Mailbox UX: How Mailbox Builds User Love

nodesocket · on Feb 9, 2013

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.

WA · on Feb 9, 2013

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.

sriramk · on Feb 9, 2013

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

holman · on Feb 9, 2013

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)

jason_shah · on Feb 9, 2013

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.

rossfeller · on Feb 9, 2013

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?

seivan · on Feb 9, 2013

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.

jason_shah · on Feb 9, 2013

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/

jason_shah · on Feb 9, 2013

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?