Designing Shift: The Challenge of Making Email More Productive & Less Stressful
Multiple logins; umpteen browser tabs; filtering the ‘most important’ emails.
These are just a few of the pain points that we run into when managing more than one email account. With email being such a vital component of our daily lives, it’s impossible to abandon it — or find a comparable alternative for that matter.
We’ve all been there: downloading dozens of apps that promise to streamline our daily workflow — some of which do a fantastic job of doing just that. But the part we usually don’t consider is how overwhelming managing all of those tools can be — regardless of how well they complement your workflow.
Then there are the tens of browser tabs that engage you in a never-ending cycle of clicking back and forth and logging in and out. This cycle is broken and outdated. It also fails to reflect the modern workflow we’re all accustomed to — you know, the one that enables us to be productive and well-rounded in our daily tasks.
What are the Options?
We knew there had to be a better way to manage multiple email accounts.
In our minds, having more than one email was no reason to have to choose between being productive and being a slave to one’s inbox. Seriously, there were just too many pain points that went along with managing multiple emails. And most of us have tried nearly all of the (and we use this word loosely) solutions. Specifically:
Multiple Browser Tabs: This is probably the most common — and most annoying — “ solution” of them all. Before we created Shift, we were all victims of excessive-browser-tab-usage. Not only was this method time-consuming, but it wasn’t even a fix to the problem! It served as more of a band-aid than a solution — a soggy, half-stuck band-aid that was partially useless and needed a replacement asap.
Slack (team collaboration software): We thought for sure we had found a solution to the multiple email madness when we invested in Slack. And don’t get us wrong, Slack works wonders when it comes to team and project management. In terms of email, Slack is great for reducing how many you receive — what it doesn’t do, however, is strike at the root of the real problem: managing multiple email accounts.
Mobile and Desktop Apps: This is a classic go-to option as well. But, because many apps only focus on one aspect of the issue (e.g., email scheduling), you have to continue to download them to arrive a complete solution. Not to mention, you’re stuck managing all of these apps and putting up with any clunky, unreliable features that go along with them.
Once we’d compared and tested all of the options, we decided it was time to design a solution that fits how we work and get work done.
Thus Shift was born.
Hitting the Drawing Board
We went into this project with the intent of designing a solution that was simple, but effective.
The goal: Make managing multiple emails more productive and less stressful
The approach: Keep it simple and usable; attack the root of the issue
Over the course of 7 months, our designers and developers worked tirelessly together to deliver the most practical solution for managing more than one email account: Shift.
Shift is a desktop email client that simplifies the all-too-common struggle of managing multiple emails — specifically Gmail, Outlook.com and Office 365 accounts. Shift allows users to access Gmail, as well as G-suite tools like Calendar, Photos, Drive, and Doc — meaning that the browser Gmail experience is very similar to the client. Not to mention, Shift integrates with some of the best, most popular productivity apps and extensions out there, like Trello, Grammarly, Asana, and Slack. The best part of it all: complete and total access to your Gmail accounts — and all of their offerings — takes place in one window.
Starting with the Shift design, we didn’t overcomplicate things. Shift features an interface that is simple, clean, beautiful, and customizable. All Shift dashboards come standard with a built-in aesthetic control for adjusting dashboard themes to either light or dark mode. Equally as useful is the option to add an avatar for each Gmail account.
One of our biggest focuses was on the experience of the user. We didn’t want Shift to be another tool that users had to learn and toy around with before becoming comfortable with using. Amee, one of our UX designers, said it best:
“From a UX perspective, the most important consideration when designing Shift was to ensure the application was easy to use with little to no learning curve.”
Built with Your Productivity in Mind
By adopting an interface identical to what users see when they log into their Gmail accounts via the browser, the need-to-learn element of Shift is virtually nonexistent. This gives you more time to be productive, lessens stress levels, and allows you to become the Gmail power user you were called to be.
Moreover, Shift is complemented by a number of cool features that further its goal to make email less stressful and more productive. Here are a few of Shift’s best attributes:
Productivity-Focused Extensions: For most business folks, productivity is the coveted end goal. And, in most cases, increasing one’s productivity requires the accompaniment of productivity-focused extensions. Shift supports Chrome extensions like Grammarly and Boomerang for those days when you’re looking to up your output.
Workflow Apps: Productivity isn’t possible when your workflow is out of whack. Another one of Shift’s best features is its seamless integration with your favorite workflow apps. Keep your team, tasks, and time organized by integrating your Asana, Invision, Flow, Jira, Trello, and Evernote accounts.
Notification Muting: For those times when you just can’t be bothered by new email alerts. Whether you’re in a meeting or the phone with a client, keeping email notifications at bay for 15, 30, or 60 minutes is as easy as toggling on the “Mute” option in your Shift dashboard.
Unified Search: The Unified Search feature is a hit with Shift users. We all know the pain of logging in and out of our Gmail accounts looking for a specific email, document, etc. Well, with a single search query, Shift allows you to search all of your connected email accounts simultaneously.
Customizable Themes: Allowing users to customize dashboard themes was important to us because many people like the idea of coordinating their apps and tools.
“When faced with the challenge of adding external SaaS applications such as inVision, Trello, Slack, Asana, we realized we needed to add another theme,” says Mateusz, another one of Shift’s awesome designers. “We choose to add the light theme as well as the original dark to complement the variety of colorful apps.”
Overcoming Email Stress with Shift
Our foremost goal has always been to provide a tool that takes the stress and mess out of managing multiple email accounts.
Last we checked, clicking back and forth through browser tabs and trying to synchronize a dozen apps is unproductive…and stressful.
We built Shift to solve the issues that are inherent in using more than one email account. Its best features focus on helping you reach your highest productivity potential without missing a beat — or an email.
We’re just getting started. Long-term, we plan to add several more useful, productivity-focused features that keep you and your work flowing.
