The take away here should be, if you're going to spend time redesigning email clients, you should take an equal or greater amount of time laying it out on your website. So much for sharing ideas. When half the comments trash your WordPress template before they even get to the subject, you know it's a tough crowd.
Re-Designing the classic email client
111–120 of 222 posts
Re: Re-Designing the classic email client
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 coo…
I'm not sure how this really addresses anything in the parent post. Sure, interoperability sucks, but surely you're not suggesting that the solution is to glom everything together into a single monolithic app that does everything? By all means, fix the fact that tools are painful when you want them to work together. Maybe unify a few of those communications tools.
> Let me communicate with a unified UI and unified contacts.
This was from the top comment. It is suggesting the solution is to glom everything together. I think the comment you are responding to is concurring with their parent comment by providing an illustration of the concerns raised.
Re: Re-Designing the classic email client
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks really bad on my retina Macbook pro, all pixelated. If he's to do that JPG stuff, he ought to include x2 images :)
The retina Macbook is going to be in a small minority for a while yet- don't expect people to be leaping out of their seats to accomodate you!
Catering to these users now will preserve the design for the next round of display technology. We all know the future belongs to these types of displays.
Re: Re-Designing the classic email client
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like a lot of snark, it's not really that bright, but it's agressive and presenting itself as clever. Not all of those things deal with the same category of work. > You might want to send a message to somebody and not care how, but I do care how. But why do people have to remember how? Why can't I send off a message and have a computer figure out the preferred way to send the message. Remember, a big stakeholder in t…
If I send 50 SMS to someone who is charged 10c per message, I have cost them $5.00. So I should care whether I send them an SMS vs. an email. Someone without a data plan doesn't have constant access to email. Maybe they only check it on a computer every few days. So if I want to send an instant message, SMS might be necessary. Randomly sending an email vs. an SMS does not "just work". Nor does forcing each person to…
> If I send 50 SMS to someone who is charged 10c per message, I have cost them $5.00. So I should care whether I send them an SMS vs. an email.
Yes. You're supporting my point.
> Someone without a data plan doesn't have constant access to email. Maybe they only check it on a computer every few days. So if I want to send an instant message, SMS might be necessary. > Randomly sending an email vs. an SMS does not "just work".
Again, yes, this is it exactly. Things right now are very far from it "just works." Things are horrendously complex, and it often sucks for one reason or another. Some people can manage all of this complexity in their heads, but that's certainly not true of everybody. What's needed is an integrated vertical.
> Nor does forcing each person to communicate to a computer some elaborate policy for how to reach them best.
True, that, though being able to set that just once might be better for some of the tech savvy than having to keep track of it all. That wouldn't fit everyone, though. What if someone could communicate their preferences to something like Siri after the fact, with a machine learning system adjusting preferences taking into account all of the communication stakeholders?
Re: Re-Designing the classic email client
#115Don'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…
You must have felt the same way I did about the original Google Wave announcement.
So much potential squandered by a poor design team. I've always hoped some developers would turn the code into what it was meant to be.
Re: Re-Designing the classic email client
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 coo…
I'm not sure how this really addresses anything in the parent post. Sure, interoperability sucks, but surely you're not suggesting that the solution is to glom everything together into a single monolithic app that does everything? By all means, fix the fact that tools are painful when you want them to work together. Maybe unify a few of those communications tools.
No, there just needs to be interoperation layers like file systems, sockets, stdio, etc. In the kitchen metaphor, it's your hands.
Re: Re-Designing the classic email client
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
The retina Macbook is going to be in a small minority for a while yet- don't expect people to be leaping out of their seats to accomodate you!
Catering to these users now will preserve the design for the next round of display technology. We all know the future belongs to these types of displays.
Sure, in a perfect world when you have no other pressing issues to attend to. If you do, making @2x versions of every image on your site is going to slide down the scale of necessity.
Re: Re-Designing the classic email client
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I've been wishing there was a layer between my phone and me that said, effectively, "You've reached David's phone - if this is an emergency or he's expecting your call, press 1; otherwise, press 2 to set up an appointment for a later call, or 3 leave a voicemail message." Where 2 would talk to my calendar and ideally their calendar and figure out a time that works for both of us without my involvement. Sure, people c…
with gvoice, people can leave a voicemail that gets transcripted (vaguely) and texted to me. I glance at the text and decide if I want to call them back or not.
Re: Re-Designing the classic email client
#119Don'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…
"All I want to do is feed myself. Why on earth do I need to have so many different things to do it?"
Because good help is so hard to find.
Re: Re-Designing the classic email client
#120This 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?
Ahh Sorry didn't realize. I see the problem now.