How would you improve Gmail?

Gmail is a free mailing service by google, it is the largest and most widely used email-service in the world. The main purpose of gmail is to assist/help people to communicate/share their thoughts/views/opinions via emails. Thus helps people to connect, communicate and collaborate with each other thus bringing them closer to each other.

Emails are generally used for formal communication and they are the least non-obtrusive form of communication. They are used for communications which don't require urgent attention.

Some of the direct competitors of gmail are: yahoo mail, microsoft outlook, rediffmail, hotmail etc

Indirect competitors are: Whatsapp, Hike, Telegram, Signal, slack, zoom etc.

Step 2: Ask clarifying questions to narrow down the scope of the product/question?

-Why is there a need to improve?

-Are there any issues or problems going on that i should know about, because of which an improvement is needed?

-What do you mean by improve? (Improve user engagement or Increase user retention or Increase revenue or Increase user base or Get new features to compete with IM tools)

- Are we focussing on the web based app or mobile app? (mobile)

-IOS or Android? (Android users to begin with)

-For the improvement are we focusing on a particular region or not? (Yes for users in US only)

Step 3: Select one goal and give your reason for the same.

Gmail is the largest/most widely used email-service has over a billion users who use the service on a daily basis. (Therefore retention is definitely not a problem)

The main mission of gmail is to enable easy connection and collaboration of people across the world and thus bring them closer to each other and instill a sense of community. User engagement is something that aligns very closely with this mission of gmail for this reason we will focusing on improving user engagement for this question

Step 4: List down the user groups

Now we will divide the users based on their usage capacity/ability

For Personal Use: These users can be further divided into the following types

1) Power users: Use gmail very frequently to send and reply to emails. These people use gmail multiple times a day

2) Regular users: These users use Gmail couple of a times a week.

3) Casual users: These users seldom use the app, maybe once or twice in a month. They just receive emails and read emails hardly send emails.

For Business Usage: The different type of users in this capacity which is basically used in a work-place setting are as follow

1) Recruiters/Hiring managers

2) HR

Step 5: Select your user group and state your reason for the same.

For the scope of this question we will be going with the personal user group that uses gmail as this is the largest set of users/user group that will be using the app. In this section we will be going with regular users as our targer group as this is the biggest user segment. If we can find ways to engage these users on the app then it basically means that we can increase the user engagement on gmail as a whole and thus which can lead to increase in user retention and monetization/revenue for gmail and google as a whole.

Step 6: List down the user pain-points

Pain-Points for Regular users.

1) Too many emails once they login after a long time, don't know what's important and what's not (which to reply too)Don't have so much time to go through all the emails

3) Composing emails is a very time consuming process

4) Finding and searching for emails is not a very efficient process currently

5) Waiting for the reply is a big/huge turn-off

6) Need help in composing and replying to emails

Step 7: Prioritise the user-pain points based on meaningful criterias like: Impact to end user, Impact to business value

Pain-Point #	Impact to end user	Impact to business value
1	H	H
3	H	H
4	M	M
5	M	M
6	H	H

Based on the above criterias we have prioritised pain-points 1,3 and 6

Step 8: List down the solutions for these prioritised pain-points

1) Too many emails once they login after a long time, don't know what's important and what's not (which to reply too)Don't have so much time to go through all the emails.

A) Mail summarizer: Gives a summary of all the kinds of mails, segregated topic wise received in the time-span that the user didn't login to gmail. To keep the user up-to-dated with the summary of week's emails

B) Push notifications of important emails using AI-based filter: Inbuilt filter which will segregate mails based on what's important nd what's not (this is on the basis of the internal google algorithm )and push notification from the app will be sent to the user to inform user about these important email

3) Composing emails is a very time consuming process

A) Voice based mail composing: Much faster than the traditional text based mail composing. Uses NLP+AI to compose the email

B) Auto-complete feature: Helps user to complete the sentence based on AI based suggestions by understanding the context of the sentence

6) Need help in composing and replying to emails

A) AI based mail generator: System asks a few questions to understand the content and then generates the mail on it's own.

B) Inbuilt Tips and tricks tab/feature: Users can check the articles, tips and recommendations given there to compose and reply to email

Step 9: Prioritise the solutions based on meaningful criterias like: Impact to end user, Implementation effort and implementation cost.

