Gmail - The Missing Features

Everyone loves GMail. Well everyone except maybe the guys at Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail Windows Live Email Experience. Previously I wrote a short post explaining one reason why GMail is that much better than its two competitors; It shows users the things they want to see.

On my own blog recently, I made the satanic suggestion that Mozilla Firefox could be improved. Over a thousand people took time out of their day to explain how wrong I was, either by comments (on my blog, digg, reddit, or other peoples blogs), or by sending me angry emails. The jist of most of the feedback was simply “Firefox is good enough, you don’t need these extras, you can achieve it through plugins”. As I said in my follow up post…

If you stop developing your product once it’s good enough, you’re leaving a big sign above your head saying “Free market Space! Insert better product here”.

It’s easy to pick out atrocious applications and find ways to improve them. It’s a lot harder to fine tune applications that are already high quality. That’s what we’re trying to do here. What little things would make GMail work better for you?

Starting from the top

Pic of Current GMAil top Bar

Google knows damn well I don’t use Photos, Web, Groups, or Documents when I’m logged in under my personal account. However, I use Google Reader almost every time I log in, but it’s hidden away in the middle of a dropdown that includes 14 other obscure services. The other service I use (and love) is Google Analytics, and that one doesn’t even make it to the party! Why can’t the title bar offer me the services I use most often?

Picture of Suggested Enhancements

Account Settings

A lot of people I know keep two or more GMail accounts, I keep three. One for me, one for my work(iQ), and one for Bigulo stuff. I would kill for the ability to tell Google that I own these three accounts, and for a nice little dropdown to switch from account to account. It’d be nice to remove the excise of the lengthy log out log in process.

Picture of Suggested Enhancements

Filters for your mail

Pic of Current GMAil Filter

One thing that Thunderbird, Outlook, Evolution etc. have that GMail is lacking is the ability to create intelligent contextual filters. If I’m reading a mail from news@ixda.org, and I click “Create a Filter”, it should give me a few intelligent options as opposed to ten form inputs laid out like they dropped out of someones pocket.

Pic of Suggested GMail filter

Calendar

If I send an email to Lar saying “Meeting with $client in Morgan Hotel at 7pm on 8/10/2007″ why can’t the same magic that works in Google Calendar kick in, highlighting the even, asking which calendar I want to add it to?
Update: I’ve heard this one is on the way, in fact Lar says he’s seen it already. It didn’t happen while I was creating this mockup anyway.

Pic of Suggested GMail Add Event

Attachments

Have you ever sent an email but forgot to add the attachment? Of course you have!
Wouldn’t it be nice if Google could warn you what you’re about to do? If I use the phrase “Please find attached”, or “I’ve attached” , or “is attached” in the content of my portion of the mail, I’d love it if this happened…

Pic of GMail with alert saying document is not attached.

Speaking of attachments, does that long blue bar that reads “View as HTML Open as a Google document Download” annoy anyone else? There is no visual distinction between three very different actions, I’ve clicked the wrong one more than once and brought my browser to a halt as Google Documents tries to interpret a 140 page word document. Something as simple as a gray bar would help here. This really is designed by a programmer …

Pic of Attachments Menu

Please understand the images used here were all created in about 5 minutes using Paint, Gimp, or Visio. They represent the feature I want, not the way I want it to look.

I am married to GMail at this point, I can’t see myself using any other mail client for the foreseeable future. If it sounds like I am criticizing it, I really am not. Behind every great application are users pushing it to be just that little bit better, and that’s all I’m trying to do here.

Your turn

It’s easy to criticize my suggestions as things that “you don’t want/need/write plugins for”, so instead try coming up with your own. Post them here, or blog them and link back here. Or mail them to me, and I’ll add them here.

Categories Design, Technology, Usability