This blog entry is off topic from my usual
app dev related publications. Several years ago I worked on an IBM project
"Reinventing EMail". At that time we came up with many ideas
how to improve the mail experience.
One of the ideas was how to improve the search functionality. Mike O'Brien,
Greg Klouda and I wrote a patent
SEARCH
BAR WITH INTELLIGENT PARAMETRIC SEARCH STATEMENT GENERATION.
Below is some context why we wrote this patent.
After years of trying to organize mails in folders, at some point I gave
up. Now I only have one folder called "old mails" where I move
everything into that I don't want to delete but don't have to work on anymore.
I think "folders are dead" or at least shouldn't be used anymore.
I experienced that folders don't help me. After I moved mails in folders
I often forgot in which folders I moved specific mails anyway. The internet
doesn't have folders either. Information is found via search.
Search results for mails can easily be improved by appreciating the nature
of mails. When you search for something in the internet, often you look
for information you've never seen before. For mails that's different since
you often remember some additional metadata, e.g. who else was in the mail
thread, when roughly did you read the mail (yesterday, last week, last
month), sometimes you remember whether the mail had an attachment, link,
etc. Searching for mails is in most cases information retrieval rather
than searching for potentially non existing information.
Most email clients today have "parametric search" functionality.
In the patent however we tried this experience to be more like the experience
for internet searches. As my professor at university always kept saying
"Don't use dialogs. Reduce the steps of enforced sequences".
The patent contains some
screenshots.
The core ideas are still valid, but today I'd do it a little differently.
Below is a rough mockup. It shows how to find a mail from Niklas Heidloff
from yesterday with the word openntf in it.
I know the debate about the need for mail folders is almost a philosophical
debate. If people are happy with their folders I'm the last person trying
to convince them to change their behaviors.
(Icons in the screenshot above are from www.famfamfam.com)