As I wrote about recently on @matt (https://write.as/matt/falling-short-in-2020), I'm spending my spare time thinking about a new private communication tool that helps me keep in touch with people better.
Right now, it's looking like it'll be a new email client.
Biggest ideas are:
- An "inbox" interface that's more about people than messages
- Deeper classification for contacts, meant for categorizing users, customers, contributors, potential customers
- Better message organization meant to facilitate more timely responses and general customer support
For the inbox UI, current idea is a chat-like "buddy list" -- the focus is on names of people who've emailed, not subject lines. This is just like #DeltaChat, but actual message composition will still reflect classic email -- long-form instead of short chat messages.
I think the MVP will include a subset of actual Inbox messages only from important contacts. Once usable, I imagine I'll use this new tool in conjunction with my current email workflow -- scan and triage in my current standard email client, and do the actual work / communication with this new tool.
The "inbox" will be sorted on a few different dimensions, making it more of a prioritized to-do list than a normal message inbox.
I'd like the sorting algorithm to be entirely flexible / customizable for everyone. For me, it'll involve a combination of "importance" or priority for a given person, plus recency and category of request.
This is the single question I need the software to answer for me daily: Who do I respond to first?
@matt sounds a bit like a CRM?
@darius yep, but more tailored for current customers / users instead of prospective ones, and designed for tiny / one-person companies and orgs (I've had a hard time finding these).
Also looking to do it all on open standards. But for now, just building for a userbase of 1.
@matt this sounds a lot like the value hello.com was supposed to bring.
@matt sorry hey.com 🙈
@geekgonecrazy @matt You'de mean hey.com
Check it out.
@matt I'd love an Airtable or Tweet Deck for email that has multiple, savable views.
@steven_ovadia Nice, for sure. What kind of views do you think you'd keep with a tool like that?
@matt Flexibility. To set a view, maybe save it for a few days, and then trash it when the need ends. But you can easily toggle between saved searches and sorts without having to undo everything each time.
Beyond that, there's plenty of room for integrations, e.g. issue trackers we use at @write_as (Phabricator / GitHub) and other comm platforms