Born, raised, and currently residing in the GTA 🇨🇦, I’m a recent graduate of Sheridan College’s Honours Bachelor of Interaction Design (Class of 2020 🎓!).
I like to dabble in a bit of everything; illustration, motion graphics, 3D modelling, traditional painting, etc. No matter what it is, I’m always up for the challenge. 🎨🖌
But of course, my expertise lie in the UX design process and visual design ❤️. I pride myself in putting lots of care into my work, to me the big picture is just as important as the little details.
Thanks for stopping by!👋 If you like what you’ve seen and wanna talk you can find me here:
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* I’m also currently in search of job opportunities, click here to view my resume.
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As a precursor to my thesis project, I began by first examining the email system as a whole. Being a service that’s managed to stick around since the very beginning of the human-computer relationship, it’s of course riddled with issues and plenty of inefficiencies. But seeing how it’s managed to withstand the test of time, there’s reason to believe we’re not getting rid of it anytime soon, so what can we do to make email something that better suits users of the 21st century?
Duration: 2 Months (Fall 2019)
Tools: Figma, Aftereffects
Project Type: Individual, UX Research, Visual Design
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What once was a revolutionary method of communication has now become a wasteland of unopened promotional emails and receipts. But despite it’s several shortcomings, you absolutely need an email to do almost everything online. So why is it that after 50 years, with the internet/users changing so rapidly, that email hasn’t really grown to adapt?
Besides new features added and visual changes, it's core functions remains pretty much unchanged, which is odd when email has come to play so many roles (ie. identity verification, promotional news, professional communication, etc.).
To learn more about people’s relationship/habit with email, I decided to hold a group discussion with a group of 4 students as well as a few other individuals with varying email usage.
After speaking to them, the relationship that people have with their email(s) can be broken down in 4 points:
Email still remains the preferred method of identification due to privacy concerns of other alternatives (ie. Sign in with Facebook, Google, etc.) It also remains the most acceptable method to contact someone professionally because it provides a boundary that other services don't. It also remains the preferred way to receive news and communication from companies.
Inboxes can become easily overwhelmed if not managed regularly, especially when company's abuse their direct line to consumers and send way more than should be acceptable. This is one reason why most people have up to 3+ emails, because it's easier to start over when things get out of hand, or they need multiple accounts to keep things separated. .
"40 notifications is normal, I've learnt to just ignore them" says one participant. Out of everyone I spoke to, only one person reported actually cleaning their inbox daily. Another participant stated that at the rate emails accumulate it's like fighting a battle you can't win. With everything online directing back to email, if you want to use the internet, this is a reality that you just have to accept.
Email isn't instant messaging, it's typically reserved for longer-form communication, however you can receiving/responding to messages instantly because of today's technology. This makes it hard for users to set boundaries with email. Many participants claim to check their emails obsessively in fear of missing something and some are too afraid to look, overwhelmed by the responsibility it represents.
Based on my research, these are the issues that need to be addressed:
If you do a search online, you can find several solutions others have developed that address each of these issues, but what if we wanted to address all these issues with one solution that would withstand the test of time? We need an updated email system that's self-maintaining and gives back control to users.
Design Principle Tested: Five Hat Racks/Chunking
Test: Card Sorting- User were given several emails and told to organize them into category they believe the email fits.
Rationale: From my research these are the categories that majority of email will fit into. Grouping emails into set category aims to reduce confusion, increase transparency and allow for seamless organization.
Result: The first set of categories had very varied results, after making adjustments to categories based on feedback, results were much better.
Design Principle Tested: Mental Model (Time vs. Priority)
Test: A/B Testing
Rationale: Email is not for instant messaging, so we need to allow people to set boundaries. What would happen if we treated email like traditional mail, only received during certain times of the day or what if we were able to control who can reach us and when they can reach us like a phone extension?
Result: People preferred the priority-based control, because they didn’t want to put limitations on their availability when they’re not in a place in their career to do so, but there are people such as those of higher seniority who would benefit from controlling their available hours.
Design Principle Tested: Flexibility-Usability Trade-Off
Test: Walk-through
Rationale: Since large majority of emails are for professional reasons anyways, why not reduce the confusion that associated with email writing and time spent, and just have standardized email templates for everything?
Result: Most people did not like this, it felt “too easy” and “unpersonal”, though there were those who said if this did become something everyone adopted they could go with it.
Design Principle Tested: Chunking
Test: A/B Testing
Rationale: Separating different emails into separate categories will help with clarity and reduces confusion.
Result: Users preferred to have the most important email category opened and the other minimized rather than having them all open at once.
Email 2.0 is a version of email that aims to eliminate the major issues that modern day users face with the current email system.
Every type of email sent will be categorized by the sender themselves in order to reach the the right inbox. The subject line has also been further simplified to further transparency. Each category is also represented by a particular colour/icon to further create distinction between them.
User can control what emails they can see upfront and automatically older emails will be hidden and unaccounted for (no build up of unopened emails). If the user does want to look at the older emails they can just click on "See Older Messages".
Control and let others know when you're available, as well as create different email branches to control who has direct access to you.
I think that with this being a very theoretical project with no limitations, I took a lot of big design risks. But this project also helped me learn how important it is to set limits, especially when there are none, otherwise you end up trying to solve too many problems at once.
After this project I decided for my final thesis I would focus on email writing since out of all the areas it seemed to be the one with fewest solutions available out there.
