Mini App Critique: Android Gmail App
15-day App Critique Challenge: day 2
About the “15-day App Critique Challenge”: for 15 days, I’m going to critique a popular web/mobile app each day, to improve my critical thinking skill.
Home screen (inbox)
Upon opening the app, I see the inbox with emails. I can easily find unread emails as they have bolded sender names and titles.
I think it will be helpful to have a layout customization button, similar to the “inbox type” options on the web Gmail. Right now all the mail notifications are sorted by time, so users won’t be able to see all unread emails in the first place. Given this is a mobile app, a simple toggle button to move unread emails to the top might be a solution. I’m also curious if the mobile Gmail will apply the user preferences from web Gmail, such as layout option, density, etc. I didn’t find similar customization options under “Settings”. I think it’s important to provide users with consistent experiences on web and mobile, so there won’t be discrepancies in usage flows when switching from web to mobile.
The whole page has a minimal design and followed Material Design Guidelines (shadow, floating action button…). The page cleverly uses whitespace to distinguish each email notification item.
The top action bar contains a hamburger menu icon, search input area, and user profile picture. I’m curious about the decision of enclosing hamburger icon and profile picture into the search input box. Will this design confuse the users that the hamburger icon is associated with the search? Will users misinterpreted the hamburger icon as search options instead of the menu? I’m assuming most Gmail users are very familiar with the app flows so it might not be a problem, but I’m curious about the design logic behind it.
The placeholder text in the search input box greatly signifies the purpose of this bar. Upon tapping, the search window popped out. I could see the recommended search queries are from my search history, and there is a voice input option.
The keyboard window is already popped, which saves users from another tapping. The search has an auto word recommendation feature, which is very useful for users. This design also aligns with the “Recognition rather than recall” principle from NN Heuristic Evaluations.
On the inbox page, when I started scrolling down, the top action bar disappears, and the “Compose” fab condensed into just an icon. And when I scroll up, the action bar reappears and the condensed “Compose” fab expands. This is a very smooth experience, which aligns with user behavior.
I know I’m looking at my “Primary” inbox because this is signified by the text on the email list top. Email notification item has a standard design, with a profile pic of the sender, sender’s name, time, 1-line title, and 1-line content preview. The “Important” emails are highlighted with yellow right arrow icons, which are very obvious. Here I’m curious about a few things: 1) Could the area for profile pic be used more efficiently? At least for me, most of my contacts don’t have profile pics (even Google Pay), and I think using the first letter of senders’ names doesn’t tell much information to the users. 2) The amount of email content revealed under the list view. Right now only 1-line title and 1-line content are shown but I’m curious about the effectiveness of conveying information to the users by just 2 lines (I also notice that title text is truncated based on each sentence). Why the app doesn’t provide more content preview to the users? I’m wondering if any research has been done to investigate if the amount of text here aligns with users’ email writing style and could sufficiently give users an overview of the email. 3) The purpose of making the “Star” feature interactive on the email list view. Is it typical for users to “star” an email from a glance? Obviously my personal habit cannot represent all users, so I want to know some usage scenarios for this feature. Relating to the “wasted” profile pic area I discussed earlier, is it possible to attach the “Star” feature to the profile pic?
I notice the design for inbox categories: “Primary”, “Social”, and “Promotions” are different from web Gmail and mobile Gmail. On the web, categories are displayed as tabs, while on mobile, the “Social” and “Promotions” categories are condensed into two email notifications. I think this design is backed up by research that users “Social” and “Promotions” are less prioritized categories. But I think this might create an experience inconsistency between the web and mobile version.
I also notice information hierarchy mismatch for inbox categories, whereas on the menu, “Social” and “Promotions” are parallel to “Primary”, but on the inbox email list, “Social” and “Primary” are blended with individual email notifications under “Primary”. I’m wondering if embedding the secondary categories under the main category will cause any confusion to the user.
On the menu, I find that the designs of the number of unread are different for the “Primary” inbox and the other two. Where for secondary inbox categories the number is more highlighted. I’m curious about the reason for this design difference. I’m assuming that since on mobile home screen Gmail app icon only shows the number of unread for “Primary” inbox, and users firstly encounter undread from “Primary” category inside the app, the app wants to catch users’ attention about the number of unread for the other two inboxes by making the number more obvious.
I test the general interaction gestures: scroll up and swipe left/right, on the home screen. When I scroll all the way to the top, the email list will refresh which matches my expectation. When I use my thumb to swipe left/right on an email notification, I could archive it. This is a very handy tool so users don’t need to go to each email to archive it. This is useful for users to keep the inbox clean. It is also accessible to both left-handed and right-handed users as users could swipe it from both directions.
Compose an email
Then I try to compose an email. The placeholder text for each input area is really helpful in clarifying the purposes of that text entry. Divider signifies the input division, as I know the line for recipients, title, and body.
To understand the scalability of this design, I input a long list of recipients and a long title. I find that the system is very scalable in accommodating long input. For more than two recipients, the system will show the first and use “+1” to indicate the remaining recipient(s). Upon tapping the area, I can see the full list. This is very efficient as it saves screen space and provides complete information when needed.
The wording recommendation feature is very handy when composing an email, it speeds up the process a lot. The interaction (swipe right)is very natural and intuitive.
The top navigation icons are understandable and conventional. I notice that without inputting recipients the “send” icon is greyed out. I think this design signifies that users need to make sure there are recipients before sending. However, I’m wondering if this design could be used more effectively. I’m curious about how often will users send an email without putting recipients. However, I think it is common (at least for me) to send an email without title or forgetting to append my name or attachments. I find that I could successfully send a no-title email without getting a warning. It might not qualify the “Error prevention” heuristic from NN. Even though there is a small “undo” text at the screen button after sending, but users need to perform undo speedily because it disappears in a few seconds.
Finally, under the three dots button, there are “Settings” and “Help & Feedback” options for the users. I’m curious if these two items are necessary for the composing page, and want to know the usage scenarios for these two options.
Conclusion
Overall I think Gmail has a very good user experience. Some details might be debatable to me but they have a very subtle effect on my overall experience. I’m very impressed by how Gmail designers cleverly integrate complicated and various features into simple and understandable user flows.