Comments on The Information Architecture of Email

scott hirsch — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:03 GMT

on the topic of deleting in gmail, it’s important to keep in mind that google does not want you to delete your email. this is a great example of the tension between business goals and user goals – google gives you free email so that they can have yet another data source to cohort-test, prototype and validate their algorithms. of course, we users want to delete our email—especially if we are inbox neat-freaks (which i am not).
Google’s solution: give us so much memory that we don’t have to delete. I’m not saying that alleviates the user frustration of looking for the delete button and not being able to find it. Rather, it is an interesting tradeoff that made it onto the final product.

Kerry — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:03 GMT

One minor complaint with Gmail and lists. If you post a message to a list, it doesn’t show up in your Inbox (even though it’s been sent to you by the list processor) until someone replies – maybe there’s a message in that.

And as it’s all new, there are some cool names up for grabs.

Mark — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:03 GMT

I’ve become a huge GMail fan, opting to use my GMail addresses over my accounts at my personal domain (which have become deluged with spam). I’ve yet to see any spam at my GMail.

The latest trick I’ve discovered is using a Bookmarks label to apply to all those one-off Sent messages my friends are subject that have valuable links in them. Now my Bookmarks are portable.

As for any inconveniences you’ve encountered when threads grow too long, I have one word, well two, for you: Keyboard Shortcuts. One of my favorite aspects of GMail is that they’ve implemented useful keyboard shortcuts into a web-based application. Want to reply to the message you’re reading? Hit “R,” or even just hit Tab in some contexts. I’m so used to using CTRL+Enter in Outlook to send (or IM or in Thunderbird, etc), that I was flabbergasted by the oversight in GMail, but when you’re composing a message, Send is just a Tab, Enter away.

ji kim — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:03 GMT

In a related note, there is an interesting video in CNET this week about simplicity and workflow for emails. Video talks about gmail, and etc.

http://news.com.com/1606-2-5275416.html

Bronwyn Boltwood — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:03 GMT

No email client I’ve used is quite right. I’d like to take Gmail’s wonderful conversation view, M2 in Opera (with fixes for certain annoyances), and some of Pocomail’s advanced capabilities, and blend them into the perfect email client. Of them all, M2 is closest now, but it isn’t quite up to snuff for me.

Levin — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:03 GMT

You should check out M2, the Mail-Client integrated in Opera.

It has a very similar approach but, as a ‘real’ desktop application is much more usable (real-time-search)

Its folders are called “filters” and like sticky searches. Really useful.

http://my.opera.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=382…

Jeremy Flint — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:03 GMT

I really like the way that Gmail allows me to apply labels to my e-mail, giving me a one-click view to see all e-mails related to work, or my personal site, or whatever.

One thing I wish they would do is allow you to apply colors to the labels, and any conversation with a certain label applied to it, that “row” would have a color corresponding to that label. Similar to how you can apply colors to your Layers in Photoshop.

Of course, I say that now, but I suppose that if you have 20 labels, the e-mail list could get quite colorful and uneasy on the eye. Maybe an option to apply colors if you wanted to…

John Hathaway — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:03 GMT

Dan, really enjoyed the article.
While reading it, I started thinking about how we designers review things like this: we praise and criticize the work, but often don’t ever think about the fact that there are real people, just like us, designing this stuff. I have no idea who designed Gmail, but do want to make sure that we acknowledge that lots of work and innovative thought went into this! Thanks Gmail design team! It’s important that we acknowledge each other as designers and not just critique the artifacts of our work.

Derek Scruggs — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:03 GMT

I’ve found that the biggest improvement in email mangement for me came with a shift in how I think about email, courtesy of the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen.

Without going into a lot of detail here, Allen breaks down the way we process and act on information that flows into our inbox (whethere e-mail or real world), and gives you some great mental tools for coping with the flood. The net result for me is that I rarely have more than 3-4 messages in my inbox and frequently have zero – all messages gave been either responded to, filed for future reference or moved into a task list (sometime all three at once!).

At the same time, I’m also known to be a quick responder to email and for following up with people who don’t respond to me. It sounds like a lot of work and diligence, but once I got the hang of it I found it to be much easier and less stressful than anything I tried before.

