[Kde-pim] Kontact Touch Mail - Initial Mockup + Git Workflow

Björn Balazs bjoern.balazs at user-prompt.com
Thu May 16 09:47:11 UTC 2013


Hi Thomas, Michael, all,

Am Mittwoch, 15. Mai 2013, 21:51:21 schrieb Thomas Pfeiffer:
> On Wednesday 15 May 2013 20:35:41 Björn Balazs wrote:
> > I would like question whether using the column-based-navigation is
> > actually
> > a good decision. Remember that a lot of people have deep hierarchies of
> > mail folders. As navigating actually is not the main focus when using
> > mail,
> > the navigation area might get too much weight in comparison to the actual
> > list of mails within a selected folder, when the pattern is used (at least
> > as far as I understand it, you can end up with e.g. 4 columns visible).
> 
> I agree that deep folder hierarchies should not lead to having to go through
> multiple columns to get to your mail list, but that doesn't necessarily
> mean we have to abandon the whole approach, especially since tree views are
> not very touch-friendly either.
> Suggestions for this follow at the end of this email (because I have to make
> something clear in a reply to your summary beforehand).

Ok, then I might have been on the wrong track, but as far as I understand the 
pattern you were referring to, multiple columns are the basic idea of it?!?

> > In the same category of problem falls the fact that dragging mails to
> > trash
> > will only work as long as the trash folder is visible (which cannot be
> > assured using the column-based-navigation). Again, having trash as a
> > drop-target while the other elements are for navigation only seems to be
> > inconsistent and difficult to understand for the user.
> 
> The trash folder would always be visible if we don't navigate through a
> folder hierarchy using the columns (and I agree with you that we
> shouldn't).
> 
> Let's see dropping to which folder would not be possible:
> - Inbox: Works
> - New: Works (would mark a message as unread)
> - Important: Works (would mark as important)
> - Outbox: Works (at least Desktop KMail allows that)
> - Sent-mail: Works
> - Trash: Works
> - Template: Should work
> - Drafts: Should work
> 
> All of these items except for New and Important are just normal folders, and
> so it should be possible to drag emails to them just like in Desktop Kmail.
> The two folders which are "virtual" - New and Important, are both cases
> where dragging mails into them to change their status makes perfect sense
> to me. So where do you perceive an inconsistency?
> Files has shown that drag & drop is a much more intuitive interaction on a
> touch device than selecting and pressing a button on a toolbar.

Actually "New" has gotten me on the wrong track. I agree 100% that drag&drop 
is great (not only) for touch devices and would not question that. What I fear 
are inconsistencies in respect of the result after dragging (and hence 
problems with building up the mental model by the user):

Mails are usually single instance items, so when dragging them to a different 
folder they get moved there. Copying mails is really a rare use-case and 
should be possible, but could be done somehow different. Now when the user is 
in a folder (by the way: How is the currently active folder visualized? - 
missing the mocks) and he drags a mial e.g. to Trash, that mail is moved 
there. If on the other hand she moves it to important only the state and not 
the place of the mail is changed. This could be confusing and is inconsistent.

To suggest a solution: We could somehow visually seperate real and virtual 
folders - that would solve this inconsistency.
 
> > Summing it up - as far as I understand the mockup, it oversimplifies a bit
> > too much. The matter is complex. Unfortunately.
> 
> What I take from this is that we first need to define the usecase of KMail
> Touch / Active / Whateveritwillbecalled:
> Kontact Touch had the goal to be full-featured Kontact, just with a touch-
> optimized GUI. I know where that goal came from, but I don't think it was an
> ideal goal, and thus I don't think it should be the goal for our new
> approach. I do not believe it's possible to create a GUI that allows you to
> manage every aspect of enterprise-grade PIM comfortably on a mobile device,
> no matter how smart the interaction designers are.
> And I think that's why the current Kontact Touch - despite having been
> designed by smart people such as yourself - doesn't live up to its
> potential.
> 
> This is an opinion which Mike obviously shares, and form previous
> discussions it seems to me that many others from the Plasma Active team
> share as well.
> 
> What I see as typical usecases for mobile mail is reading up on important
> mails and replying to them, or writing new mails from scratch of course.
> Mike seems to have thought something similar, as he oriented his approach
> towards Lionmail, which is optimized for a pretty similar usecase (reading
> up on new emails and deciding what to do with them quickly).
> 
> So I don't think the current approach is oversimplifying things, but instead
> is focusing on the usecases that are likely to be done on a mobile device,
> and that's why I like it.
> Surely it has to be possible to access all emails on your huge IMAP account
> with dozens of deeply nested folders from your mobile device as well, but
> this is probably a rather rare usecase which does not have to be offered
> prominently in the main UI.

Well, I do have to disagree here a bit. People use mail quite differently. 
There are people that make excessive use of pre-sorting of mail, either using 
Sieve or clients rules. This has nothing to do with a business environment. 

Other people just leave everything in the inbox and work with read / unread 
status only and others again use flags like important / unimportant to manage 
their mails.

I think a solution should allow all these ways of working with mails (and also 
those I forgot). But you are right, we need to agree on the use-cases we want 
to cover and if the team decides to leave those other use-cases out, well I 
would not be happy, but I will not do the work, so it would be ok...

Another aspect is not only reading the mails, but also cleaning up. For this 
the user e.g. has to be able to move the mail to the target destination. Also: 
even if we do not want to have full enterprise (or desktop) complexity - as I 
do not see the

Again, I do not yet understand how this will be achieved with the current 
approach, do we really want to reduce it that much? I do not see any 
contextual options. Example: I go on holiday, but forgot to activate my 
automatic reply. Something which could be handy to be able to do directly on 
the phone. Do want to cover anything like that? Or to be able to start and 
configure spell-checking? - Just go through the contextual features of KMail - 
there are many stupid ones, some I would even like to remove from KMail 
desktop - but cutting them all down on the mobile interface?


> About the navigation through the folder hierarchy: I don't assume this is a
> common usecase for a mobile device. What I'd envision is users selecting a
> few favorite folders which are than shown in the list.
> Maybe add an entry "Select folder" to the list for selecting a folder
> anywhere in the hierarchy which then stays there until another one is
> selected for the case where a user has to deal with old mails somehwere
> deep in the hierarchy. New mails are all shown in "new" anyways, no matter
> where there are in the hierarchy.

This could be an approach to solve some of the above mentioned problems. I am 
curious for the next mocks...

Do not get me wrong. I am perhaps too fully aware of the complexity of the 
topic, so it is good that you start of with something extremely simple and 
question everything. I just fear that just as the current solution is hitting 
way beyond the target, we might end up with something too simple.

Anyway - keep up to good work!

Cheers,
Björn


-- 
Dipl.-Psych. Björn Balazs
Business Management & Research
T +49 30 6098548-21 | M +49 179 4541949

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