Overview
Minimail organizes your lengthy emails into bite-sized, actionable summaries and also intelligently transforms your most important information from emails into digestible info cards. Its intuitive design streamlines your email management, allowing you to focus on what truly matters. Minimail is the ultimate tool for staying organized and eliminating email overload.
MY ROLE
In this project, I was responsible for conceptualizing the product idea, conducting research, designing the entire user experience and prototype, and creating a cohesive visual identity that resonates with our target users.(An engineer and I are concentrating on the newsletter section of this project as an MVP, aiming to develop a working app and release it on the App Store within a year.)
Role
Deliverables
Tool Used
Timeline
Project Background
Email: Essential Yet Time-Consuming
Despite advancements in technology and the rise of new communication platforms, email remains a vital and widely used tool. It plays a key role in exchanging important information in businesses, educational institutions, and personal interactions.
However, even with technological progress, managing email still demands significant time and effort. This challenge led to the creation of the Minimail project.
Process
From Ideation to Refinement
Research
Desk research: Identified the initial problem and market challenges
Observation interviews: Gathered actionable insights into user behavior
Competitive analysis: Explored opportunity areas by analyzing competitor strategies
Synthesis
Mega insights: Synthesized findings into overarching themes that reflect user needs and opportunities
Problem statement: Clearly defined the core problem to address
Project scope: Determined outlined deliverables to stay focused
Prototyping
Iterative user testing: Continuously improved the solution based on feedback through low-fi to high-fi prototypes
Made significant changes after hi-fi user testing: Incorporated critical feedback that required major adjustments to the design
Reflection
Planned success evaluation methods: Outlined metrics to measure project success
Reflected on lessons learned and areas for improvement: Summarized insights and identified opportunities to enhance future projects
Problem statement
How might we make it easier for mobile users to quickly access and interact with important information in their emails?
Design Solution
Key Info Sorted and Summarized for You
Minimail automatically sorts all emails into four categories:
Highlights, Calendar, News, and Orders
2. Custom Email Management
Building User Trust and Offering Control
Verification and Feedback loop
Users can cross-check AI-generated summaries against the original email to ensure accuracy. By providing direct feedback on AI output, the system can learn and adapt to user preferences
Custom Folders
If users prefer their own method of categorizing emails beyond AI-based classification, they are able to create and manage personal folders.
3. feature discovery
Seamless Start, Smarter Emails
Minimail's thoughtfully designed onboarding experience introduces innovative features through interactive walkthroughs, while seamlessly importing users' email data. This strategic approach ensures users embrace our unique email management system from day one.
4.Design System
Enhancing Efficiency and Consistency
To enhance both efficiency and consistency across development and design processes, the Minimail Design System was created. This system provided a unified set of components, typography, color styles, and spacing. By minimizing redundancy and preventing inconsistencies, it streamlined cross-functional workflows.
Research
Email is an essential communication tool but requires significant effort to manage.
My goal was to design a solution that integrates advanced technology to make daily life more efficient and productive. This focus led me to explore email as a productivity tool that bridges technology and usability to address everyday challenges.
Through desk research, I discovered that email apps are central to productivity ecosystems. Despite being an essential communication tool, they often demand considerable effort to manage, leading to inefficiencies and user frustration.
Initial Assumptions
Managing emails on mobile is difficult
Users would primarily check and sort their emails on a desktop due to the challenges of mobile interfaces.
Users desire AI Features
Users would welcome AI functions like automatic composition, summarization, and categorization to make email management easier.
2. User Observation Interview
The inconveniences with mobile email apps and distrust in AI
Interviewees find mobile email cumbersome due to limited screen size, extra steps, and non-intuitive labeling, preferring the desktop for in-depth tasks. Some use only basic features and feel overwhelmed by extra functionality.
They value AI for routine tasks like summarization and sorting but remain wary of its accuracy. These insights highlight the need for both streamlined organization and trustworthy AI assistance.
3. Competitive analasis
Competitors’ apps have a wide range of complex features, and their AI capabilities are primarily focused on writing.
I analyzed a total of six email apps, selecting three traditional ones and three innovative ones.
Believing there was significant room for improvement in the mobile experience, I focused primarily on mobile usage, examining what each app did well, how they utilized AI, and what UX/UI insights could be learned.
Most of the email apps offered a wide array of features, making them complex, with AI capabilities generally centered on email composition.
I concluded that simply replicating all these features to create a similar email app would not provide a strong point of differentiation.
Refined Understanding
Research confirmed that most users currently rely on desktops for email organization. However, they are open to managing emails on mobile, if it offers an equally efficient experience.
