邮件App Geronimo，让处理邮件变得像玩游戏一样有趣Erik Lukas 让我看看他手机上的邮件。
他问我：“你想扔掉一些邮件吗？”没错，他把这个整理过程叫做丢弃。他得用一个文件夹来整理邮件，不然的话其他人会觉得他的邮件乱七八糟的。
这款邮件App叫做Geronimo，于8月27日正式发布iPhone版和Apple Watch版，并且使用均是免费的。作为创始人，Lukas给我演示了应用程序的运作过程。首先，我将一封Linkedin里的邮件进行长按，之后就能感受到一种无形的数字攫取，然后我将大拇指滑到屏幕的右下方，这时邮件触碰到屏幕边缘就消失销毁了。
这个互动过程出其意料地会满足用户的使用心理，或者，换种说法，可能会很有趣。
但是，准确地说，其实它并不该用有趣来形容。虽然说你使用的过程可能很有趣，但是由于邮件本身它不是有趣的，所以Geronimo也不是有趣的。
发布自Jumpin Labs的Geronimo可以将Gmail账户里邮件进行安排布局， Lukas称之为一种设计思路式的布局。如果说仅仅从纯粹的用户使用界面来说，这款App在Gmail普通应用程序和Apple有限的邮件选择基础上是一种完善和提升。
虽然说在视觉上，它没有Google Inbox那么使人满意，但是却在新奇的交流互动方面弥补了不足。最起码，Geronimo的使用过程是很有趣的，就像Lukas所说的，这是一个优势。他向我演示的时候说：“我们正在努力地将邮件重新赋予人性。”
这款App运用不全靠直觉的手势交互方式，使得整理和删除文件的过程有点像玩游戏。如果你想要销毁、存档或者标记邮件，只需要简单地滑到屏幕上某个特定的角落就可以完成操作。轻触手机背面，之后邮件就像雪花一样直接从你的收件箱里消除。你还可以将手机竖直倾斜来查看日常的邮件，不需要一直沿着手机上下滑动。而左右滑动就是查看前一天或者后一天的邮件。
换句话说，Geronimo与你之前所使用过的任意一款邮件App都不一样。
目前，Lukas正在利用另一种交流形式，研发一种新的语言来处理邮件。他说：“邮件没有利用以往我们从手机短信里学到的那些有趣的创新性的东西。”
许多的开发商都试图将邮件变得像文本打字那样简单，但是Lukas还拥有其他的一些特色优势，比如说能够快速与重要人士进行交流沟通、定制个性化图片等。Geronimo可以让你对五位重要的的联系人进行置顶，以便进行快速对话。
你可以将你以往邮件历史当中的某一封转发给联系人，或者可以直接点击联系人的头像图片来创建新的信息。如果说你处在创建信息的窗口之下，你可以通过拇指向左滑动来访问照片流，然后利用la Snapchat附件进行发送。
Geronimo与那些传统的邮件App最大的不同就在于它的时间轴浏览。每天不同的邮件被分在了几个不同的区，而不是全部放在同一个界面。顶部的那些图文并茂的时间轴可以清晰地让你看到哪些天有未读邮件。
Lukas解释说：“不管你使用哪一款邮件App，其实我们都非常依赖收件箱的时间顺序，以此来查看邮件。”Geronimo通过拖放个人邮件重新安排邮件的顺序，来改变人们以前的想法。这是App一个简便且非常有用的特性，你可以不用一个个地浏览星标文件夹就把事情按照优先顺序安排妥当。
这种直接的操作显示了Geronimo的一种物质性。你能感觉出Lukas聘用了移动游戏开发商来构造新的交互手势，而每一个手势又让你感觉发现了一个全新的操作。
他说：“即使现在这些令人满意的游戏机制和互动不是那么广泛地被使用，但是我们还是想知道它们是否有用并且有效。”
事实上，当你用了一段时间之后，你就会发现它能够开启强有力的用户操作，比如说滑动查看不同的日常邮件、自动星标或者存档邮件。但是你要是想要升级更新至下一个级别，你就得证明你已经会使用这款App了。
如果你已经习惯使用这些交互的话，其实比你用熟悉的老式邮箱程序还快，只是在你习惯之前你得花一段时间来学习。而这一点正是Geronimo能否留住用户的关键。目前的我们已经习惯以某种特定的方式来处理邮件。
这是一场快速梳理文件的高效游戏。其实不管有多少特色的智能手势，邮件永远都不会让你充分享受，但是它却能够减轻你的烦恼与负担。
This App Makes a Wacky Game Out of Sorting Your Email
ERIK LUKAS HANDS me his iPhone and invites me to go through his mail.
