A UX design review of the two popular email services
I have always been a loyal Google user and even named my first dog after it, (R.I.P, Google the Poodle). However, since my current employer uses Office 360, I have been forced to switch to Outlook for all work emails. It was not an easy transition to start with, and, unfortunately, is not really getting much better after using it for over one and a half years.
As a user, I picked out the four most irksome designs in Outlook, and explained Gmail handles them. Before getting into the list, I would like to clarify that I will be comparing the webpage version of Gmail and the Mac desktop app of Outlook, as they are what I use on a daily base. Let’s get started.
1) The search box in Outlook is too far and small, while the one in Google feels right
As shown in the images above, the search box in Outlook locates all the way to the upper right corner (in the red square), while my mouse is usually in the left part of the screen to check and write emails (in the yellow box). As a result, every time when I need to search for an email, which happens extremely often, I have to move the mouse all the way across the screen.
What makes it worse is that the search box is very slim, therefore requires a high level of preciseness in the mouse movement. Because of this design, the search function in Outlook can get quite annoying, especially when I use a large monitor with the small touchpad on my mac.
In contrast, Gmail does a much better job by making the search box bigger and centering it right on the top, very close to the core function area. This design allows me to easily move the mouse to the search box and move it back to the email list to check out the results, despite how large my screen is or what kind of mouse I use.
2) Gmail is simple, intuitive, and customizable, while Outlook still looks like from the 90s.
Maybe MS deliberately designs the Outlook this way to achieve consistency in its signature look, but it just feels way more crowded and outdated than it needs to be. For example, the buttons in the red box are what I use most often in the Home menu, and the rest are very seldomly touched. But because of the design, I have to choose between hiding the key function buttons for simplicity and letting the not-needed buttons to crowd my precious screen space. Apparently I chose the former, hating the design every time when I use the app.
Compared to that, the design in Gmail is much more clever. It understands that the key tasks users perform here are writing, sending, and reacting to emails, so that those buttons are big, clear, and only showing up when needed. For example, the Composing button is always on the upper left, allowing me to easily start a new email no matter which page I am on. The Send button in solid blue only shows up below the composting area, and stands out from the white background so that I will never miss it. The Rely and Forward buttons show up after an existing email, suggesting the actions I am most likely to take after reading the message. All these designs minimize users’ effort of mouse moving and page scrolling, making the interaction with Gmail so intuitive and smooth.
Well-designed simplicity does not compromise functionality, but caters to the different needs of its users. Gmail is powerful in many ways, while its design team understands that 80% of the users need only 20% of its core functions usually, therefore hides a lot of the less used functions in “Settings”, or only display when they are relevant. For example, the font and text coloring tools only show up in the composing page. This insightful and comprehensive understanding of how users interact with each feature in the product helps the designers keep the Gmail interface clean and simple without losing functions.
Also, as shown in the screenshot, the color scheme and background image can be easily customized in Gmail, while Outlook does not provide the same level of freedom. Nothing too critical to the core function, but the blue sky and beach umbrella always put a smile on my face.
3) Outlook does not allow users to check the calendar and emails simultaneously, while Google does with multiple options.
If you are like me, relying heavily on the calendar to keep track of the busy schedule, you understand how often we need to quickly switch views between emails and the calendar. But in Outlook, email and calendar are two different pages in that one same app. As a result, you will never be able to look at them side by side even with multiple screens. What’s worse, when you switch back from the calendar to the email list, it does not always remember which email you were looking at, and just shows you the recent ones in the Inbox.
Imagine you searched and finally dug out an old email, and went to confirm some information in your calendar. When you click back to the email page, you will have to do to search all over again. Adding to that is the inconvenience of the extremely far and tiny search box we talked about earlier. This could be a real nightmare when you have something long and tedious to cross-check, such as a conference attendee list. Ah, just thinking about it gives me a headache!
Fortunately, someone like Gmail designers gets it. It’s quite easy with Gmail, simply by opening up Gmail and Google Cal in two different windows. To make things even easier, you can click on the Cal icon and pull out a column on the right of the Gmail interface to view your Google calendar while navigating your emails. How nice is that!
4) Outlook Makes Long email conversations even more confusing than they already are.
We all know how inevitable while overwhelming email conversations can be. Outlook and Google organize the conversation, or threads, in opposite ways, resulting in totally different user experience.
In Outlook, conversations are organized from the most recent to the oldest. It sounds logical, but actually makes things more complicated. When opening up the most recent email in the conversation, it shows all the previous emails responded to or forwarded in the conversation after the new message, sorted from new to old. As a result, the conversation is presented backward, making the reading experience like solving a puzzle.
Also, every email in the conversation would contain and show all the previous messages, despite that the users could just click the email list under the conversation to read the history if needed. Providing unnecessary information that cannot be folded up or hide contributes against the clarity and efficiency of communication by introducing distractions and potential misunderstanding.
On the other hand, the way Google handles long threads demonstrates good UX design principles. Emails are sorted in the same order as received, and most previous emails are folded up by default. In this way, the most recent message can also be viewed when the conversation is chosen, while the users could easily click a button to unfold and read the email history from the beginning to the end.
Also, while Gmail keeps the thread history in each email too, it hides the history by default, so that the users do not see the duplicated messages over and over again when reading through the thread. If needed, users can click on the three-dot button at the end of each email to reveal the full history. In that interface, Gmail uses color-coding and indention to help users navigate the history of the conversation.
While there are many other examples of good UX design in Gmail/Google when compared to Outlook/Office 360, these are the TOP 4 that impact my emailing experience. I sincerely hope that the design team at MS could do some research to understand the unmet needs and address them with better UX design.
