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
Beyond that, there's plenty of room for integrations, e.g. issue trackers we use at @write_as (Phabricator / GitHub) and other comm platforms
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 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.
@matt this sounds a lot like the value hello.com was supposed to bring.