Students looking to get better control of their inbox may have a new application to help stem the daily flood of emails.

The newly released Mailbox app is designed to keep the user’s mailbox empty at all times. Mailbox’s notable feature gives users the ability to “snooze” certain emails. This means that if an email indicates an appointment is scheduled for the next Monday, Mailbox will remind the user a few days later, closer to the appointment date. Reducing the amount of clutter in the inbox allows the user to sort through more information in less time, according to a Jan. 22 Mashable article.

“I’m really bad at checking my email. I find it challenging to set push notifications,” said Rachel Mohler, a sophomore photojournalism major and contributing photographer at The Daily Orange. “It’s hard to compartmentalize them on your phone because the screen is so small.”

Generic email mobile apps often leave the user with an endless stream of messages, largely unorganized and unsearchable for minute details, according to a Feb. 12 by Wired magazine.

“Email is something that needs to be done. I never read the school email because it’s not relevant, hard to browse and because it’s not specialized,” said Michael Lima, a sophomore architecture major.

But students hoping to download the app may have to wait a while. More than 750,000 people have already signed up for the app, which is being released in stages. The excitement for the app has led some anxious users to take to Twitter to show the world their position in line to download it, according to the Wired article.

Although Mailbox allows users to be reminded of future appointments, some students believe calendars are a more suitable option for organizing their schedule than email.

“I use my calendar to organize my priorities rather than reorganizing my email,” said Jason Evanko, a sophomore film major.

There are several gesture-based features to Mailbox that allow users to swipe to save a particular message to a designated folder, or swipe in the opposite direction in order to delete the email.

Gentry Underwood, CEO of Orchestra, the parent company of Mailbox, said in the Mashable article that it is unfortunate that many email providers force users to adapt to a miniature desktop version of the conventional email. By optimizing the user experience, especially for mobile devices, the hope is that more people will be able to quickly manage the often unbearable influx of daily emails.

This new way of reinventing the smartphone mailbox was forged with dynamic research from Stanford University behavioral researcher BJ Fogg. Mailbox is effectively a balancing act between a user’s ability to complete an action and their motivation to actually do it. This gives users the ability to shrink their mailbox by postponing tasks that need attention at a later date, according to a Feb. 17 article by Forbes magazine.

Mailbox lacks several key features that its competitors have. Sparrow, an email app competitor, affords the user with a greater number of gestures that speed up the navigation of email. Sparrow also allows pictures to be added to contacts, thus personalizing the user interface, according to Mashable.

The differentiation factor of Mailbox is its ability to “snooze” messages that do not need immediate attention. According to Mashable, the Mailbox team is already working on the next great innovation for email: automated organization and location incorporation.

Published on February 18, 2013 at 11:28 pm

Contact Jared: jmrose03@syr.edu