Users desire AI features -> Some users embrace AI tools, but most prefer simplified apps
While some take advantage of advanced features, most users stick to basics such as reading, replying, and deleting. As a result, they prefer streamlined apps over those with a large set of complex functions.
Mega Insights
A new email management app that prioritizes quick access to critical information—intentionally excluding the email writing feature.
Mobile Email Management
Despite high mobile usage, many users find email management cumbersome. I plan to streamline the mobile experience with intuitive navigation, quick access to essential information.
Management-focused Email App
Focusing on organization and summarization, while excluding composition and reply features. We aim to create a tool that helps users quickly handle large volumes of messages, minimizing complexity.
Enhancing AI Trust
Many users are wary of AI-generated results. We will address this by allowing them to review or customize outputs for greater trust and control.
Design Process
Persona & User Journey Map
Understanding Users:
How to present categorized information
Problem 1
Category layouts:
How to present categorized information
problem statement
It needed an intuitive layout so that users could quickly grasp the summarized contents of automatically categorized emails.
Simplified
Mid-Level
Detailed
low-fi to mid-fi Prototype
I explored multiple versions, ranging from extremely simplified information to moderately dense layouts and highly detailed views. Users found the highly detailed screens overwhelming and did not prefer them.
Layout study for each category
hi-fi Prototype
Based on this feedback, I created two hi-fi versions:
Info Card designs showing key information for each category on an expanded screen
Widget designs displaying a condensed summary of each category on one screen
Most users found the Collapsed Info Card and the Detailed Widget versions too crowded with text, making them difficult to read. They preferred the Simplified Widget screen for its minimal, clean look, and the Expanded Info Card screen for its ability to display all relevant information at a glance.
Simplified widget
Detailed widget
Problem 2
Main screen:
A productive app vs an attractive app
problem statement
Users might open the app daily if it appears visually appealing, or they might habitually use it if it immediately provides practical value. I had to decide whether to emphasize interesting visuals or prioritize productivity.
hi-fi Prototype
Based on this feedback, I created two hi-fi versions:
Widget designs displaying a condensed summary of each category on one screen
Info Card designs showing key information for each category on an expanded screen
Most users found the Collapsed Info Card and the Detailed Widget versions too crowded with text, making them difficult to read. They preferred the Simplified Widget screen for its minimal, clean look, and the Expanded Info Card screen for its ability to display all relevant information at a glance.
Alt 1 -attractive
Alt 2 - productive
Problem 3
Color Palette:
Making it appealing without sacrificing usability
problem statement
I wanted to move away from the dull image of conventional email apps by using colors that evoke liveliness and fun, but I also had to ensure that readability and WCAG guidelines were respected, so users could intuitively distinguish different categories.
hi-fi Prototype
I tested several color combinations that balanced energetic accents with clear, readable text. Each category was assigned a distinct color for easier identification, and all text colors passed WCAG criteria for readability. The final palette gave the interface a more vibrant and engaging look without compromising clarity.
Branding
brand essence
The direction for visual design, user experience, and interaction is based on the brand essence:
Minimalism, Simplicity, and Seamlessness
Naming
The name "Minimail" combines "minimalism" and "mail."
Symbol
The symbol integrates the letter 'M' and an envelope shape, intuitively representing the app's function.
Color
Warm and soft color palettes are used to make the interface less intimidating and more engaging for everyday use.
Typography
The typeface, Inter Display, is clean and readable. Bold and highlights are used to draw attention to key areas, with hierarchical typography aiding in quicker scanning and prioritization of content.
Icons
Icons are simplified and geometric, aligning with the overall minimalist aesthetic.
Reflection & Growth
Key Learnings
User-centered iteration
Since users had different email usage patterns, feedback from diverse backgrounds played a key role. Over time, users who participated in multiple tests shifted their feedback from visuals to more practical aspects, reflecting how they would use the app in daily life. Through this process, I realized the importance of not only identifying real user needs through testing but also thoughtfully designing the tests to gather meaningful insights.
The importance of prioritization
One key insight was that users do not expect a single app to solve every problem with extensive functionality. Many preferred a clean, focused app with well-designed features rather than a complex, feature-heavy product. This finding emphasized that prioritizing core functionality is critical to maintaining a user-friendly experience without overwhelming users.
Future Directions
Feasibility-based design review
I will revise and finalize the design with developers to ensure technical feasibility. Once the MVP is built, a design review will be conducted to confirm that key features are implemented as intended and meet usability standards.
Landing Page Design
During app development, I will create a landing page to promote the product and gather a waitlist of early users. The page will emphasize the app’s core value and features, encouraging users to sign up and stay engaged until the official launch.