The Problem
One problem that many computer users have is that they havemultiple email accounts, but not many easy ways to see all their inboxes at onetime. It’s partly interesting because I have this problem – I have my schoolemail address, two personal email accounts which receive a fair amount oftraffic, a work email account, and a professional email account. Frankly, it’squite hard to know what email is getting sent to each email account, especiallywhen they use different email services; and there’s a lot of friction inmanually logging into 5 or more email accounts every time I turn my computer on(friction being the time and energy needed to log in to multiple accounts, ortime and energy needed to switch windows or tabs every time you want to seeanother inbox). Several people I talked to have found their own workarounds tocheck multiple email accounts, but would like to have an interface that causesless friction in checking multiple accounts.
Within this space, I have designed an interface that allowsusers to see and reply to emails from multiple accounts simultaneously on thesame screen.
One problem that many computer users have is that they havemultiple email accounts, but not many easy ways to see all their inboxes at onetime. It’s partly interesting because I have this problem – I have my schoolemail address, two personal email accounts which receive a fair amount oftraffic, a work email account, and a professional email account. Frankly, it’squite hard to know what email is getting sent to each email account, especiallywhen they use different email services; and there’s a lot of friction inmanually logging into 5 or more email accounts every time I turn my computer on(friction being the time and energy needed to log in to multiple accounts, ortime and energy needed to switch windows or tabs every time you want to seeanother inbox). Several people I talked to have found their own workarounds tocheck multiple email accounts, but would like to have an interface that causesless friction in checking multiple accounts.
Within this space, I have designed an interface that allowsusers to see and reply to emails from multiple accounts simultaneously on thesame screen.
The Users
Broadly, the users of this interface would:
· Have multiple email accounts
· Have a high volume, or emails of high importance, (depending on which the user values more) received across multiple accounts
· Tend to work in time-sensitive environments
Broadly, the users of this interface would:
· Have multiple email accounts
· Have a high volume, or emails of high importance, (depending on which the user values more) received across multiple accounts
· Tend to work in time-sensitive environments
Design Goals
There are some current solutions that people have:
Forwarding
One thing that I noticed a lot of people doing was havingtheir email forwarded to one account. However, there are drawbacks to thisdesign: there’s no easy visual way to tell which email has been received bywhich account; they all appear as the same-looking email in the same inbox. Thisalso becomes more difficult when using multiple email providers.
Multiple Tabs
The “brute force” method is opening multiple tabs orwindows, and logging into several email accounts at once. This, however,requires a lot of time and energy. The main drawback to this approach is thatmultiple email accounts cannot be displayed simultaneously. Given the contextof email, it often runs in the background, while users do other tasks (internetbrowsing, word processing, etc). As such, generally only 1 tab or window stayson “top” in the background. This means that the user can only passively monitor1 email account while doing other tasks, and it may be easy to miss importantor a high volume of emails that are being received by an email account whosetab or window is not on “top.”
There are some current solutions that people have:
Forwarding
One thing that I noticed a lot of people doing was havingtheir email forwarded to one account. However, there are drawbacks to thisdesign: there’s no easy visual way to tell which email has been received bywhich account; they all appear as the same-looking email in the same inbox. Thisalso becomes more difficult when using multiple email providers.
Multiple Tabs
The “brute force” method is opening multiple tabs orwindows, and logging into several email accounts at once. This, however,requires a lot of time and energy. The main drawback to this approach is thatmultiple email accounts cannot be displayed simultaneously. Given the contextof email, it often runs in the background, while users do other tasks (internetbrowsing, word processing, etc). As such, generally only 1 tab or window stayson “top” in the background. This means that the user can only passively monitor1 email account while doing other tasks, and it may be easy to miss importantor a high volume of emails that are being received by an email account whosetab or window is not on “top.”
This storyboard depicts how the "multiple tab" approach to multiple email accounts could be problematic
My design goals to correct this:
1. An interface with 1 login per session, that logsusers into multiple accounts (though this is really more of the backend, andnot part of the main design interface)
2. Displaying multiple email accountssimultaneously
3. Creating visual separation to indicate whichemails have been received by which account.
1. An interface with 1 login per session, that logsusers into multiple accounts (though this is really more of the backend, andnot part of the main design interface)
2. Displaying multiple email accountssimultaneously
3. Creating visual separation to indicate whichemails have been received by which account.
Initial Ideas
After my initial brainstorming, and some initial discussionswith other students, I came to a draft of EmailDock:
After my initial brainstorming, and some initial discussionswith other students, I came to a draft of EmailDock:
EmailDock, turns emails into actual feeds, similar to how Tweetdeckdisplays tweets and Facebook feeds. Several emails would be displayed in feedcolumns – given the narrow space, emails could be displayed similar to how theyare displayed on mobile devices, which are also thin. While changing theconventions of how emails are displayed (though arguably it applies mobileemail conventions to computers), it reinforces the mental model of feeds, asprovides visual distinction by physically separating the spaces where emailsare displayed. I tried out different variations on this theme as well.
