On Yahoo! Mail + Singing News-O-Grams

Ideas frequently start golden. The new Yahoo! Mail, most definitely did. My friend Greg was the lead interaction designer- and did a killer job. Sam Lind also did an amazing job with the visual design… which when it was done, was a smart and sleek and innovative interface, offering a subtle nod towards the Outlook paradigm.

Candygram (the moniker for the new Y! Mail) was initially born from Oddpost.com, a pay-for webmail startup that Yahoo! acquired in 2004. Among other things, Oddpost was heralded as one of the first major webapps to really put Ajax to the test with managing a ton of data… and in a make-or-break position, within top level tasks.

Candygram problems that linger 2+ years later: the Ajax functionality was never tuned to enhance (versus weigh-down) the user’s experience, the speed issues everyone commented on in the early stages did get better… then yo-yo’d between better and far worse, and performance aside, you can’t even see the damn interface anymore. The whole app has since (it’s internal Alpha launch) been hijacked by rich-media ads, and too many PMM’s getting the green-light to upsell too many cross-network bullshitty things; ahead of putting the user’s basic tasks and desires that define why they’re there to begin with, front-and-center.

Grumbling points, such as: I’m checking my email… do you think I want to see an animated advertisement for a Ford Minivan that I can’t figure-out how I triggered “on,” and now can’t figure-out how to trigger “off,” plus a fully-tabbed headline-news experience below a weather report, before I see the contents of my InBox?! Sure- just to the left of my local weather report (and, isn’t it nifty that it’s localized to my sniffed IP?) is an InBox module that states how many new emails I have, and a hyperlink to then open the InBox- but is the above experience what any user really wants, when they go to check their email?? What about even looking beyond what we think users want, and focusing on features and whole-product experiences that users would describe with the word “Love?” No- I’m not hearkening to the wow/delight/love schtick- but if you think about it, geeks always use that word to describe tech- it’s our world, so everything we “love” or we “hate,” whereas most (99%) common users rarely attach such emotion to webapps.

I’m on a Mac G4 dual-processor desktop (with, yes, plenty of RAM- I am a designer), and I use Firefox 1.5 on my Jaguar OS… which I understand is not the OS/Browser combo that the Candygram engineers tuned to product for… but still, it shouldn’t take 10-20 seconds from my clicking “Go” on loading mail.yahoo.com, until I’m presented with an initial view of my InBox contents! To present a fair comparison- GMail has also been criticized as being sluggy with the same OS/Browser configuration… tho with it I see a blank white screen for about 4 seconds (which always irritates me), and within 5 seconds I see my full InBox.

I feel like a major ass writing this, for many reasons. When I sat down to write this initially, it was my first day not working for Yahoo! in 2+ years. I was inspired to write this following a long IM correspondence with a friend, comparing GMail and Candygram- my timing with having just left Yahoo!, of no influence on the disucssion. Of course my own impartiality and possible inclination to write “they suck!” for the sake of “they suck!” articles lingered in the back of my mind as an open question of personal integrity, abreast my honest and strong affection for Yahoo! the brand, the online media [something], and the organization of 10,000+ damn tallented folks worldwide… who I do miss working with daily (and pelting nerf rockets-at), dearly.

Returning to finish this article almost a month later, I now feel worse… because today’s prompt to finish writing it was winning a game on my fav new webapp, I’m In Like With You. The game asked participants to submit their nomination for the worst Web 2.0 product ever- I nominated Candygram- and was then picked as the winner. I love you Yahoo!, but… (oof). I feel like the infidel spouse, post-divorce, of an impotent and fat- but he used to be oh so sexy- husband.

It’s not like I’m not rooting with all my might for the new Yahoo! Mail to kick some serious ass in the webmail marketplace. I am. I really, truly, am. My voice grows hoarse and my confidence dissolves to cynicism however, when I find myself endlessly delighted with GMail’s ugly but by-appearances more functional user experience.

In GMail I cannot (at least figure-out how to) re-order my InBox by sender, subject, or date- it’s just default-ordered by date. The inability to re-order data by column is a major, major shortcoming in Google catering to user needs and expectations, with a pretty basic mail-app feature. I’m also constantly “circling” the upper-leftish corner of the screen, looking for the action to compose a new mail message… and upon returning to the app it always takes me forever to find the cowering hyperlink for, again, a pretty basic and core piece of functionality. I do kind of like the totally-new mail-app feature of clustering conversation threads- tho I still want to have the option to see my InBox without this clustering- and I think there’s a way to turn this off, but I’m not sure how. Everyone I know either passionately loves or passionately hates the clustering feature- most, leaning towards Rolling On The Beach with Splashes of Incoming Tide love. Love!

Most products that speak to Users with intuitive and relevant features/functionality, validate user-centered design as a profitable strategy- albeit in the long-term, versus short-term now/now/now revenue gains. Cater to Usability, and the Revenue will follow. Just as in learning how to ride (motorcycles, competitively) as a roadracer, the best advice I got was to learn how to ride smooth; and that with smoothness, speed will intuitively follow. It did… and when my speed started to pick-up with improved smoothness, I barely noticed- the ride just got more pleasurable, I enjoyed myself more, my engagement and focus increased- and the stopwatch (usually) kept creeping below 3-minute laptimes at Sears Point (heh).