Solution #	Impact to end user	Implementation effort	Implementation cost
1 A	H	L/M	L
1 B	H	M	L
3 A	H	L/M	L/M
3 B	M	M	L
6 A	H	M	M
6 B	M/H	L	L

Based on the above criteria we have prioritised the following pain-points

1A, 3A, 6A

Step 10: List down the metrics that you'll evaluate and track for these features.

1 A) Mail summarizer: Gives a summary of all the kinds of mails, segregated topic wise received in the time-span that the user didn't login to gmail. To keep the user up-to-dated with the summary of week's emails

% of users who use this feature on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

3 A) Voice based mail composing: Much faster than the traditional text based mail composing. Uses NLP+AI to compose the email

% Dec in time taken to compose and reply to an email

Avg inc in number of people who started sending and replying to emails after launch of this feature

6 A) AI based mail generator: System asks a few questions to understand the content and then generates the mail on it's own.

Avg # of mails generated using this feature

Avg # of mails generated per person using this feature

DAU, WAU and MAU for this feature

Step 11: Summarize your answer

PM Team · Answer 2 · 2018-08-12T19:45:39+0000

Clarify – improvement for what – market share, engagement, monetization, new features to better compete with IMs and slack, technology improvement, personal or corporate market etc.

Assuming – improvements to better compete with IMs– a lot of things are moving from emails to WhatsApp/FB messenger – Gmail revenues /markets share at risk if people stop using gmail.

What is gmail and its competition – free email service having over a billion users – biggest market share

Competition – direct (yahoo mail/Microsoft.com/regional country specific emails) – indirect (whatsapp/FB messenger/text messaging) – billions of users in developing countries got on whatspp before they got their email id. So IMs are existential threat to Gmail.

I am ignoring corporate user base of gmail where the competition is Slack/Microsoft/IBM etc

Let’s look at some of the use cases and compare ease of use and what additional wow features we can add in gmail to take market back from IMs –

1. Ease of registration – just verify your phone no and done in whatsapp… gmail requires signup etc
2. Address book/contacts – anyone having whatsapp becomes part of your list and can send/receive text – gmail requires adding/knowing email address to send/receive
3. Notifications – gmail mental association is login and check your email habit – whatsapp – mental association of notification
4. Storage – gmail provides its own storage for docs/photo/video – whatsapp – stores on the phone
5. Data Device dependence – whatsapp data is on the phone – gmail data on the cloud
6. Monetization – gmail is monetized …. Whatsapp is not…. Need to build a better product than whatsapp without losing the monetization
7. Formatting and rich text – whatsapp cant do that… gmail does…
8. Integration with gdrive (not in whatsapp)

A lot of people use whatsapp for forwarding jokes/pictures/videos and do simple short conversations. Gmail is used for more formal communications such as applying for jobs, sending a formal complaint, request for assistance. Whatsapp could evolve there and become a bigger thereat.

Ideas to improve –
1. Gmail equivalent of whatsapp – gmail has access to phone no and email of bulk of the users thanks to increased adoption to android phones. Come out with a product, lets call Gello, that makes phone no as the primary address and associated gmail as secondary. Use the google ecosystem to provide better experience – let user to upload photos directly to google photos, documents to drive and important conversations to gmail as conversations. This not only gives users the ease of IM but also solves problems associated with whatsapp. This may result in revenue loss in the beginning but right now my priority is to stop the adoption of whatsapp/IMs. Monetization can be figured out once we control the users. I will also launch a special service for corporate support through GHello to propel its push using its unique differentiator. Users can get in touch with service provider/warranty providers using Ghello. This way we will preempt WhatsApp’s march.
2. Innovative features for gmail –
a. Customer support through gmail – launch this service wherein user does not need to know email id of target/walamrt/att – in the address field jus type att support and magically a support request is sent to the corporate – from their gmail can function like IM ..letting user to solve its problem — authentication etc can be carried by google…. Saving time and hassle for corporate and consumer..

There could other simple options but looking at Whatsapp threat I would like to pursue idea 1. This will be potent to eliminate threat of Whatsapp and would be strategic to do especially when 85% market share is with Android.

solders15 · Answer 3 · 2018-08-12T19:43:06+0000

Question for the interviewer – What do you mean by improve?
Interviewer says – You (interviewee) decide
I decide user experience as the main aspect to improve.
Options – gmail for web/mobile.
I focus on gmail for mobile

Customer – Segmentation – 1. Enterprise – Gmail for Work
2. Gmail for personal use

I’m going to choose Gmail for personal use

Customers – Occasional users, casual users, turbo users,

Customer profile chosen – Turbo user of gmail who answers several email in the course of the day. Further, she, is employed and of age between 25 – 40, US resident, college educated.
Before going to pain points of the user I will also try and understand the reason why she will use gmail as opposed to texting or messaging.
Gmail, and generally mail, is used when users need to send 1. attachments, 2. not seeking immediate attention, 3. less personal contact.