“Do you want to toss some emails?” he asks. That’s right, he calls it tossing. He has a folder for this, because “otherwise people get a little slap-happy with my emails.”
Lukas, the founder of the email app Geronimo (which launches for free on Aug. 27 for iPhone and Apple Watch) shows me how the app works. I long-press on an email from Linkedin until I sense an intangible digital grab, then flick my thumb toward the lower right hand corner of the screen. The email hurtles toward the edge and disappears. Trashed.
The interaction is surprisingly satisfying. Almost, oh, I don’t know…fun?
Well, not fun, exactly. Email by its very nature email isn’t fun, so Geronimo isn’t either, even though you can tell it really, really would like to be.
Geronimo, from Jumpin Labs, pulls in email from your Gmail account and arranges it in what Lukas describes as a “design-driven” layout. In terms of pure user interface, it’s an improvement on Gmail’s mediocre app and Apple’s sterile Mail option. It’s less visually exciting than Google Inbox, but makes up for that in novel interactions. At the very least, Geronimo is interesting to use, and if you ask Lukas, that’s a win. “We’re trying to re-humanize email,” he says while walking me through a demo.
The app is full of not-quite-intuitive gestural interactions that make sorting and deleting email feel a bit like playing a game. To trash, archive, or label an email, simply flick it toward a specific corner of the screen. Tap the back of your phone, and robo-emails fall away from your inbox like snowflakes. Tilt your phone vertically to scroll through the day’s emails without dragging a finger along the screen. Flicking to the left or the right moves you from one day’s emails to the next.
In other words, Geronimo is unlike any email app you’ve ever used.
Lukas is developing a new language for handling email by drawing on another form of communication: messaging. “Email doesn’t take advantage of any of the interesting, creative things that we’ve learned from mobile messaging,” he says. Many developers are trying to make email as simple as texting, but Lukas is riffing on other features too, like being able to quickly communicate with a few important people, or customizing images. Geronimo solves for that by letting you place as many as five quick contacts at the top of your inbox. You can drag emails from your timeline to a contact to forward it, or tap on the contact’s picture to compose a message. Once you’re in the compose window, you can access your photo library by dragging the left side of the screen over with your thumb and draw on that attachment (a la Snapchat) before you send it.
Neat stuff, but Geronimo’s most significant departure from traditional email apps is its timeline view. Instead of seeing a single vertical wall of emails, days are split up into separate blocks, and a pictorial timeline at the top give you an overview of which days have the most unread emails. “We’re kind of slaves to the chronological order of the inbox, no matter what app you’re using,” Lukas explains. Geronimo tries to upend that idea by allowing you rearrange the order of your messages by dragging and dropping individual emails. It’s a simple but handy feature that allows you to prioritize your actions without having to navigate to a separate starred folder.
This direct manipulation gives Geronimo a sense of physicality. You can tell Lukas hired mobile game developers to come up with new ways to interact; every gesture you learn feels like you’ve discovered a new power move. “We wondered, what are game mechanics and interactions that are satisfying that can be applied here that aren’t overboard but are useful and efficient?” And indeed, after you use the app for a while, it unlocks power user moves like flicking your wrist to move through days and auto-starring or archiving all emails. The thought being, you have to prove you know how to use the app before you can advance to the next level.
Once you nail the interactions, it might be even quicker than using the old Mail standby—it’s just going to take a bit learning. And that’s where Geronimo will hook or lose you. We’ve grown accustomed to dealing with email in a certain way. It’s an efficiency game—plow through the pile as quickly as possible. Email will never truly be enjoyable, no matter how many clever gestural features you build into it. But it canbe less painful.
Source:wired
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