A stinging irony is found in a quote on the Wikipedia page for Oddpost, as spoken by it’s former president, positioning Oddpost’s value-proposition amongst it’s competition:

This data-centric approach may sound painfully obvious, but consider that at 1024×768 (the most common resolution on the web), only about 30% of Yahoo! Mail’s inbox screen is devoted to your mail. The remaining 70% is not, as you might expect, all devoted to advertising. In fact, ads only account for about 10% of the screen real estate, and the remaining 60% is consumed by navigation, dead space and administrative debris.

- Ethan Diamond, 2003; then president of oddpost.com

Ouch!!!

Looking at a Yahoo! acquisition held in a parallax esteem by the public, Flickr, little has changed with the photosharing beacon of interestingness and fn and everything vowel-less and irreverent and card-carryingly user-centric, that both new and legacy users love and cherish about the service; a study in balance and customer loyalty rarely seen in any acquisition, over and beyond the period of parent-company absorption.

So: what the hell happened from Oddpost to Candygram, startup to secure and resource-rich megacorp?! Lots of folks (internally and externally) have been asking this for many, many months… and while many answers can be hypothesized and debated, I think what I- and everyone- really just wants to see the most, is some accountability: “Yep, I f••••d-up, we set into motion “x” failed strategy, and we’re gonna fix it;” followed by some swift corrective action.

Following the debacle of the Peanut Butter Manifesto, I think that many hoped for such an admission or another “leaked” memo with a concise problem/solution plan outlined. Unfortunately though, I think everyone also understands and has little choice but to accept the cold reality that so much of the problem is systemic (or pandemic, depending on your palate for sarcasm) both to Yahoo! specifically, tho perhaps moreso to the operation of any multi-billion dollar public corporation. Each identified problem is multi-fold; is complicated; lies on multiple levels; finds responsibility in hands no longer working for the Big Why; taking “bold new steps” means tremendous risk with a high price-tag for failure; and, just- ugh… whutta mess.

User Experience- as Yahoo! has thankfully realized- encompasses so many product attributes beyond design: like, not being annoying. A close second to not being annoying, is delivering to users the functionality that *they* want- not what a product marketing manager thinks could raise a metric here, a benchmark there. One ray of hope that I do have, is that senior (executive) management at Yahoo! has gone out of their way in recent months, to make it crystal-clear to the entire company that design is a major competitive edge- and that user experience is paramount to any online somethingerother’s success or faillure. I know that many companies in tough times make these olive-branch gestures to groups feeling marginalized, tho the exec prosthelitizing of design just prior to my exit, did have that rare note of sincerity to it that gave the commitment a safe place in my heart of hope for better things ahead.

What exactly this nebulous commitment of acknowledgement and prioritization will tangibly become, has yet to be realized- and I just hope that unlike most commitments and actions that a public company of 10,000 can safely make, that Yahoo! pulls out all the stops and really makes this one stamp the phattest imprint across it’s network, and in record deployment speed. Please- don’t test the hell out of everything for months and months on end- please significantly narrow the timeframes of staggered roll-outs.

A major critique lodged against Google, is that while it deploys products with record speed, it often deploys buggy products with usability flaws left and right, and butt-ugly visual design. Unfortunately, a tough pill that Yahoo! has got to get un-squeamish about swallowing in order to swim and not sink: balance… balance the prudence, with the push to deploy, not just by nudging quicker and quicker releases, but, by god- just start pushing cargo off the ship already! The design pool at Yahoo! has some of the brightest stars in usability research, and if researchers could be involved more actively in early-project critique and advisement… and less active in testing build after build after build, that could be a huge win. Add to the mix more collaborative engineering/design partnerships, fewer product managers, fewer still product marketing managers, and there’s a bunch more win’s right there. Quit thinking and thinking and strategizing and PowerPointing and over-thinking… remove from positions of importance the egos that can’t get over themselves- and just, please, make it happen. I know the tallent is there- the decision making just has got to happen. Risks have to be taken. Enough with the wimpy claims that all of the above are happening. Enough with having little ID-badge plaquards that state the corporate mission and goals for 2007, made and distributed to employees worldwide; just… please, make it happen!

Oh yeah- the Singing News-o-Grams. I don’t think they ever happened. I just did some search queries- and thank gawd, didn’t find any singing anchormen. I did however, find this- which I think is pretty cool. As with everything pretty cool that Yahoo! does, totally not promoted, marketed, anything. Yahoo! also has this extremely cool news product- which I would have definitely expected to see heavily promoted on Flickr or somewhere- but alas, I have yet to see it promoted, marketed, or anything- anywhere. Maybe the answer to this: just… er, start, like, giving publicity to the cool things that will probably shut-up most of Yahoo!’s critics… ?! Things such as Yahoo! Mindset Search, Y! Teachers, Y! You Witness News, and Y! Pipes- a product of the YDN YDN’s sister group, ADD- which thankfully, has gotten some incredible press and lots of great buzz among it’s target audience, the geek community.

Lots of cool stuff in the works, tho lots more potential un-realized. Again- Yahoo!, please make me and so many others proud, and make it happen! Sidenote: I’d love it if you could make it happen in enough time for the markets to increase the stock-price so I can cash-out my options in a couple of months, and get more than a cup of coffee with the proceeds… now of course, that I have to pay for my coffee again…

26 December 2007 NOTE: I closed comments on this article, because the spam was getting out of control. If you’d like to comment, send it to me: sneaker at kickingpebbles dot net, and I’ll be happy to post it.

candygram, design, geekspeek, gregrosenberg, oddpost, samlind, User Experience, yahoo, yahoo!mail, yahoomail