Three Ways
to Make Email Better
We want email to be that technology that makes our lives easier — again.
We know email can make our lives easier because it already has. It’s the technology that saves us hours, if not days. Think of the all of the time you’ve saved at the airport checking in early with your boarding pass emailed to you; at concerts with tickets you didn’t have to collect at the will-call window; and planning anything over different timezones with groups of people.
So what’s next? How could email get even better?
Savor the Past
Our email is like a time capsule of who we were, the places we went, and the people we spent time with.
What if email smartly separated messages and attachments based on time, location, recipients and more, so you could easily revisit a longstanding conversation with friends, or bring up travel suggestions based on a long past journey?
Learn from the Present
Managing our inbox is key to professional success and personal relationships. You don’t want to be the person who misses an important meeting or friend’s event because your inbox is a mess.
Imagine email separating your current interests from the ones you abandoned, and sorting messages on those topics and hobbies into “trash” and “treasure” folders, respectively.
Or, telling you how a first-time sender knows you, showing your shared contacts. Every time you receive an email, you have an idea of why and how someone knows you (and how much you should prioritize a reply).
Guess the Future
The future of email might lie in guessing what we want, even before we know — and doing so correctly.
What if your email unsubscribed you from a mailing list if it noticed that you habitually deleted (or never opened) messages?
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Why do founders insist on tinkering with email? Because it could be so much better! We don’t need a brand new app, just to add to the ways email already helps our lives.
I can’t wait to see what’s coming.
Take a read of my last piece — Five Reasons Chat Won’t Replace Email — and let me know what you think.
