Maybe I am the only person in the world who thinks this, but I can’t stand the gmail interface.  Tim O’Reilly’s post reflecting on Bill Higgins post the Uncanny Valley of user interface design made me groan.  Higgins talks about why gmail is better then zimbra – an up and coming open source exchange replacement (both  quote/un-quote web 2.0 email apps) in his opinion.  As much as I think the importance of a good UI is often misunderstood and underplayed in product design, I could not disagree more strongly about Higgins’s views about gmail.  As a 20+ year user of email (and yes I am in my mid-30′s so it means most of my life), there are certain conventions and analogies that I and hundreds of millions of others have come accustomed to.  And from my point of view – gmail violates a lot of them and as a user I find that very, very frustrating (it’s the same reason I don’t like Office 2007 fwiw).  And from my more then decade of experience of helping build apps, web apps and websites, I think a key component of good UI design is maintaining common conventions and making them ever more simple or easy to understand while maintaining flexbility so the individual user can create the UI experience that is optimal for them.

One of the most annoying conventions that gmail violates is the inability to have a non-threaded view.  I hate threaded views (or at least the way gmail does it).  Can’t stand it and what’s worse is there is no way to use the standard sort by date available in every other email app I have ever used.  Drives me nuts.  About the only feature in gmail I liked was the ability to tag emails (why outlook doesn’t have this yet is beyond me).  

Gmail’s mobile interface and mobile support right now is also sorely lacking.  And since email for me is now largely a mobile experience, the fact that gmail is only available via a mobile browser or a pop3 client means gmail pales in comparison to integrated apps like blackberry or goodlink from good technologies (good is the killer email app for mobile exchange users).

So until gmail overcomes its one size fits not me approach to its UI and gets some real world mobile support that’s competitive with blackberry or goodlink, it won’t work for me.