Gmail Concept: Task Management
As a college student, I receive tons of emails every day. A lot of them do not need immediate actions or could be postponed to reply later. People end up forgetting important emails and fail to finish tasks in time. To solve this problem, people star emails or set up a reminder in another app. Yet, starring becomes ineffective when people star too many emails. Switching to another app is time-consuming.
Snooze reminds users of the email again at a future time. However, many users complain the feature is confusing and ineffective.
How might Gmail better remind users to check important emails? How might Gmail help users easily distinguish the most urgent emails without scrolling for a long time?
Understanding Why It’s Hard to Manage Tasks
User Research
My goal was to understand how people manage tasks received through emails. With this goal in mind, I conducted user interviews with 6 users to discover the pain points. Here are some key problems:
Gmail has been trying to solve the problem by incorporating a new feature called Snooze. Users can choose when they’d like the email to pop up at the top of your inbox again. I then decided to interview 3 users who have experience using the Snooze feature.
Users don’t engage with Snooze feature because:
- Users find it confusing because emails will disappear from the inbox folder.
- Users still cannot set up a reminder easily because they need to go through many steps to snooze an email.
- Users want something as easy as starring emails.
Defining the People Problem
After many rounds of user interviews, I found that not being able to keep track of important emails easily upset users:
People want to prioritize tasks assigned through emails they receive, but they have a hard time doing so because 1)people often forget about important emails 2) it’s hard to identify the most urgent emails
Ideation: Evaluating Opportunities
I recruited my friends Mona and Hannah who were also experiencing this problem to help me out. After exploring a few rounds, we decided to create a task list:
Helping People Out From the Ocean of Emails
Initial Exploration
After I decided to do a to-do list for emails, I was still unsure whether I should build upon the existing snooze feature or create a new task feature instead. Thus, I choose to ask my users. Many people mentioned one pain point of snooze is that emails would go back to the inbox after the snooze passed. If they happened to be busy, they are likely to miss the snooze again. They want to have a section that would keep their important tasks. I decided to go with the task feature.
Exploring How to Create Tasks & Display Tasks
The process of task management can be narrowed down into four steps. For this case study, I chose to focus on two of the most essential steps: how to create tasks and how to display tasks.
Final Prototype
Design Iterations: Exploring How to Create Tasks
Option 1: Task name + dates + details
Pros: Enforce users to complete the relevant information right away. Less likely to miss tasks.
Cons: It could be demanding and time-consuming when users are on the go or don’t have enough time. Users might postpone creating the task and end up forgetting it.
Option 2: Smart suggestions
Pros: Quickly and easily create tasks.
Cons: Users cannot create independent tasks other than what they receive through emails. They don’t have control over the tasks if smart suggestions go wrong.
Option 3: Task name
Pros: Users can create tasks they want quickly without filling in all the information. They have the option to add information later.
Cons: Risks of forgetting to set due dates and missing the deadline
Destressing Task Management
Many people mentioned that it is sometimes stressful to manage tasks, especially when they have works piled up. One goal of the task list is to make this process less stressful.
I experimented with different layouts of the task list. I tried bundles, toggle and categories. I used bundles for overdue tasks in A&D because I thought hiding overdue tasks could reduce stress. However, users said two separate bundles in A is confusing and they don’t care that much about tasks past remind date. According to my users, they rank pinned tasks as the most important so they want to see them immediately. C fails to accomplish this goal. I gave up the idea of the bundle and choose B because it is the most direct and intuitive way of presenting tasks.
Visual Design
Moving on to high-fidelity, I chose to do more explorations on different UI elements to categorize tasks. Option B is chosen after I compare the pros and cons of each option:
Option A: Date is highlighted but can be misleading because it is not in chronological order
Option B: Quickly see overdue cases and able to view tasks based on the urgency level (chosen)
Option C: Big icons differentiate pinned tasks from others but icons are repetitive and redundant
Option D: Task content is highlighted but users can not quickly tell when tasks are due
Option E: Section headers are straightforward but are inconsistent with Google’s material design system
Further Considerations: Display High-priority Tasks and Simplify Task Creation
Based on my user interviews, I noticed that users not only create high-key&important tasks such as an appointment with a professor or an internship interview but also create low-key tasks like attending G-body meeting and picking up parcels. That being said, they need a way to distinguish the level of urgency. Therefore, I explored the “Pinned Tasks” feature.
I ended up choosing A because swiping is more consistent with the design of the main page. C would display more pinned tasks but horizontal scroll disrupts the vertical flow of emails. B is also visually off compared to the design of the Inbox page.
Making tasks more accessible
During user testings, users mention that sometimes they might just want to create tasks without attaching to any email. If every task needs to come from an email, the scope of this feature would be very limited and not feasible. Since the existing floating action button makes composing email accessible on every page, I decided to build upon it by creating a secondary floating action button.
Understanding Gmail Visual Designs
Here is the toolkit I generated from my analysis.
What I Learned
Designing Within an Existing System
While I was designing and iterating through different versions, one thing that I always kept in mind is to maintain the harmony of the Google design system. When assessing my designs, I always ask myself: Is this something that a Google designer would do? Would this fit in the design system? If the answer is no, even when the design works perfectly with user testings, I know it is still not the optimal choice.
Aligning With Google’s Business Goal
Designs can never detach from realistic constraints and business goals. Even though this is a personal project, I still try to put myself in the shoes of a real designer in the industry. I constantly remind myself of Google’s mission:
to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
I will ask myself while designing: Does your design make information more accessible and useful? Would it improve the organization of information within Gmail? Does it alleviate information overload?
Reflection
This is the first time that I’ve conducted a case study on an existing IOS app from start to end. I learned a lot in terms of product thinking. Instead of pursuing the feeling of “looking good”, I understand it is much more important to design with intentions. My design certainly has many limitations. Looking back, I did not do enough explorations on visual designs. In the future, I will also focus on visual designs along with product thinking.
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This is a case study for a project in Intro to Digital Product Design. I am in no way affiliated with Gmail.
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I am a sophomore at Cornell University, pursuing a major in Information Science. Feel free to contact me through yw299@cornell.edu!
