thunderbird
Account Drawer Improvements
🎯 The objective
The objective of this project is to redesign the account drawer in Thunderbird for Android (TfA) to enhance the usability and clarity of the drawer. This improvement addresses major user feedback from the recent TfA 8 and 9 beta releases, which highlighted difficulties in switching between accounts. The goal is to create a seamless, user-friendly experience by introducing:
- Icons that visually distinguish between accounts.
- A wide view for clearer visibility of account names and email addresses.
By implementing these changes, we aim to improve the user satisfaction and engagement with the TfA app.
🎒 Resources
- User feedback summary:
- User stories and specifications: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XXT3U_ywV5_j0UxrLch0ALPmCmcKbq8BvLqsNwd_SFg/edit?tab=t.0
- Figma designs: TODO
- GitHub issues:
🦮 Rules of the Road
To ensure a successful implementation, the following requirements must be met:
🟢 In Scope
- Visual Icon Differentiation for Accounts: Adding customizable icons to represent different accounts visually.
- Wide Format Layout: Updating the account drawer layout to display account names and associated email addresses in a wide format.
- Visible indication of account selection
🔴 Out of Scope
- Changes to the core functionality of the email client unrelated to account switching.
- Introducing a structured folder view for easier navigation within each account, see separate project #8959 .
- Advanced folder management features such as folder creation, reordering or deletion within the drawer.
🚧 Technical and/or Business Requirements
- Accessibility: Ensure compliance with accessibility standards, including proper labeling for screen readers and visual contrast for icons.
- Scalability: Support users with one account and a large number of accounts and folders without degradation in performance. Additionally, ensure that usability and navigation are not compromised for these users.
🏃 Milestones
Milestone 1: Research and Design
- Gather user insights to refine requirements.
- Develop detailed Figma designs for the new account drawer.
- Do usability testing on design prototypes.
Milestone 2: Development and Implementation
- Implement visual icon differentiation for accounts.
- Update the account drawer layout to support wide format.
Cross-Functional Tasks
🎨 Design
- Turn scoped design change description into finished designs that can be implemented
⁉️ QA
- TODO consider if there are any things SV manual QA should do
📊 MarComm
- Ask users for feedback on design
- Inform about changes in reviews
- Potentially update the community on the changes we’ve done and that we are listening (blog post, etc)
🤝 Support - Product
- TODO Sumo changes - which ones?
@wmontwe are you working on all of the issues in this epic? Is there anything I might be able to pick up?
Both Google Docs links need an invite and your link "Folder Hirarchies" is a 404. When and where was this feedback collected? As a user and a developer I haven't come across any questions for feedback. (I wrote the old, searchable folder list, back when Android phones still had a fourth hardware "search" button and ListView was a thing.) It sounds strange that "too many account" is a more prominent issue then "too many folders".
Apologies for the internal links, the epic contents sync from our notion where MZLA does project management. The feedback was from a number of sources including Topicbox beta mailing list, app store reviews, K-9 Forum, issues filed, etc.
Summary
This document compiles user feedback on the Thunderbird for Android app, focusing specifically on the account drawer. The primary areas of concern are account identification and customization, folder navigation, and overall drawer design.
Top Priorities
- Account Identification and Customization:
- Allow customization of initials, icons, colors for better differentiation between accounts.
- Option to display full email addresses for clarity
- Folder Navigation:
- Introduce folder hierarchies, potentially collapsible.
- Optimize spacing and provide compact views.
- Drawer Design:
- Reintroduce compact layouts or make icons optional.
- Restore settings access to a prominent, single-step location.
Aggregated Feedback
- Account Selection and Customization
- Accounts on the same domain are difficult to distinguish, as they share the same initials (e.g., "GM" for Gmail). Also similar names are hard to distinguish when just using name initials.
- Limited customization options for account icons or initials.
- Users miss the older account overview layout that was more intuitive.
- Folder Navigation
- The new drawer layout displays all folders and subfolders at the same level, overwhelming users with large folder trees.
- Lack of collapsible or expandable folder views makes navigation difficult for users with extensive folder structures.
- Line spacing in the folder view consumes too much screen space.
- Drawer Layout and Usability
- The redesign replaced compact text with larger icons and bulkier text.
- Moving accounts selection to the left in the drawer instead of the top leaves less room for folder navigation.
- No access to quick actions when the account selector is collapsed, including settings and refresh options.
- Not working well on small screens, the folder list has not enough space.
Raw Feedback
Play Store Reviews
- Please add an account setting to set the color and initials shown in the drawer to distinguish multiple accounts under the same domain.
- The new folder drawer design is confusing and buggy.
- The new drawer is completely confusing. Small text replaced by giant pills. If you have more emails on the same domain, all of them will show up as the same two letters.
- The first and what bothers me the most is that in the drawer all the folders and subfolders appear at the same level and not as a tree view, not even a simple and expandable view to go up or down the level to go through the folder tree.
- no bottom button bar
- the mailboxes labels absolutely need to be customizable, else they are useless and render the navigation through different mailboxes all but frustrating
- Once imported the first thing I see is a whole bunch of big bold circular icons down the left hand side of my screen. The two non-changeable initials on each icon represent the first two letters of the domain name of each email account.
Topicbox
- Now these accounts are on the left instead of on the top. Taking away all the necessary space for folder names.
- Desktop app layout != phone app layout
- now k9 is showing me >200 folders, why???? Manage folders also >200 folders. What is the point??? Why not work with collapsable folders.
- Old account overview was great
- I have 3 Gmail accounts and all are called GM, but with different colours, some easier way to recognize them is needed.
- I would prefer to have Icons/avatars, as I do with my email addresses, and contacts, and have those appear instead
Github
- Inbox in french too long in left panel · Issue #8487
- UX regression from K-9: Access to settings · Issue #8235
- Better folder navigation with long lists and hierarchies · Issue #8463
- Reduce space between lines in folder view · Issue #8475
- Show picture profile on account list · Issue #8238
- Account icon is displayed twice at accounts list · Issue #8631
- Allow including the full email address of in the account sidebar to prevent confusion · Issue #8495
- Redesigned menu doesn't read well on smaller screens · Issue #8708
K-9 Forum
- Compact folder list - General
- Don't show "account selector" by default or at least enable account pics - Support
- New layout not OK - Support
- How to change account icons? - Support
- Settings and refresh button - Support
I can share more docs as needed, there is one more with some user stories that served as input for design. Too many folder is certainly also an issue, but the root of the complaint was that the new drawer doesn't have great ways for users to determine which account they have selected. Users with 1 account were unhappy they lost the extra space on the side. Users with 2-3 accounts were unhappy about the visual switching that occcured when the account moved to the top.
Overall users with 2-3 accounts were likely ok with the change overall, but users with many accounts simply didn't have any way to customize in a way that they could easily understand their accounts. We unfortunately don't yet have any data to understand what the average number of accounts and folders is.
The too many folders problem I think we can explore more in #8959. Glad to see you returning :)
Hello, I was wondering if this ticket is the reasom in the latest (frdoid) version my folder with subfolders no longer stays expanded?
I have a folder like Family -Mom -Dad -Gpa
When I expand Family, it shows the sub folders properly. If I swipe away K9 from my app switcher and re-open it later, Family is no longer expanded and I need to expand it again. It didn't do that for the many years I used your K9.
Can you please add an option/setting to keep folders expanded like it did before?
Thank you either way.
I was one of users that downgraded from v8 to v6.. I see there were many changes in the meantime. Is there available video how handling of drawer works now, especially with more accounts? Something like: changes from V6 to v12, I do not see in https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuMTCmnwZPiXXVIy_TW6Bnw
