I just switched back to the Mac from Windows, which necessitated that I switch from Outlook to Entourage for my Exchange client. I used to lead up the Entourage project for 3 versions when I worked at Microsoft. Good times. The 2008 version is pretty nice; a definite upgrade from 2004 although I'm still pissed they haven't yet integrated with WebKit for message display and composition. and the conversation view takes up way too much space with the massive thread headers that add no value whatsoever.
But the one thing I still love is the auto-complete when addressing messages. There are a lot of designs I look back on from my early days working and can't believe how ignorant I was. But auto-complete was a huge success. There are two keys to this design that make it work:
Too often technology takes the easy way out. Even if they offer a way to type-ahead to results within a constrained set, the selected entry is almost always the first one alphabetically. And alphabetical does not equal relevance. Think about every country selector you've filled in. Type U and you're taken to... United Arab Emirates. Useful to well less than .1% of the people filling out the form.
So for any designers, developers, product managers and the like out there, my one request is that you consider relevance when presenting options to the user, and give them the most relevant option as the pre-selected result.
But the one thing I still love is the auto-complete when addressing messages. There are a lot of designs I look back on from my early days working and can't believe how ignorant I was. But auto-complete was a huge success. There are two keys to this design that make it work:
- Keeping track of messages sent and received to each contact, using that data to calculate a relevance (weight) for each contact, and automatically selecting the most relevant contact by default.
- Matching entries on any of several fields, including first name, last name, company, nickname, and email address.
Too often technology takes the easy way out. Even if they offer a way to type-ahead to results within a constrained set, the selected entry is almost always the first one alphabetically. And alphabetical does not equal relevance. Think about every country selector you've filled in. Type U and you're taken to... United Arab Emirates. Useful to well less than .1% of the people filling out the form.
So for any designers, developers, product managers and the like out there, my one request is that you consider relevance when presenting options to the user, and give them the most relevant option as the pre-selected result.
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