11 ms·

Kanban for E-Mail

300 points by humbfool2 8y ago

marrone12 8y ago
You don't list anywhere on the site how it actually works. Is it IMAP?
- appleiigs 8y ago
  and are there rules for sorting or do I manually move all of them? Can the columns be customized?
giancarlostoro 8y ago
Pictures are huge and font is huge on my 1080p display. Is this just designed for a 4K audience or something? Starting to feel like the whole move towards supporting mobile should include 4k devs supporting lower resolutions too? Or is it just me...
- anothergoogler 8y ago
  The header font is huge and doesn't scale with the viewport, that is not a requirement for mobile/responsive design though.
tejasmanohar 8y ago
Nice job getting a landing page on the front page :-) This is an interesting product. I've been using Google Inbox at work for the last ~6mo. I really like the snooze feature that removes an email from your inbox until a set time. I check my Inbox every few hours and try to keep it squeaky clean by snoozing emails until I plan to attack them. When something's snoozed over and over due to procrastination / poor time management, you really feel it. How does everyone else manage their email? I don't get that many emails, probably < 10/day.
- tofflos 8y ago
  I read them and mark them as unread until I have time to deal with them. Every once in a while I try to clear out "sections" of time such as the current day, week or month by either responding or by performing the requested task - hoping that one day I'll get my unread count down to zero. ;-)
hknd 8y ago
This looks nice! I'm using gmail exactly like this with the "multiple inbox" experiment. I'm triaging my mails a couple of times per day and assigning them to the correct inboxes via labels (ctrl+l).
lucisferre 8y ago
This is neat, and I could see it potentially being a useful way to categorize and organize e-mail, though I personally find e-mail clients that allow for deferral/scheduling sufficient for my needs. However this trend of using lean and Toyota production system terminology to sell stuff that has no real relationship to it is starting to get tired. None of these card column systems has any real relationship to the Kanban process outside of the use of cards. The similarities tend to end at a completely superficial level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban Rule #1 of Kanban is that it is a "pull" system. By design e-mail is push. It would also be difficult to limit work-in-progress here, which is another cornerstone feature of a Kanban system.
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  The Kanban the author is using is "software development Kanban", not "lean manufacturing Kanban". There is a subtle but useful distinction. Most of the people who use TPS-derived methods in IT are actually using models that were adapted over time in software development lifecycles. The names are the same, but they're actually different processes. (I find this annoying too, I'm just giving context for why this is) A more accurate term for the author's board may be "Scrumban", but I'm not a Scrum or Agile expert by any means. You can use e-mail as a sort-of pull-based JIT system. You're constantly getting new resources, but you can't necessarily use them all immediately or action them all at once. So you stage the work in planning, and "pull" work into "doing" when you're ready. The lifecycle continues until an item ends up "completed" and archived. I don't think work-in-progress is all that difficult to manage with e-mail, as your e-mails are basically feature requests or alerts that lead to a story, and once the story is planned and ready for working, you can determine what a suitable work limit is. The author's e-mail model may need a bit of modifying to create actual stories rather than just tracking an e-mail, which may not be enough in itself to begin working on.
  - lucisferre 8y ago
    Work is still meant to be pulled in software development Kanban. WIP limits are still a key feature. They are different processes because Kanban is not the process, it is the mechanism for displaying the work in progress.
mattl 8y ago
“Indie Maker” —- is this a new term or am I missing something about this?
- antoineMoPa 8y ago
  I like the concept.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  It basically just means that the product isn't made by a VC-funded company. C.f.: https://www.indiehackers.com/ https://www.indiehackers.com/ https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/ As a customer, the main advantages of using indie products is that there aren't investors telling the founders that they need to shut down if they don't get millions of users in the next 18 months, or that they need to start selling customer data. And if you're a big enough customer, it means potentially being able to own part of the company. (Since turning a business into a co-op and selling shares to the existing customers is a common exit strategy, but is rarely possible once a company has taken venture capital.)
  - KaoruAoiShiho 8y ago
    However, has an arguably higher chance of outright failure.
  - cabaalis 8y ago
    > As a customer, the main advantages of using indie products is that there aren't investors telling the founders that they need to shut down if they don't get millions of users in the next 18 months, or that they need to start selling customer data. I get that, but companies exist to get paid. And therefore a successful product will attempt to grow, which often means a change in business processes or pricing. So if I make a product like this indispensable to my workflow or company, I could be faced with a change being forced upon me when they go to scale. All that to say I'm not 100% it's effective marketing.
