Tiny Email - A Mobile Phone E-Mail App

This document describes a UI for Tiny Email, as it may be implemented in a proxy server working with a SIM card or embedded application.

A Tiny Email client emphasizes receiving the gist of important emails. Tiny Email has limited email management and creation tools. Tiny Email's features are terse, understandable, and limited.

Tiny Email is designed for a small device with extremely limited memory, small screen, and phone keypad.

The Tiny Email User

The Tiny Email user wants to keep in touch with their email INBOX. She would use Tiny Email in one of two modes. The two modes differ in when she wants to know about her email:

At particular time(s) of day.
As emails arrive at her post office.

Technically, these two modes of operation are differentiated by whether email arrival alerts are set to ON or OFF. In one mode, emails silently arrive at the phone. In the other mode, emails cause a phone to beep and alert the user in the same way that SMS messages do.

Normally, the Tiny Email user will not respond to email, nor will she want to manipulate the email. Her PC email client program is far better than her phone for doing these things.

When the Tiny Email user does respond to an email, she will not craft a long, nuanced response. A typical reply to an email might be,

"OK" Or, "Thinking. Will reply later" Or, "Call me at 987 234 5678" Tiny Email provides many pre-built replies of this sort so that the Tiny Email user can simply select a reply from a list.

User Scenarios

These images of a Tiny Email user may help to capture the essence of the system's use-model:

She is eating breakfast or riding a bus to work while quickly glancing at all of her current, unhandled mail.
She is in a car, possibly with other people, and notes when an email arrives. She "reads" it in under 5 seconds and forgets about it a moment later.
She has stepped off a plane and scans her emails while walking to the baggage claim area.
She is in a store and notes a new email. She has expected it and reminds herself to follow through with it later.

Essential Features / Core System Values

Filtering

Since one of the two major modes of operation causes an audio/visual alert on the phone, the Tiny Email user will be pleased if Tiny Email filters irrelevant emails for her.

Compression

Since a Tiny Email user will want to quickly note emails rather than examining them in detail, the Tiny Email user will be pleased if Tiny Email "distills" each email down to its essence.

One Finger Operation

Since Tiny Email runs on a small phone, the user should be able to operate Tiny Email with her thumb. The first choice in any menu is generally the most common operation. The UI is skewed toward repetitive presses of one key.

Tiny Email's filtering and compression functions provide the main opportunities for product differentiation and added value. As these two functions become more mature and sophisticated:

The Tiny Email server increases in value.
The barrier to entry to competing systems becomes higher.

Functionality options are discussed at the bottom of this document.

UI

Tiny Email Alerting indicator --- Current mail counts

View Recent Mail ...
Send Mail ...
Start/Stop
Settings ...

Start Tiny Email

If no name in settings: Enter name
If no password in settings: Enter password
If required: Enter SecurID
Start Tiny Email
- Alert for new mail
- No alerts

Stop Tiny Email

Please press Select to stop Tiny Email.
Thank you.

Tiny Email Settings

Screen Name Edit screen name - Allow name@aol.com. Help user if name is not legal.
Password Edit password - Help user if password is not legal.

Recent Mail List

From/Subject/Attachment indicator/Body
.
.
.

As much as can fit in one line on the screen is shown in the list. "View" soft key selects a particular, individual email.

From address: could have @aol.com stripped from it.

Attachment indicator: Extension/type with file name?

List order: Most recent emails at the top, unviewed emails above viewed emails. In the list, the next email should be highlighted and immediately selectable (this viewed email would be positioned after unviewed emails).

Soft keys:

Main - Must be labeled "Main" instead of "Back" to avoid confusion when user has come from "Confirm" screen or from Mail Options menu.
View

Individual email is shown:

Time/Date of email

From:
Sbj:
Attachment indicator
Body of email ...

Soft keys:

List Mail - Must be labeled "List Mail" instead of "Back" to avoid confusion when user has come from the Mail Options menu's Show More option.
Options

From/Sbj... - Mail Options menu

View Next ... View recent mail list with next email highlighted and selectable.
Call ... [?]
Filter Such Mail ...
Show More [?] Redisplay the less-compressed email after a "Please Wait" screen.
Reply ...
Forward ...
Move To Old Mail ...

Call "From:" address

2062687523
AOL Seattle
.
.
.

Filter From/Sbj...

Filter mail such as this from your phone in the future?

Soft keys: Cancel and OK.

Go to View Recent Mail.

Move To Old Mail From/Sbj...

Move this mail in to your AOL Old Mail box?

Soft keys: Cancel and OK.

Go to View Recent Mail.

