<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=windows-1252">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p>Thank you all for the great feedback and suggestions, this is a
great start.</p>
<p>Below you can find my answers and clarifications to your
questions.<br>
<br>
</p>
<p><font size="+1" color="#333399"><b>Remove 'Get a new Email
Address'</b></font></p>
<p>I implemented that secondary button as Ryan told me there are
potential partnerships happening with various email providers.
Offering a "spotlight" placement in TB is pretty important in
order to close profitable deals with email providers, opposed to
something like "We're gonna put a link on one of our web pages".
We need a stronger selling point.<br>
</p>
<p>The idea is to offer the ability to create a new email account
directly inside Thunderbird without leaving the client.
Furthermore, once the email has been created, TB would complete
the setup automatically. A seamless implementation for that tiny %
of users that need a new email address.</p>
<p>I think we can all agree that, other than offering a stable and
fully featured software, we want to also on-board new users and
grow our audience. I don't think completely removing that feature
would be a good idea as the low % of usage can be attributed to
many factors, like a disconnected and confusing UI, unavailability
of multiple providers, and lacking of a properly guided
experience.</p>
<p>That implementation might have been a failure, but that doesn't
mean we need to react with a "never again" approach. We should
identify road blocks, pain points, and iterate upon that.<br>
<br>
</p>
<p><font size="+1" color="#333399"><b>Why do we need a completely
new dialog?<br>
</b></font></p>
<p>I'm not sure if what Ben Bucksch is referring to is my dialog or
the current TB dialog</p>
<blockquote>
<p><font size="-1" color="#666666"><i>"This dialog was created by
a UX designer, and highly optimized to provide exactly the
right clues, and leave out everything unnecessary."</i></font></p>
</blockquote>
<p>If this is related to the current dialog in TB, I'm sorry but I
strongly disagree. The current dialog is not optimized at all, on
the contrary, all the information and steps are lazily aligned and
misplaced.<br>
The input's helpers text are inline, which makes the dialog longer
that it needs. If there's an error, the message with a misaligned
icon appears to the right of the helper text, making the dialog
grow, causing elements and focus points to shift.<br>
The configuration steps are not styled at all, it's just a text
after another printed at the bottom, not properly aligned and
poorly utilized to actually show the user what's happening and the
steps to take.<br>
Buttons are in the wrong order for a cohesive navigation.</p>
<p>I hope we can all agree that the current dialog is not a great
"First Experience" to offer to new users. That dialog sells TB
short, making it look unpolished, non-curated, and kind of like an
amateur old software.<br>
<br>
</p>
<p><font size="+1" color="#333399"><b>Tooltips and error messages</b></font></p>
<div class="moz-signature">
<p>To guide the user in typing proper information, we can use a
combination of placeholder text and tooltips. Showing all the
text at all times is not a good solution as it clutters the
dialog and distracts the user.</p>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">
<p>Tooltips can also be triggered dynamically without changing the
size of the dialog, which we should avoid as it disrupts the
experience.</p>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">
<p>If the user types "bob", we can have a check in place for
lowercase single words in order to trigger a timed tooltip to
state "This is the name your recipients will see", or something
like that.<br>
If the email is incorrect, the field can shake and a timed
tooltip can appear.<br>
Tooltip messages can be shown on mouseover as well.</p>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">
<p>All these solutions create visual cues that catch the user's
eye, without moving elements around or changing the location of
fields and buttons, like it happens in the current field.<br>
<br>
</p>
<p><font size="+1" color="#333399"><b>Cancel the dialog<br>
</b></font></p>
<p>This is something I'd like to hear your thoughts about it.
Since any dialog can be closed through the window controls, do
we want to highlight this option with a dedicated button?</p>
<p>The idea here is to somewhat prevent this if the user access TB
for the first time and no accounts is set up. Is TB usable in
any way without an account?</p>
<p>Anyway, a "Set Up Later" button or link can be added on the
first screen, but I wouldn't add it or keep it once the user is
in the funnel, to prevent accidental clicks or confusion with
the back button.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Thanks again everyone for taking the time to review these
mock-ups.<br>
Taking design decisions is always hard as everyone has its own
taste and expectations, but I'm sure we can all work together to
improve the experience of using TB, and create an interface that
it's modern and appealing, and can help us solve problems, gain
new users, and solidify the trust with our current audience.</p>
<p>Cheers,<br>
</p>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<span style="color:#666;font-family:mono; font-size:small"><b>Alessandro
Castellani</b><br>
Lead UX Architect<br>
Thunderbird</span></div>
</body>
</html>