Comments on: Email IA for the overloaded

By: Lawrence Ladomery

Lawrence Ladomery — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:16:07 +0000

I’ve started using Gmail which doesn’t use folders but ‘labels’ instead. This allows users to tag emails with multiple labels, the equivalent of having the same email in multiple folders.

It takes some getting used to, but I find it a much better system. For example, two labels I have are ‘online shopping’ and ‘freelance work’. When I buy a hosting package, for example, I use both labels for the confirmation email.

By: AlastairC

AlastairC — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:42:34 +0000

Hi Delk,

Usability is an attribute of something, so in the case of filtering, it would be how easy to use that filtering system is for particular users with particular goals.

Regarding your email question, it really depends on your application and what criteria you can use to get to it, but I’d start with the advanced search.

By: delk

delk — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 02:48:29 +0000

i got no website as for now but i want to ask a question concerning usability and filtering? how do this two work together? and in your case about the email, if i wanted to access an email that is a year old, what is the fastest means to get to get to it considering usability?

By: AlastairC

AlastairC — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:30:39 +0000

Thanks Mike, that’s a nice tutorial, I’d made a bit of an assumption that people knew that stuff already

I guess I also didn’t say that this doesn’t really try and cover list email, which for myself I’ve separated onto gMail, but could be treated the same way as above.

By: Mike Cherim

Mike Cherim — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:03:38 +0000

I couldn't live without message rules putting email into folders. I, too, get a ton of it, both legit and spam at a ratio of maybe one good email for every 3-5 spam emails. This might be helpful to someone. I wrote a tutorial on how to set up a few Message Rules for a Cleaner Inbox.