[Design] How basic can we stand for email?

[Pieter Hartsook]

On 7/14/06, Mikeal Rogers <mikeal at osafoundation.org> wrote:
> >> I think our long term goals should be as ambitious as possible and
> >> I hope that one of our long term goals is a full email client
> >> replacement. I assumed Sheila's email was more about short term
> >> email in Chandler, and on that I agree that we should be trying to
> >> integrate with existing clients rather than trying to replace them
> >> while I do believe it is important that we have enough of our own
> >> email functionality in Chandler that we can show off the other
> >> integrated features that tie in to email as an input and
> >> communication medium. Email is just too integrated a part of
> >> peoples lives that we can expect them to move completely to
> >> Chandler for email unless we have everything they already use, but
> >> we'd loose out on a lot of valuable users if we waited to try and
> >> attract them until we were totally finished with email in Chandler.
> >>
> >> -Mikeal

When thinking about driving adoption one should think about both
attractors and barriers to adoption. Easy transition from existing
tools lowers that barrier. Being able to test a new tool in parallel
with your existing tools gives a feeling of comfort and security that,
if you don't like it you can just continue with the old tool. It also
provides a clear comparison of the benefits of the new tool.

When I started using Gmail I just forwarded a copy all my mail from my
various mail servers and used Gmail in parallel with my email client
(at that time Thunderbird) for probably 2-3 months. By that time I was
sufficiently happy with Gmail that I just stopped using my other email
client.

In my case, I don't need a lot of fancy email features, but am looking
forward with eager anticipation to having the dashboard/triage
functionality. That benefit will outweigh MANY shortcomings in the
near-term (like not being able to sync my calendar to my Treo!). Since
with Gmail I'm not storing email locally anyway, using Chandler and
Gmail both together is a solution I think I can live with for a while.

Pieter