
Mailbox UX: How Mailbox Builds User Love - jason_shah
http://blog.jasonshah.org/post/42648846774/mailbox-ux-delivering-subtle-beauty
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nodesocket
The queue was really a genius tactic. It's addicting to check back, open the
app, and see the number of people in front of you drop by hundreds or even
thousands, and the total number of people behind you increase as well. Their
traction is insane, seems to be somebody requests an invite every other second
on average. The real-time updating of the queue was a super smart move.

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WA
And another middle man accessing my mail. Privacy hell. Would never use.

Edit: Haiku style:

    
    
      Middleman sees mail,
      welcome to privacy hell.
      I would never use.
    

Edit2: Well, maybe not. Is it a client app or is it a middle man app? Why is
it requesting permissions to Gmail instead of using IMAP? Weird.

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sriramk
Probably to be able to send push notifications for new email.

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holman
I think the waiting list and UX built hype, sure, but not love.

The majority of tweets in my stream since it "launched" were negative.
Interestingly enough, this is impacting their App Store rating, too:

<http://cl.ly/image/0Z3P412a2l1Y> (Screenshot)

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jason_shah
There are definitely a lot of negative reactions to the queue.

However, it's more the new user experience once you actually have access
that's building love. Naturally, waiting doesn't build love. Maybe some
excitement, but also some animosity as we saw in this case. But if you can
drive the excitement as they did for _some_ people, but most importantly
capitalize on the hype when people are actually using the app for the first
time...that's when you build love IMO.

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rossfeller
Interesting to note how the reservation system has impacted ratings in the App
Store with a ton of one star reviews complaining about the wait. Might take a
long time, if even possible for them to recover their average. Unintended
consequences, or maybe they don't care?

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seivan
I wonder what their team looks like. Like, how many software engineers do they
got going, and how many self-proclaimed product people and "Mobile UX super
experts with awesome ideas" are around.

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jason_shah
According to AngelList, the Mailbox team is at least 5 people
<https://angel.co/mailbox-by-orchestra>

I wonder if they have additional folks from the original Orchestra team
pitching in right now given the fast rise of the app though. And I'm sure they
can't hire fast enough right now... <http://www.mailboxapp.com/jobs/>

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jason_shah
Aside from their new user experience, I wonder what the impact of the queue
has been.

Does it make people want to use the app more or push the app out of memory?