    - Alex3917 8y ago
rjacksonm1 8y ago
What a fantastic idea! I know many folks, especially in small business, who would get a massive productivity boost from something like this. I'd recommend explaining how the service integrates with people's emails, before asking them to hand over any details. That's the only thing that would stop me from giving it a go.
tehabe 8y ago
This would be neat if it were a local application.
athenot 8y ago
This workflow can already be done with good old Apple Mail. The ability to open multiple windows all showing a personalized view (both in the selection of emails and what you want to see about them) allows for this flexibility. As a bonus, the views can be compact and take up very little screen space.
- mattl 8y ago
  I miss Lip Service from NeXTMail. The ability to quickly add an audio note to an email was very useful.
bachmeier 8y ago
Let me state my personal experience trying something like this. I get a ton of email on all sorts of different topics and projects that may be old or may be currently in progress. I did something like this inside my file manager. Just download all new messages into a directory a couple times a day. Delete the junk. Put email needing to be processed into one directory. Put processed email into a different directory. The system didn't work at all. Sure, it works great for certain tasks, like responding to "What time will we meet for lunch?" I had to add extra directories to allow archiving messages by project. An email is a piece of reference material. You appear to be constructing a walled garden that makes it hard to do anything with messages once they're inside your service. What do I do with messages that don't need a response but that provide information? How do I view past email related to a project? Hopefully the answer is not "use your regular email client". Looks good but unless there's more than shown on this page, I don't see it yet being a solution for the people that would be willing to pay for it, if it does nothing more than sort through messages needing a reply.
- ScoutOrgo 8y ago
  I already do something like this, but with a lot of success: anything that requires an action on my end stays in my inbox and anything that I get done or is purely informational goes to a folders (typically project related). All this seems to do is break out my inbox/"to do" into "uncategorized" and 3 other "to do" categories. I don't know if totally needed. If someone already has a problem organizing their main inbox, how are they going to stay organized with this kanban flow?
  - bachmeier 8y ago
    > how are they going to stay organized with this kanban flow? That's exactly right. Processing your email does not mean you reply to every message. It means every task related to every email has been completed and you have access to that information everywhere its needed - even if you forget about it.
echan00 8y ago
cool stuff, i actually do kanban on my gmail by tagging them with different colored stars. i'm not sure i want the UI though, but maybe because i'm already used to my workflow
- devm33 8y ago
  Yeah, I have a very similar set up to this on gmail using labels and the multiple inboxes feature. Which also has the benefit of working with filters to automate some sorting, e.g. certain emails going straight to todo.
neogodless 8y ago
I'm not sure what the research shows on this sort of thing, but when I loaded up the landing page on my desktop browser, I saw two buttons, and neither applied to me. "SIGN UP" and "LOG IN". Since I did not yet know what this thing is, beyond my vague knowledge of Kanban and email, I wanted it to explain that to me. Instead, I have to take action. Oh wait... after a while I look for a UI element - a scroll bar. And this is the only clue I get to tell me how to navigate. Is this a good design choice, to make it appear like your only options are one of two actions, while relying on a native browser control to hint to the user that they can scroll to get down to the information they are going to need to start making decisions? (I'm not arguing that this can't be a good design choice, but at least for me, personally, it seemed pushy, while also being unintuitive if you're not there to take one of those actions.)
- sam0x17 8y ago
  For me, this was a self-explanatory app. Just seeing the background image told me everything I needed to know.
  - lttlrck 8y ago
    sure, but enough to sign up?
    - sam0x17 8y ago
      not for me, but maybe for my co-worker
- cellularmitosis 8y ago
  Came here to say this. I really don't like this UI/UX trend of "If the user isn't smart enough to test and see if they can scroll, screw 'em!". Apple did something similar in their Podcasts app (when you are playing a podcast, it turns out you can scroll down on the "card" to see a lot of additional features. It took me months to discover this, and reminded me of the months it took me to discover that the Calculator app can rotate into a scientific calculator).
sam0x17 8y ago
This is a really good idea. If it works well, this is a god-send for product managers. I've forwarded it to my company's product slack room.
cryptozeus 8y ago
Definitely add video showing how it works. Great job !
ronreiter 8y ago
An MVP to check if there's product market fit for something like Drag. nice. how's the stats? :)
nautilus12 8y ago
I find that for email the Getting Things Done framework works the best.
