Ever since I fell in love with Gmail, I have been hoping for improvements to its interface. All things considered (portability, backups, hard drive space, search, storage, using multiple e-mail addresses, etc.), I believe Gmail is the most effective e-mail solution available. It functions well, but as with nearly everything Google produces, it looks like an engineer designed the interface. I could vent for hours on this ubiquitous practice, but I’ll keep my thoughts focused on Gmail.

Allow me to discuss a few of the boo-boos and Band-Aids of the Gmail interface. When I speak of “boo-boos,” I refer to poor design decisions and ugly interface elements. Band-Aids are the changes Google has made to the interface under the pressures of expedience and convenience.

Before I point out areas that I think are lacking in the Gmail interface, allow me to say that I can empathize with those that designed it. They have to cram a lot of information into the screen, and I’m sure they were more concerned with the thousands of lines of Ajax they have to work with. Nevertheless, interface designers have a way of cleaning up even the busiest layouts, and it’s a job that must be done eventually.

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Let’s start with the our-yellow-is-more-annoying-than-CNET’s choice of color. To make things clear as a hot poker to the eye, they add that vibrant, nausea-inducingblue for their links. Whoever started the #0000FF use of blue on the Web should be given a fine.

Here’s another kludgey approach. It’s great that the system provides you with confirmation of those e-mail milestones:

“You just deleted an e-mail. Do you have a permission slip from your mother to do this? Shame on you. Fortunately you can simply click our big blue link to undo this atrocity.”

What a relief to know that you can click Learn More to fortify your understanding of the e-mail deletion process.
The footer communicates the common absence of visual hierarchy in many other areas of the interface. This is an opportunity to understand how the mind of an engineer works (I graduated in engineering, so I can say this):

Everything is really important and must be bold since I know no other formatting techniques. The user must know all of this instantly. I like green.

I think labels are a great idea. They are hard to get used to after using folders for so long, but it’s very handy to be able to search for mail and see which labels apply. The only two wishes I have are that there be label categories and a better-looking way of displaying them. A label category enables the same hierarchy as folders, but with the search power of labeling. The category itself should not be applied to an e-mail, only the label within that category. That way, I can have a Mac category, and inside it put labels like Macbook Shopping, iTunes, Rumors, Downloads, etc. This would also make a handy feature for my second wish of making it look better. With label categories, the user could collapse the labels instead of them being spewed down the screen. Something more than a green list of links would be nice, too. Google loves those link lists.

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Now on to those parts of the interface where, in a time crunch, Google just adds stuff willy-nilly so that they can enhance functionality and further contribute to the chaotic state of the interface.

With the advent of the Calendar and Spreadsheets, Google probably got a billion e-mails about how people wanted to be able to link to them from their Gmail account. In an ideal world, these different apps would be available on tabs. (More on that in a minute.) For now, we get to admire soothing clutter around the logo.

The “Loading…” indicator is also good. Since Gmail communicates with its server asynchronously, it’s important to let the user know that the system is churning even when the browser page isn’t reloading and nothing on the screen changes. Unfortunately the design and placement of this feature looks a little throw-in-last-minute. There should be a single place where all error messages, loading statuses, and even deletion confirmations should appear. Icons indicating the severity of the action would also be helpful. For now, we’ll leave the padding and margins set to 0 and just be glad the system talks back.
One more interface Band-Aid to look at. Search options are a good thing, but I think this is something they could hide in the preferences somewhere. Not everything has to be explicit. Gmail engineers need to step back and rank the importance of the features available and create some functional and visual hierarchy.

That’s my take. In order to put my money where my mouth is (which, by the way, happens to still be below my nose) I’ve decided to start a hobby project. I’m going to mock-up a new Gmail interface and see if I can spruce it up a bit. I’m curious to know if any other designers have done the same. Google would do well to run a redesign contest like Slashdot did. Granted, the interface usually doesn’t get much attention in the Beta phase of an application, even when that phase has been going for 2.5 years.

As I state on my About page, I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings. People make decisions like this because they are constrained (time, resources, funding) not because they are stupid. I still believe all it takes to have a product that is much better (this is a difficult assertion to quantify) is to hire one good interface designer and work with him or her for a few months. Once Google does this and does it well, Gmail will be even higher in my book.