David Heller — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:03 GMT

Andrew,

Actually, what is different about Gmail is not that it does threading, but HOW it does threading. Most threading metaphors still treat the separate postings as different objects that just show relationships. Gmail by default treats the different posts as the same object that CAN be separated later if the user chooses. I know I have never chosen to do that.

—dave

Andrew Tetlaw — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:02 GMT

So many articles I read talk about email threading as if it were some revolution in Email. Every mail client I have used has supported email threading: Netscape mail, Mozilla mail, Mutt and so on. The notable exceptions seem to be the commercial heavy-hitters: Outlook & Express/Lotus Notes.

It would seem that due to the exposure of most of the email using world to the MS Outlook clients, people are surprised when they see a threaded email client.

I wish article writers would point out that Email has supported threading forever, and these email clients ignore it.

Meg Houston Maker — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:02 GMT

A little off the Gmail topic here, but what I *really* want is a taxonomy I can create once and use everywhere—in email, on my hard drive, with my PDA, etc. My various applications and clients could reference it, using it as the foundation of their classification or folder system. Any time I edited the source, it would make a global change. This solves the problem of having one classification system in email, and another on my hard drive. Keeping both in alignment is a time-sink.

For example, if I start working on a new project called Foo, I want to add a category Foo to my personal taxonomy, and maybe some sub-categories called Content and Technical Specification. These new categories would automatically propagate to Entourage, the Finder, and any other application that points to my personal taxonomy. I would then have the option of overriding, deleting, or amending these new categories locally. And if the system were really smart, I could use one of the clients to push the changes back to the global file.

Laurent — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:02 GMT

if you re searching for interesting email organization, i really advice to have a look at ZOE client email.

It’s a java based client software working on ur computer just as a server. The application is working standalone and does not require any installation. Just this is already an interesting concept.

Next, i really like the way emails are organized almost like into a blog. Chronology is a key issue but the sotware also propose person, domain, subject automatic classification.

Finally, the client interface is a browser so you can just surf your email forlder.

for more infos : http://www.zoe.nu

David — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:02 GMT

Hey there,

Gmail fan here, but also an Outlook fan … Now we know that e-mail management is a VERY personal thing, so going out and making generalizations won’t be too helpful, but here goes. ;)

Just kidding … I wanted to say 1 thing about the article, is that I think that from an IA perspective the article did a great job, but it didn’t mention from a behavioral IxD perspective where Gmail really shines over other e-mail (especially webmail systems) and that is SPEED. Oh my G-d! there is like no latency in this system and where there is for processing purposes the user is kept well informed. But moving to and between messages and initiating new messages is so quick. Other triggered events are also amazingly lightning fast (perception only, which says volumes). I don’t think any multi-user web-based application architect is going to have the excuse about performance to pull out of their back-pocket when a designer comes to them and suggests something, dare we say, bold.

Now, to Heather … Categories in Outlook is underused for email management b/c it is burried. I know it is there for contacts and calendaring but never found it until you pushed me to w/ your response. I have to open the message and then go to “options” (and that is under “view” instead of “tools” where it normally is). Many know me to be agnostic in the whole MS evil/good debate. I like them and I hate them, but this one takes the cake in negativity. All they had to do was keep it on the primary form and I’d be golden. What’s even funnier is that they have it as a arrange by feature which would also be golden.

I don’t need folders. I don’t need labels. What I need are both. I need to have a view that is easy to get to, folders, that represents item that I categorized (or other facetted relationship) whether manual an automated by my rules or systemic. Gmail sorta does that as I can view a label’s list by clicking on it. What it doesn’t allow me to do is create a more robust system b/c there is no heirarchy of labels. I can’t create a taxonomy. It has to be flat.

Love Gmail … Love Outlook. ;) Want my personal hybrid. I wonder what Yahoo is going to do w/ OddPost in all this?

—dave

heath weaver — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:02 GMT

I believe that Categories in Outlook is one of the most underused features of the program. I currently only use an Inbox and an Archive in Outlook. Searching for mail is very fast as I have most mails set up with multiple categories.

So if I want to see all mail from a certain person (I have the group by selection enabled) I just click on the From header. Also, with outlooks quick search (not the advance search) I can type in a word and I get all mail containing that word without leaving my Inbox.

When archiving I just sort by message size and then drag the biggest emails into the offline Inbox (Archive) and voila.

Folders (directories) should be banished from all computers forever!