Some pain points of customer:
1. Multi-pane view – Multiple panes in landscape mode would allow better feedback to user about what the message is about.
2. Better search.
3. Better ad placement.
4. Integration with other google services such as hangouts, calendar and maps – If I hover on an address in the email a small map opens up with the option of the user to click on it to enlarge it.
5. Better spam and anti-phishing/malware support
6. Single delete – Once I delete a particular email, say a forward, it doesn’t appear again on my email list
7. Grouping – Currently done by thread. It could also be done by context across multiple threads. Auto suggest groups
8. Faster startup
9. Themes for google – Personalization

Prioritizing (rating on Benefit B, Cost C and Risk R). (Alternatively I would use a prioritization matrix)
Overall Goal is improved User experience
1. B- High, Cost- Medium, Risk – Medium. The risk here is that some may like this and some may not and feel it too crowded on the screen. Must be an option that can be turned off or on.
2. B-High, C-Low, R-Low. This is core Google technology and has maximum benefit for the buck.
3. B-Low, C-Low, R-Medium. Ads are still considered a nuisance so people may be turned off. Privacy concerns.
4. B-High, C-Medium, R-Low: This simplifies the user’s life in a big way and helps her navigate her day better.
5. B-High, C-Medium, R-Medium. Spam filtering may lead to false positives being filtered out. Could cause pain for user.
6. B-Low, C-Medium, R-Low – Not a feature that will be missed if other features listed are implemented.
7. B-Medium, C-Medium, R-Medium -Too many options may cause confusion to the user.
8. B-High, C-Medium-High, R-Low – Technical feasibility must be analyze. More of a continuous improvement project
9. B-High, C-Low, R-Low – More of a cherry on the cake.

Summary:
Based on the prioritization above, I will suggest features
2, 3, 9 as the first features to consider implementing.

Baran Atmanoglu · Answer 4 · 2022-03-03T14:26:29+0000

Gmail aims to provide an email experience that saves as much time as possible for their users.

After defining the goal of the product, I would ask what is the current problem Gmail is facing? User acquisition or engagement? (I would choose engagement.)

Then I would define the users. In this case, I would define two user segments:

Casual Gmail users: Email is not the primary method of communication for them. They check their emails a couple of times a week. Mostly Gen Z.

Power Email users: Email is one of the primary methods of communication for them. They check their emails a couple of days a week.

I would choose to improve the user experience for power users to improve engagement.

What are some problems they are facing with Gmail?

They are receiving tons of emails but usually few are really important. Gmail proposes a Primary Inbox and side categories, but lots of emails still go into the Primary Inbox. Search functionality doesn't always find the intended emails.

Here are a couple of solutions, I can propose:

- Implement a Smart Inbox view, where the most recent engaged emails are shown rather than a chronological Inbox view.

- Improve the categorization of the emails.

- Let the user choose their close circle by adding email addresses.

The third one would require manual work from users and would be hard to maintain. (Bad UX.) It would be more impactful to improve the categorization to provide a more clear Primary Inbox to the users. So I will choose Solution 2.

Here is a detailed solution proposal for this: Our targeted users are Power users and they are tech-savvy and most probably do a lot of online shopping. I would introduce a new Orders category and put all the emails sent because of an online purchase under that category, which will provide a better Primary Inbox experience.

The Orders tab will also list the recent open orders and their latest status so users won't have to track different emails to track the status of their orders.

I would start implementing this with Google Shop and extend it to Amazon purchases.

What to track?

Here are a couple of metrics I can track.

- The number of emails labeled as Order.

- The average number of Order emails per user.

- The number of times users are visiting the Orders tab.

- The number of times users are changing moving an email from Orders to Primary .(and vice versa.)

To summarize, First I defined the goal of the Gmail product as providing a time-saving email client to its users and chose Engagement as the metric to improve. Then I defined the users as power and casual and choose power users and defined a couple of pain points they may have with the current Gmail. Then I proposed a solution around creating a new Category as Orders and structuring this kind of email to give a new view of users' online purchases. At last, I defined the metrics I would track to understand the success of this new category feature.