Designed on Figma | May 2022

Email has been the forefront of communication in the business world as well as in personal affairs, and it doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon. Since it’s meager beginnings as a common directory where anyone on there could see a person’s message to advancing into exclusively linked network to becoming even more privitized for individual use, it’s evident that through the decades engineers have consistently found ways to improve email. Today, even with its advancements, there are still subtle ways in which its efficiency and the amount of time the modern email user spends in it can be improved, and I’d like to share my ideas in how.

I gathered recent data from users that focused on what features they liked about the email they use and on what features did they feel could be improved on. Out of the twenty-three users that were sharing their feedback, these three were the top reoccuring pain-points:

• 12 commented about the convenience it is to have a multiple accounts feature so they can separate work from personal emails

• 8 appreciated or brought up the lack of organization when it came to saving, deleting, or archiving multiple messages

• 6 mentioned the ease of using email and having a simple functionality that is clear to grasp

Other notable pain-point that were also mentioned include an adding contacts feature, storage limits, search ability, and customer service.

Rather than creating an entirely new email platform, the goal of this case study was to set up what we generally know to be as email and then redesign select features that were derived from the main user pain-points from both the research that I gathered as well as from the provided user persona prompt. Here are the changes that I made after fleshing out a standard email app:

Due to time constraints, my wireframes are very focused and not as fleshed out as one would properly be. Here though, they specify how the main pages will be viewed as well as how a reply would be made and the animation of the sidebar.

A Less Formal Way Of Responding

Instead of the generic method of looking for the reply icon, which in itself can be time-consuming as well as frustrating to a user, this feature has been rearranged and augmented into a layout that many are already familiar with: text messaging boxes. To save time in responding to an email, the user would only need to look down. To the lower right is even an optional chat box feature to further bid the formalities of responding to emails goodbye.

Upon clicking the message box, options clearly become available in how the user can send a response by either replying directly, forwarding, or making it a canned response. Other options are available such as adding contacts and including attachments. Replies form into a threaded message that can easily be scrolled to and from.

Organizing Your Email To Inbox Zero

Subtle variations have been updated in order to increase the efficiency of pinning, archiving, or deleting emails. Selecting an email expands the card into organizing it into one of the three options listed.

Two other methods for deleting emails have been included so that the user can have a choice in which type works best for them.

Binding More Than One Account

The third and final addition was a clear way of binding accounts. Initially, the idea would be for the user to click the email account which would lead to a separate page where they can access their emails, but it ended up being a drop down list for quicker access.

Takeaways

As there was a time limit in getting the project finished, I tried to bring to fruition the main points of how I would bring about improvements in email. I was able to explore more on the functions of animation as well as visual design and feel that I was able to bring my main points across doing so. Looking back now, I can see how I can better the user experience of including more options for canned responses and to include notification features for binder accounts so that the user can be easily aware when a new message has been sent to them. Overall, this was a very good experience and fun project to have done.