post #48
hapless wrote: post #8

This guy has teeny tiny letters hardcoded into JPGs on his web site. I can't read it. Fortunately, this means I can disregard what he has to say about UI/UX. Sometimes the medium IS the message.

Perhaps you aren't supposed to read them but instead the text in the HTML?

He's showing something, but I can't see it. Oh, unless it's just a Mac Book Air. I can see that.

I had to use the scroll wheel 5 times to actually see something that might be interesting.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#64

Post by jack-r-abbit »

ThomPete wrote: post #48
hapless wrote: post #8

This guy has teeny tiny letters hardcoded into JPGs on his web site. I can't read it. Fortunately, this means I can disregard what he has to say about UI/UX. Sometimes the medium IS the message.

Perhaps you aren't supposed to read them but instead the text in the HTML?

There is no text in the HTML! It is all images. I think that was the point of the complaint.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#65

Post by mkl »

hapless wrote: post #8

This guy has teeny tiny letters hardcoded into JPGs on his web site. I can't read it. Fortunately, this means I can disregard what he has to say about UI/UX. Sometimes the medium IS the message.

Not only that, but the over-wide pages can't be scrolled sideways.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#66

Post by smacktoward »

untog wrote: post #53
podperson wrote: post #36

Don't fix email. Fix communication. Why, on my iPhone, do I have: 1. An email app (which required a major update to unite mail boxes) 2. A "messages" app (which abstracts out two different message systems) 3. A phone app 4. A contacts app 5. Twitter 6. Facebook 7. Skype What I want to do is (a) send messages to people (I don't care how), (b) check messages I've received (from anyone, using any method), (c) manage my…

I realise that this may sound like I'm descending into fanboyism, but this is actually something that annoys me about iOS- it's far, far too app-centric. Take Windows Phone for example: tap a contact in WP and you see their tweets, Facebook messages, your SMS and e-mail history with them. The messages app integrates SMS and Live chat seamlessly. Ideally this system would open up to allow any third party to plug into…

Yeah, even webOS made a creditable stab in this direction. And that was what, three years ago?

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#67

Post by darklajid »

podperson wrote: post #36

Don't fix email. Fix communication. Why, on my iPhone, do I have: 1. An email app (which required a major update to unite mail boxes) 2. A "messages" app (which abstracts out two different message systems) 3. A phone app 4. A contacts app 5. Twitter 6. Facebook 7. Skype What I want to do is (a) send messages to people (I don't care how), (b) check messages I've received (from anyone, using any method), (c) manage my…

I don't want to turn this into a (mobile) OS war. And my favorite is dead anyway..

That said, did you ever see the way WebOS handle[sd] this cases? The 'synergy' thingy was solving a lot of the friction points you're complaining about - and yet it obviously wasn't good enough to save the platform.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#68

Post by kodor »

hapless wrote: post #8

This guy has teeny tiny letters hardcoded into JPGs on his web site. I can't read it. Fortunately, this means I can disregard what he has to say about UI/UX. Sometimes the medium IS the message.

The text went beyond the window edge and there was no scroll bar. I tried to select the text, but found some image in the way. I deleted the image and found that I was now looking at a pitch for some tool the author had cooked up... which was also an image. This made me so angry that just closing the window was not enough. Fifteen minutes later, I'm still thinking about how wrong the site is. That's quite a call to action. I wonder if there's some way to harness it?

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#69

Post by smacktoward »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #23
hapless wrote: post #8

This guy has teeny tiny letters hardcoded into JPGs on his web site. I can't read it. Fortunately, this means I can disregard what he has to say about UI/UX. Sometimes the medium IS the message.

Any other areas of your life where you throw the baby out with the bath water? Someone over salt some food so you assume that everything they say or do with food is wrong? Refuse to ever get a lift with a friend because they forgot to indicate once so obviously they can't be trusted to drive? I'm not wild about the way he's presented his website but I'm still willing to look at his ideas about e-mail workflow with an…

If someone presents himself to me as a professional cook and then proceeds to over-salt the food, yes, I do feel completely comfortable disregarding his culinary opinions from that point forward.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#70

Post by Zash »

smacktoward wrote: post #66
untog wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realise that this may sound like I'm descending into fanboyism, but this is actually something that annoys me about iOS- it's far, far too app-centric. Take Windows Phone for example: tap a contact in WP and you see their tweets, Facebook messages, your SMS and e-mail history with them. The messages app integrates SMS and Live chat seamlessly. Ideally this system would open up to allow any third party to plug into…

Yeah, even webOS made a creditable stab in this direction. And that was what, three years ago?

Maemo on the N900 is pretty great too.
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