I thought we, or originaly, Brent Simmons, was the end user.
My understanding was this wasn't an email client for the masses, but a
client specifically created for the needs a group of people
(mostly us, as we are the ones expressing this want) who aren't happy with
other existing clients.
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, River Brandon wrote:
this is a great suggestion, thanks.
paula is very close to what i'd put together, with a few differences. not sure
if i'll +1 her or add another character.
On Jan 26, 2010, at 9:14 PM, Kevin Conner wrote:
There are a lot of ideas flying around the list about how power users want such
and such feature, and users don't care about blah blah, and the default needs
to be so and so. But we each have our own ideas about who these users are and
what they want. I don't think we have decided who Letters is for.
Who is the target audience of Letters? To answer that, I propose an experiment:
Let's invent some fictional users, whose needs and habits should be satisfied
by Letters 1.0. In feature discussions, we can use them as litmus tests (Would
our users like this feature?). That may prove more useful and more decisive
than our mob of opinions.
- The goal: We will know who these "power users" are and what they want.
- The ultimate goal: Lots of real users will take a look at Letters and say, "This
is what I've been looking for!"
Give +1s to characters that represent your interests. Post a new character if
none of them do.
I'll offer a character who represents my interests:
### Paula
Paula owns a white MacBook. She works as a SQL Server DBA at her job, where
she has a company PC. But, her laptop is always with her, so she does her
email on it instead. She works on open source projects in her spare time and
is on one or two mailing lists. She is kind of a shut-in, but hey, she knows
what she likes. She likes Twitter, but thinks Facebook is a huge waste of
time. She reads lots of RSS feeds, and she's very happy to be a NetNewsWire
user. Her relatives send her dumb chain letters all the time, which she
furiously deletes. She has given up on asking them to stop.
Paula has several email accounts, including for work, personal use, side
projects, and a throwaway spam-avoiding account. She bought an Android phone
and checks her Gmail with it regularly. On her Mac, she uses Mail. Mail's
filtering rules don't really cut it for mailing lists. She doesn't like how
poorly Mail.app deals with Gmail, but she also doesn't care for the Gmail web
client, because browser chrome takes up too much screen space to have multiple
windows. She also doesn't care for Thunderbird since it uses a lot of screen
space. She does like the way Mail lets her use Quick Look, drag and drop, and
other OS X niceties, along with multiple windows. But she would rather use the
Gmail model of labels, and so far she is stuck with Mail.
- Would Paula like tabs? Probably not, since she doesn't like her email to
occupy a large window.
- Would Paula like a three-panel layout? Yes, if uncluttered. She's happy
with NetNewsWire, but she likes Mail's smaller windows.
- Does Paula need POP support? Of course not. :)
- And so forth.
I have no idea if Paula represents anyone but me. If Paula represents you,
give this a +1. If not, post a fictional user who matches you better. We can
take the most popular few users and make them our litmus tests.
-kev
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