Gmail Is Just Email

I hope this story is true. Out of necessity I have a few Gmail accounts, and apart from the large storage offered I have always hated it. It isn't that it doesn't work well (other than the occasional outage). It's that they went with an interesting set of ideas to reinvent the email user experience (UX) that I find so non-intuitive that this software geek finds it extraordinary irritating.

Feature like conversations (per the referenced article by Henry Blodget), tags and other peculiarities are very interesting ideas. They are also just not what most users expect or, in many cases, will accept. They gave way some time back by offering folders -- just like other email systems -- which I found to be a great relief. Google seemed to be so enamoured of search that they expected the insertion of a few key attributes (tags and keywords) and auto-linking of messages (conversations, or threads) would allow users to find what they needed via a search box.

It was all very interesting and worth the experiment, but apart from what seems to be a minority of enthusiasts for this approach, Gmail's peculiarities have been mostly tolerated, not appreciated. Google is slow if not resistant to user feedback, and I wondered if they would ever change Gmail's UX any further.

Even if this latest change bruises a few egos among their staff, it is worthwhile. I applaud them for doing it since it will most likely benefit them (and me). As they found with their mass storage offer, there are ways to differentiate their services other than adopting innovative, though non-intuitive, UX strategies.