Reflecting on Gmail’s Design

When it comes to UI design, Google’s Gmail is not the flashiest product on the web. Its branding features a minimal use of color and a decent spread of white space. One might even accuse it of being lackluster upon first glance. As a beginner learning about product design, I found myself fascinated by this apparent juxtaposition of Gmail’s rather simple design and its place as the top emailing service. What do their designers know that we, as laymen, don’t? As a first step in my analysis, I decided to research Gmail’s come-up story. How did it beat out its competitors?

Gmail’s Beginnings

Gmail launched on April 1, 2004. (I’m writing about Gmail on its birthday, how odd.) During that time, the top emailing services were Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. For the scope of this assignment, I can’t launch a deep investigative work of Gmail’s inception and proliferation, so I’ll be summarizing facts from this Time article.

Though it officially launched in 2004, it was first conceived of as a possibility by its creator, Paul Buchhiet, in 1996. He imagined the potential of building a web-based email and mainly explored the possibility out of curiosity. Gmail’s original name was Caribou (imagine that) and it began as a search engine for Buchheit’s own email. From there, he expanded this search engine to his colleagues, exploring the potential of Gmail’s initial and primary function — its search ability.

Google’s competitors (think Yahoo) at the time were branding themselves as “portals,” where they would encompass as many topics as they could, whether that was a news tab, a community tab, or even a shopping tab. Gmail, however, focused solely on its search function, which led to the decision of offering its users 1GB of storage space. Having a search feature would entail you’d store most of your mail instead of deleting it, or else what’s there to search for if you’ve got to keep your mail under space limits? (At least that’s my layman’s way of explaining it.) This search function was a key element that separated Gmail from its competitors — and its subsequent requirement of offering a large storage space meant users could also send large attachments. The rest of Gmail’s come-up story is even more fascinating and I’d recommend reading the entire article, but this is where I’ll depart and take a beginner product designer’s approach to analyzing why Gmail’s design works. Again, for the scope of this assignment, I will not be doing a timeline of its design evolutions.

In my analysis, I’ve gathered a few reasons why I think Gmail does what it does well:

Gmail’s simple design complements its role in the user’s life.

For many of us, our email accounts are used to facilitate professional and personal relationships, and exchanges and documents over email are often sensitive. Having a trendy, colorful design for something so essential in our professional lives can be distracting. This simplistic style also fosters a feeling of versatility in our use of Gmail. The absence of colors allows for the sole focus to be on the plethora of attachments that people might send. Gmail’s lack of color and emphasis on white space can be calming for a workday filled with back to back emails. One might even say that its consistent, flat, and one-dimensional design is reminiscent of the actual mail that arrives at our doorstep.

This simple design is a part of Google’s overall brand.

Google itself has always had its logo and a search bar at the center of the screen with the rest of the page as white space. This simplicity translates into Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps, and its other branches. Everything connects — so much so that when we’re using Gmail, sometimes we don’t even recognize it as separate from Google Calendar or Google Drive. Perhaps this rather simple design is actually a wink at how much of a powerhouse Google actually is. The simpler it looks, the less intimidated you’ll feel when you’re using it. And maybe there are times when we should feel intimidated when using Google. (This is a whole other conversation on data privacy.)

Gmail’s primary focus is on its functions and utility, and less on eye-catching color palettes and elements.

In my past work as an executive assistant, I managed multiple personal and professional emails. I spent my time clearing and organizing emails, scheduling responses, and facilitating meetings. Google’s G Suite made our office communication nearly seamless. You could easily add an invitation in an email to your Google Calendar; Gmail would predict some of your usual openers in emails; and oftentimes Gmail would recommend you exactly which co-worker you needed to cc on your staff meeting documents.

Upon reflection, I feel that Gmail does deserve its seat at the top. It has a simplistic design, yes, but right beside that is a masterful attention to developing an “intuitive” feel to its functions, something that is a part of the overall branding of Google. The choices we make as a user from Google feel very intuitive, as if the applications themselves can track and predict exactly what step we need to make next. Beyond this, utilizing Gmail is often the most efficient choice because it is a connection to everything else Google offers. And everyone else is likely right there as well, a calendar invitation away.