My email management, has quickly spiraled out of control. I constantly forget to reply to people, lose important emails and lose files to the sea of messages I get. Like many, I’m longing for someone to create either a desktop or web app that solves many of the issues that I’m having with Gmail and Thunderbird. So I created this mock-up of what I feel would be the perfect inbox.

Problems

• Emails ‘below the fold’ go out of sight. If I don’t remember to label them immediately when they come in, then they are often lost to my inbox forever.
• Important/urgent emails are treated just like any other email.
• Twitter has become like my second inbox, but there’s no way to integrate the two.

Solutions

• A ‘Related Emails’ module that pulls up X number of entries from my inbox and attempts to match whatever currently is being read, to things I may have missed or forgotten to reply to. My blog does this, my email should too.
• Unread reminder There should also be an area that randomly pulls unread emails and lists them. This wouldn’t be in the main window, but it’d be off to the side.
• Social Inbox For some people, I simply don’t have their email addresses but I do know them on various social networks. It’d be cool of this app could import all my contacts from all social networks it supported to allow me to communicate using whatever options are available. Of course it would also have to let us know which services are available to contact that person and give us a corresponding form for that communication (ex. If it’s Twitter 140 characters).

Other Features

• Trending/Analytics I’d like to see things like: How often I check my mail? Who sends me the most mail? Who sends me the least? Who gets replied to the least? How long do I allow new messages to sit before opening them etc. It would be like Google Analytics for my email.
• Granular SMS alerts for emails that have keywords either in the subject, body or sender. So if my mom emails “Need you to call right away.” I could have her email address flagged with the the keyword ‘call’. If those two conditions are met in the same message, I’d get an SMS alert telling me that I have an urgent email.
• Personal Assistant/Scheduler I’d also like personal assistant features that are integrated with my Calendar and ToDo list. If something like “I Want Sandy” became integrated, with a control protocol for sending queries to devices and applications, that would be ideal. Then I could do things like forward emails and appointments to my calendar and have them instantly appear.
• Logic I’d like some sort of logical filter that automatically pushes emails from people who I deem the most important to the top of the list. This is different from the Alerts feature because it would help me respond to people like clients, co-workers, and bosses with haste. This feature would learn from the Trending reports mentioned above.
• Smart Replies I’d like to be able to set up a list of conditional responses to emails. If you email between this date and this date I’ll be on vacation. If you email me between this hour and this hour I’m working. If you email me in the next ten minutes, you’ve missed me because I’m in a meeting. This would be tied to the Personal Assistant and calendar so that auto-responders automatically turn on and off without needing to think about it. However, they could be turned off temporarily or permanently by sending a message like “Auto Responder Off” via email or SMS.
• I’d like a Mobile interface to do things quickly when I’m on the go.
• Unified Web and Desktop App Why on earth are all the desktop email applications independent products from their web counterparts? I want one unified solution. This ensures that everything thought out for the online product also fully translates to the desktop product.
• Online/Offline Sync The unification mentioned above would allow for two things, syncing and online backups of desktop drafts. If you’ve ever used Evernote for taking notes, you can kinda grasp what I’m suggesting. This would allow users to theoretically never lose drafts or contacts.
• CMS-like Settings/Plug-Ins Most people find blog engines Wordpress and MovableType pretty easy to grasp. I’d like a similar UI that allows users to customize things. I’d also like to see plug-ins for the web interface and add-ons for the desktop interface. This would allow users to tweak their inboxes however they want.
• Better RSS integration if an application like NetNewsWire had email features it’s be pretty darn close to what I’m looking for.

In conclusion, the things I’m describing could be integrated into existing apps like Thunderbird, or they could be used in a completely new application. What would it look like? Click on the image to see it at Flickr with annotation…

I created most of it in Photoshop. Some of the apps I borrowed images from include Thunderbird for OSX, NetNewsWire for OSX and The Adobe Air app Analytics Reporting Suite. Most of the ideas I also heard on podcast from FOWA Miami ‘08, I just decided to make the mock up to help conceptualize it in case I decide to give a go at building it later.

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