Variation 1: Here I divided it into 4 quadrants rather than columns.
Variation 2: Here I included boxes in the bottom 1/3 of the page todisplay folders, and users could drag and drop their emails into the appropriatefolders.
Variation 3: And here I included boxes in the bottom third of the page tobe used for chat, or Twitter, Facebook, or RSS feeds.
Final Design and Justifications
In the end, the main product looked more like the originaldesign I had, though with some modifications, as seen in the next section.
In the end, the main product looked more like the originaldesign I had, though with some modifications, as seen in the next section.
A storyboardof how users would interact with EmailDock
A sketch of the “final” design of the interface.
Below is a listing of the inspirations features, andinspiration:
- Users would have 1 password and username forEmailDock. Once logging in, EmailDock will pull emails from the email accountsthat users have already set up (in the same way that an iPhone will pull emailsfrom multiple email accounts). The program will automatically check for emailsand refresh the columns continuously as new emails arrive.
- Users can click on “Compose” to write a newemail (and select any address they’ve associated with EmailDock to send itfrom), or click on an email to read it.
- Clicking on “columns” would allow users to addnew columns, delete columns, or reorder the columns they have.
- Clicking on the triangles at the top of eachcolumn would allow the user to reorder where that column appears, or to deletethat column.
- A settings menu is placed in the conventionalupper right corner.
- 1 inspiration I had was Tweetdeck, a web appthat allows users to see multiple Twitter feeds. I wanted to apply a similarmental model to emails, putting it in a system that sees emails as tweets.
- Another inspiration had to do with how todisplay emails in narrow columns. 4 columns of information across my screenmade me realize each column is about the width of my iPod touch, which receivesemail. So my inspiration for how to display the feed of messages was inspiredby that
- I included the ability to chat, as well as theability to have columns show specific categories or labels, as those were 2functions that came up in my talks with students. While the tradeoff is that itmakes the interface more complicated to use (by having more options about whattypes of columns the user can add), I feel that enough students brought it upto make it worth including.
In all, I think EmailDock is a worthy interface whichfulfills the goals indicated earlier, and goes a long way in solving theproblem of multiple email accounts. It allows the simultaneous display of multipleemail accounts, while also creating visual separation so that users can easilytell what email belongs with which account.
See the full story at: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5u69IwH61WSY2tDVG9kUGppUlU
- Users would have 1 password and username forEmailDock. Once logging in, EmailDock will pull emails from the email accountsthat users have already set up (in the same way that an iPhone will pull emailsfrom multiple email accounts). The program will automatically check for emailsand refresh the columns continuously as new emails arrive.
- Users can click on “Compose” to write a newemail (and select any address they’ve associated with EmailDock to send itfrom), or click on an email to read it.
- Clicking on “columns” would allow users to addnew columns, delete columns, or reorder the columns they have.
- Clicking on the triangles at the top of eachcolumn would allow the user to reorder where that column appears, or to deletethat column.
- A settings menu is placed in the conventionalupper right corner.
- 1 inspiration I had was Tweetdeck, a web appthat allows users to see multiple Twitter feeds. I wanted to apply a similarmental model to emails, putting it in a system that sees emails as tweets.
- Another inspiration had to do with how todisplay emails in narrow columns. 4 columns of information across my screenmade me realize each column is about the width of my iPod touch, which receivesemail. So my inspiration for how to display the feed of messages was inspiredby that
- I included the ability to chat, as well as theability to have columns show specific categories or labels, as those were 2functions that came up in my talks with students. While the tradeoff is that itmakes the interface more complicated to use (by having more options about whattypes of columns the user can add), I feel that enough students brought it upto make it worth including.
In all, I think EmailDock is a worthy interface whichfulfills the goals indicated earlier, and goes a long way in solving theproblem of multiple email accounts. It allows the simultaneous display of multipleemail accounts, while also creating visual separation so that users can easilytell what email belongs with which account.
See the full story at: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5u69IwH61WSY2tDVG9kUGppUlU
