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Re-Designing the classic email client

vanschneider.com

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Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#71

Post by dclowd9901 »

the_gipsy wrote: post #51

Uh, let me see. Attempt nº 5712 to revolutionize the way we use email. Tell me more. "Mark as read" is useless? I thought nowaday we had "archive", "search" and such from gmail... no mention of that. OK then, let's see what you offer... "Clutter-free interface", "clean typography" and the mystery option "what you really need"? Are you (f) kidding me? This can't scream "I'm thunderbird but made by graphical designers"…

I still maintain we should ignore the "problem" with email and instead focus on making it easier just to share stuff. As it stands, it's always a crap shoot when I send a file to someone as to whether or not they'll actually be able to read it.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#72

Post by mattmanser »

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.

That's cufon, give the guy a break. That was cutting edge two years ago. We've gone from no-one but IE supporting font-face to lots of people in a remarkably short-time.

HTML Zealots! I despair sometimes :)

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#73

Post by koenigdavidmj »

blhack wrote: post #62
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 differe…

> 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.

That should be up to the other end to determine. I should not need to say `SMS wakes me up, email doesn't' when they are fundamentally the same thing. That's an implementation detail.

The right way to do this is for the other person to be able to tell the phone what they want, regardless of protocol: messages from my Nagios system at work, or family members, should awaken me. Anything else should be ignored until morning.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#74

Post by corywatilo »

Postbox does everything he mentioned, and has for quite some time. It might behoove this guy to do some due diligence in the space, or maybe take time to explain how his designs are better than current apps.

Also, while his designs look "nice", they are over-designed and would start looking stale very quickly. When you're building a product that is used on a daily basis, less "design" is more. But I'm sure as a result of this post, he'll find some clients and make some money from it, so good for him.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#75

Post by blhack »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #73
blhack wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differe…

> 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. That should be up to the other end to determine. I should not need to say `SMS wakes me up, email doesn't' when they are fundamentally the same thing. That's an implementation detail. The right way to do this is for the other person to be able to tell the phone what they want,…

Sometimes I do want my friends to wake me up in the middle of the night:

"I'm drunk, I need a ride home."

"Can I stay at your house."

"$emergency"

"Hey, I really just need somebody to talk to..."

etc. etc.

I don't want to have to go through my entire contact list, individually setting people who can and can't wake me up at night. There is already a mechanism for this, it's called "human interaction". My friends know who can and can't wake me up; they know this because they're my friends.

By giving them my phone number, I'm trusting them to respect that, and only wake me up if they need to.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#76

Post by ben0x539 »

huhtenberg wrote: post #40
dpark wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kinds of comments aren't necessarily inappropriate here. When someone's writing about "great interaction design", it's reasonable to point out the terrible interaction design of their site. If someone were discussing "great font design" on their blog and using Comic Sans, it'd be pretty surprising if they were not attacked.

Well, if the top comment starts with "holy shit", it typically drags all other comments in the same direction. Also, questioning someone's font survey by attacking their use of Comic Sans is, bluntly put, retarded. You still need to account for the quality of the content to make a judgement.

I'm sorry, I didn't really want for my remark to become the top comment.

I left it intentionally brief and shallow because I didn't want to give the impression that the sentiment expressed reflects my opinion of the entire article. I think the expletive helps convey that it was a unrefined first impression on that single aspect.

I do think that pointing out unnecessarily bad accessibility is a valid statement. Maybe I should have clarified that the content was entirely invisible without javascript enabled, but I am a bit disappointed that we're just stopping to see full-page flash applets masquerading as websites, and are immediately transitioning to reimplementing that same user-unfriendly approach in javascript.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#77

Post by pfraze »

blhack wrote: post #62
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 differe…

It's time to cook something! How about an omelette? You need to scramble the eggs first-- thankfully, there's a tunnel between your fridge and the scrambler. You press the button, and 4 eggs roll into the bowl.

While that scrambles, it's time to chop vegetables. You'd like to do onions, but the tube from the fridge to the chopper only fits carrots and asparagus. Not great for an omelette, but good enough.

Time to cook. Unfortunately, your chopper is out of date, and it doesn't work with your pan model. The scrambler, well, it's actually a mixer and was only meant for cakes, so it goes directly into the oven.

So you put special bowls in the fridge, suck the scrambled eggs and vegetables back through the tubes, take the bowl out, store it on dropbox, and give your pan a link.

God, this sucks.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#78

Post by pbreit »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #73
blhack wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differe…

> 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. That should be up to the other end to determine. I should not need to say `SMS wakes me up, email doesn't' when they are fundamentally the same thing. That's an implementation detail. The right way to do this is for the other person to be able to tell the phone what they want,…

It's much easier and humane to accomplish this with multiple applets with different characteristics.

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#79

Post by ori_b »

mattmanser wrote: post #72
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.

That's cufon, give the guy a break. That was cutting edge two years ago. We've gone from no-one but IE supporting font-face to lots of people in a remarkably short-time. HTML Zealots! I despair sometimes :)

Forget about font-faces. How about supporting the default fonts and sizes that I selected, so that I don't go blind trying to read the page?

Re: Re-Designing the classic email client

#80

Post by [deleted] »

moeffju wrote: post #43

Sparrow is so close to this. All it's lacking is the all-attachments view and the prioritizing, but you can hack the prioritizing easily enough with Gmail labels. Even then, I don't think that's enough, though. I think e-mail nowadays needs to be more of a TODO manager and less about messaging.

[deleted]
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