Send / Forward Mail To:

New recipient
Edit address - If no '@' character, assume @aol.com. Would be nice if screen name were checked for "bounce" before user did a lot of typing on the email, itself.
Who
.
.
.
Who - (least recently used recipient)

Go to Create Mail Contents.

Mail Contents - Reply / Create Mail

New Contents
Edit subject/body - (first "sentence" is the subject?)
Recent Contents - (recent replies and created mails)
- Text
- .
- .
- .
- Text - (least recently sent text)
Common - Pre-built text.
- OK
- Yes.
- No.
- Please.
- Thank you.
- See you there.
- See you tonight.
- See you tomorrow.
- .
- .
- .
Contact Me - Pre-built text.
- Call me at 'phone's phone number'.
- Call me later today.
- Call me tomorrow.
- Leave me voice mail at office.
- Leave me voice mail at home.
- .
- .
- .
I Need Info - Pre-built text.
- When?
- Where?
- Why?
- Who else?
- .
- .
- .
Family - Pre-built text.
- Ask your mother.
- Ask your father.
- Ask your brother.
- Ask your sister.
- .
- .
- .
Friends - Pre-built text.
- .
- .
- .
Peers - Pre-built text.
- .
- .
- .
Strangers - Pre-built text.
- .
- .
- .

Functionality Discussion

What's wrong with the UI concept given here:

Filtering is difficult to control and to implement.
The compression level is difficult to control and to implement.
All those canned email replies: Good idea?
The user must not be confused about which functions apply to her phone's Tiny Email system and which to her email system in general.
In particular, filtering applies to what she sees on the phone. Move To Old Mail affects her "real" email.
It's not clear when emails would disappear from the phone's memory.
The Mail Options menu is too long.
The Mail Options menu does not contain all the important operations.
Multi-recipient sending is handled by remembering recently send mail text. Good idea?
The Show More function requires a server hit and delay. Bad.

Here are some other functions that could go in to a Tiny Email system:

Sort mail list by:
- Time-date - Default ordering.
- From
- Subject
- Up
- Down
Control over whether sent/reply/forward mail is BCC'd to self and/or put into Sent box.
Send IM to mail sender if he's on line.
Send pre-built replies via AIM if the reply is to be sent to screen name and screen name has very good odds of receiving the reply. In the AIM reply, quote the compressed mail so the receiver can understand the context.
Explicit outbound mail subjects instead of IM-like email contents.
FAX the mail. That is, forward it to a fax machine.
There should be some way for the system to tell the user how many emails are currently, and over time, filtered.
This is Spam function in the Mail Options menu?

Here are some general observations and questions:

The rest of the system follows the principle, "First, do no harm." This is why only the Move To Old Mail operation affects the user's post office mail box. And, it is why there is no Delete function.
The server should be able to control, to some extent, the Mail Options menu. For instance, if the server could add items to the list that cause a distinct message containing the option ID and email ID to be sent back to the server, then the menu could be changed on-the-fly.
Such an ability could allow "late-binding" of options like Delete and Mark-As-Read. It could also allow "beta version" options like Fix-Compression. A Fix-Compression option would be used to alert engineering of an email whose compression could be improved.
The Call operation requires sig examination logic on the server, and support in the phone/server protocol.
The system must have built in, heavy-duty spam filtering.
Should the system add the pre-built replies to the recently-sent list?
The pre-built replies should probably be OTA updatable. That way, over time, the system could populate the users' phones with popular pre-built replies. The pre-built reply categories would want to be malleable, too.
The UI, as given, relies on the system continuously:
1. Lessening filtering.
2. Increasing compression.
To balance this ongoing process:
1. When the user Filters an email, the system strengthens its current filtering level.
2. When the user asks to Show More, the system relaxes its current compression level.
I am assuming that the filtering will be done using some combination of so-called Bayesian or n-gram logic in conjunction with specific, proprietary logic.

Call

Show the Call option only if there are phone numbers that can be called? The numbers can come from the AOL UAB or the full email text - the sig, especially.

If this option is to be shown whether there are phone numbers or not, then, when there is no number to call, it might make sense to offer the most recently called numbers as choices.

In any case, the server needs to be in control of this logic. It takes far too much processing for a phone client to handle, and requires knowledge that only the server possesses.

Show More

The Show More function relaxes the email's compression by one stage of compression.

When the user chooses this function, the system auto-adjusts by giving the user less compression in the future.

Over time, the system increases the compression level. The Show More function balances that on-going process.

simcardui.htm :

bar	January 30, 2003	Text changes
bar	December 3, 2002	Change some more function and soft key names
bar	December 2, 2002	Remove Delete function
		Add Call function
		Fix some soft keys to minimize user confusion
bar	November 21, 2002	New name for filtering in mail disposition menu.
bar	November 12, 2002