Interview with Mailbutler’s UX/UI designers Magda and Yadira

Mailbutler has recently released a much-requested feature: Tags! Tags let you add colored labels to your emails and Mailbutler contacts, notes, tasks, signatures and templates, helping you to keep your inbox organized. You can also filter by a specific tag title to find items quickly, saving you time. 

We spoke with Mailbutler UX/UI designers Magda and Yadira to find out more about the process of implementing the Tags feature.  

Q&A with Magda

When the project was first discussed what was the most exciting thing about it and why? Where did the idea come from? 

Customers determine our success! We listen to their feedback and update our product based on what they want. We identified a genuine need for this feature from our users and embarked on the project to improve our product accordingly. The project was a subject of discussion a year ago, and our Product Owner Iuliia created the first document outlining the agenda and planning. 

The idea of further developing Maibutler and allowing users to tag and organize their content in our product was empowering. Adding this level of customization tailors users’ experience to suit their specific needs and preferences.  

Tags provide a structured and flexible way to organize information and find content more efficiently. This majorly enhances productivity and streamlines workflow.

Lastly, our project stemmed from recognizing that this addition could differentiate our product from competitors, making it more appealing and unique, ultimately helping us attract a broader customer base.  

What are some of the challenges that you faced during the project and how were they solved? 

Working on the Tagging system was riveting! It was a substantial project that involved close collaboration with our amazing product team. Thanks to our joint efforts we were able to overcome the challenges that our design team had to tackle

The first challenge was its complex information architecture. It was important to us that the tags were present in every feature of our product - that is, tasks, notes, messages, contacts, signatures and templates, so we needed to create the structural design and organization of information that effectively organizes this complexity, keeping it simple, intuitive and user-friendly. 

We had to try to strike a balance between flexibility and simplicity. As for flexibility, we wanted to allow users to manage their tags on a Tags management page where they can change tags’ colors and names and delete or edit a tag. At the same time, we aimed for a simplicity that requires minimal training and ensures that our users can quickly and efficiently tag items without confusion. I’m convinced we successfully achieved that balance. 

The third challenge was tackling potential clutter on our interface when there was an overload of other information. We put extra emphasis on achieving a visual hierarchy to help users understand and interact with tags and label content smoothly. 

What are the plans for the present and the future?  

We will be continuously gathering feedback from our users and gaining a better understanding of their needs so that we can further improve the tagging system. In addition to that, we will strive to conduct tests and collaborate with our development team to refine the project. 

Finally, the Tags feature is an exciting starting point for future product enhancements and we will be looking into integration with native solutions, the power of AI and automated content-tagging to make tagging more efficient and accurate. These are only a few facets, yet there are many possibilities on the horizon that we are very excited about! 

Q&A with Yadira 

When the project was first discussed, what was the most exciting thing about it and why? 

I think we started more than a year ago. We knew tags were a great feature to add to our product but we had to do some research and preparation before finally kicking off the project. The most exciting part was to actually give our users a feature they normally need to pay for with other products.  

Where did the idea come from?

The decision to incorporate the Tags feature in our product came from users' requests on our feature requests page. 

Also, during a usability test, a user expressed the significant role that tags play in their daily life, which also prompted us to explore the possibility of adding this feature. However, we had other projects in the pipeline and had to delay it. Finally, this year we were able to implement them! 

What are some of the challenges that you faced during the project and how were they solved? 

This project was quite large as we chose to implement the tagging system across various features of our product. The inclusion of an unlimited number of tags added complexity to the design process, but we worked collaboratively as a team and experimented with different strategies until we arrived at the most suitable solution. 

What are the plans for the present and the future? 

For now, we would like to observe how users will use and adopt tags. Getting this feedback from users will allow us to enhance tags and make them even more useful.