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Best of both worlds: improving gmail labels with the affordances of folders

Published: 10 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Gmail's filing system for email conversations is based around labels, which are more flexible and powerful than folders. With its original user interface, many users did not discover labels, and wondered why Gmail had no folders. The Gmail team redesigned the user interface for labeling to make it more discoverable and understandable, and to add the most useful functionality of folders. The new design works for the simple use case (a conversation with only one label), while still making the more complex use case (multiple labels) easily available. It has been launched to millions of users worldwide and has resulted in much higher adoption of labels, especially by new users of Gmail.

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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI EA '10: CHI '10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 2010
2219 pages
ISBN:9781605589305
DOI:10.1145/1753846

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 10 April 2010

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Author Tags

  1. email organization
  2. folders
  3. labels
  4. personal information management
  5. tags

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CHI EA '10 Paper Acceptance Rate 350 of 1,346 submissions, 26%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Supporting Organizations in Improving Employee Bulk E-mail --- A Tool Design and Evaluation StudyProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869118:CSCW2(1-28)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
  • (2020)Organizing personal digital information: an analysis of faculty member activitiesJournal of Documentation10.1108/JD-03-2020-0034ahead-of-print:ahead-of-printOnline publication date: 21-Dec-2020
  • (2019)Personal Information Management and Organisation Competencies: A Review of Information Literacy Conceptual Frameworks and StandardsInformation Literacy in Everyday Life10.1007/978-3-030-13472-3_5(50-59)Online publication date: 20-Feb-2019
  • (2018)Let’s get personal: the little nudge that improves document retrieval in the CloudJournal of Documentation10.1108/JD-06-2018-0098Online publication date: 29-Nov-2018
  • (2014)Overload is overloadedProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2556288.2557013(793-802)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2014
  • (2014)Tagging personal information: A contrast between attitudes and behaviorProceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology10.1002/meet.1450500102950:1(1-8)Online publication date: 8-May-2014
  • (2013)Tagging personal informationProceedings of the 76th ASIS&T Annual Meeting: Beyond the Cloud: Rethinking Information Boundaries10.5555/2655780.2655873(1-8)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2013
  • (2012)Tagging might not be slower than filing in foldersCHI '12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2212776.2223753(2063-2068)Online publication date: 5-May-2012
  • (2011)Am I wasting my time organizing email?Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/1978942.1979457(3449-3458)Online publication date: 7-May-2011

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