MoMail
2002, 2003
In 2002 and 2003 I contributed to a research project at IBM called MoMail ("mobile mail"), focused on improving the user experience of mobile email clients. At the time, mobile email clients were limited and scaled-down versions of desktop applications, and users faced challenges with small screens, limited resolution, and reduced input capabilities on early mobile devices.
MoMail was part of a broader IBM research project called ReMail ("reinventing email"), which focused on addressing challenges and limitations associated with traditional email systems, such as information overload, inefficient management, and lack of context in conversations. ReMail led to several UX innovations, including enhanced search capabilities, better email threading for improved conversation tracking, and advanced filtering options. Many of these innovations influenced the development of modern email clients.
In MoMail we took some of the key ReMail goals and designed mobile-first solutions to them. Recognizing that context switching and multitasking were challenging on small screens, we aimed to enable users to accomplish as many tasks as possible without leaving the inbox. This led us to view the inbox as a work queue, with the user focused on swift processing instead of bouncing in and out of each email.
One interesting feature was a gestural pop-up menu for quickly performing actions on items in a list. This served as a precursor to the modern "swipe left" / "swipe right" touch-screen UI conventions, but it was designed for use with a stylus. The menu allowed users to delete an item by flicking the stylus to the left or mark it as urgent by flicking it upward, for example. Importantly, these gestures were discoverable: a tap would reveal all the available options, but once users became familiar with the menu, they could rapidly perform actions using muscle memory.
Download the whitepaper:
A Mobile User Interface for Threading, Marking, and Previewing EmailI became aware later on that IBM filed three patents (1, 2, 3) based on our work.
I implemented MoMail on a Pocket PC 2002 PDA using Macromedia Flash. We chose Flash because it made it easy to create compelling and functional prototype UIs. Despite all of the issues with Flash as a closed-source and proprietary client, the developer experience was ahead of its time.
I would like to extend a big "thank you" to Daniel Gruen and Li-Te Cheng, my mentors during the internship. Additionally, I am grateful to Jorge Ortiz, who developed the C++ backend. Lastly, I want to express my appreciation to Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, who first introduced me to the joy and beauty of data visualization through their enormous plotter prints visualizing wiki edit histories that were pinned to the office walls.