Vice President of Design
6/12 - 9/13

HAN:DLE - “The world’s first priority engine”
I took a product that had been designed by Getting-Things-Done (GTM) practitioners for fellow hard-core practitioners and turned it into a product that appealed to a broader audience.

  • Designed integrated email and task management portal along Getting Things Done (GTD) principles.

  • Fully-integrated UX design milestones into development Agile/JIRA processes and roadmap.

  • Managed TechCrunch 2013 “Startup Battlefield” presentation and concurrent product launch. HAN:DLE came in second (beating Zendesk!).

v.0: Inbox Zero view
The original design was originally all about achieving “Inbox Zero”, a productivity goal in which you always have an empty inbox. Handle displayed one e-mail at a time in a “focus view.” A  counter showed how many e-mails remaining.

I pointed out that most users would demand a more conventional inbox before adopting Handle as their primary e-mail client. 

v.1: Emails and tasks
The first unified inbox I designed showed e-mails and tasks (live e-mail threads with task metadata). I made Focus view ("Inbox Zero") an option. 

Users still had to memorize keystroke commands (e.g. “r” for “reply”) and enter them in a command bar. The system was highly efficient—once you learned it. But it was still far too difficult for new users and, if unchanged, would limit adoption.

v.2: Separate email and priorities tabs
Managing e-mail and priorities (the new name for “tasks”) in a single view was complex so I added a Priorities tab. I also displayed the most common commands as buttons and reduced the width of the command bar.

A few early adopters said a Today view would be useful. Users could drag-and-drop any e-mail or priority anywhere on the Today view to schedule it. 

v.3: Complete command set and final layout
The release for TechCrunch 2013 incorporated final branding colorsand typography. Priorities were orange and content was blue and gray. I also designed the UX for account sign-up and creation in anticipation of a wide release and high user demand.