Operyl 8y ago
Cool looking project, but I'm not about to give a third party that I know nothing about access to my emails since this is a hosted service. Good luck.
insensible 8y ago
As Getting Things Done taught us, our inbox is not our to-do list. For example, in the screenshot at the top of the landing page: what action do I take on "Jennifer: Privacy Policy draft #3"? So in this state this would not be a benefit to me. But a fairly simple tweak would change the equation: a feature to process emails by converting a message into 0, 1, or multiple actions that would then go through the board. Those actions would include the email for context. A card board that allows me to stay on top of my duties without a separate email client (and without turning my inbox into my todo list) could be a very nice tool. Congrats on shipping this!
vxNsr 8y ago
I do this already with categories in Outlook, plus I use the single line view so I can see all my tasks on one screen. I hate the trend of apps following google's lead and putting eons of white space in their apps forcing tons of scrolling to get anything done. Chrome apparently will be updated sometime soon with a UI that adds two or three horizontal lines of white space above the tab bar, and they will be totally changing the way tabs look in general to make it much harder to differentiate different tabs. I will probably be moving to firefox after that...
yannovitch 8y ago
I would be very interested by this if it was opensource with integrations to major clients and open source web clients like Roundcube. But until then, I don't want to give always more private information to any new third party, even very cool Indie Maker ones.
jscholes 8y ago
This sounds like it could be potentially useful, as an alternative to unopinionated productivity tools which force you to make far too many decisions upfront. On the other hand I've never heard of Kanban and I'm not the only one. I feel like the name alone is intended to communicate what this does to a core part of your target audience, but if you've never heard of Kanban explaining that it's a "Kanban board for your emails" in the tagline doesn't make it that much clearer either. Either way, good luck with it! I'm a screen reader user so would be interested to see how accessible and usable it is from the keyboard alone. That's also why you should read what I've said above in the context of not being able to see your visual design, which might instantly make it clear what it does.
adreamingsoul 8y ago
I wish this was open source.
TrevorAustin 8y ago
Lol that the hero quote is just by the founder
- sakopov 8y ago
  Yeah that's a little awkward. Should've just made it a statement instead of a quote.
pknerd 8y ago
I use Trello for my day to day official/personal task. This idea looks good, especially when dealing emails with clients related to tasks
- addicted 8y ago
  You can use Trllo for this as well. Each board has an associated email which converts any messages sent to it into a card. I've created a hotkey for my email client so any email that may require an action can easily be added to the Inbox list on my GTD Trello board. It works really well as long as I am maintaining it.
menacingly 8y ago
I saw "kanban for email" and thought "ugh.", because it sounds like a very "an engineer thought of this" idea, but then I saw the product shots and the usefulness of it did jump out at me. This looks handy. Email-based task systems tend toward clutter, but if you have some way to deal with that onslaught, this could be really useful
s73v3r_ 8y ago
The concept is cool, but the website needs far, far, far more information. And having the very first thing you see is a giant "SIGN UP" screen is a pretty big turn off.
golem14 8y ago
I wish there were more information on how data is accessed / stored. The site claims that the only thing that is stored is the email address of the user, the rest lives in gmail. Is there an app that can read all the email and then store metadata back into each thread ? Can this app 'tee' my data somewhere else without me knowing? I guess a lot of people are not excited to give anyone else access to their email.
lurkman 8y ago
This community can be fucking toxic sometimes, at least this person created something. Get off your high horse and write positive criticism / offer help / suggest improvements or just stfu.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  >write positive criticism / offer help / suggest improvements or just stfu Interesting that you did exactly zero of the things you suggest (and used a throwaway knowing you'd be downvoted.)
  - FPGAhacker 8y ago
    What do you mean? Aside from the stfu, you quoted their constructive criticism. I don’t know what posts they were talking about though. I came late to this conversation and voting moved the interesting posts up already.
- j2bax 8y ago
  If I were posting my project to this community it would be for brutal honesty from my peers, not just to drive sales and get accolades.
- farleykr 8y ago
  There's a time/place for encouragement, and a time/place for criticism. I've only found a few comments in this thread that are even remotely derogatory or toxic. There's nothing toxic about blunt, honest, criticism. HN is known for this type of feedback anyways. It might be abrasive and tough to swallow but it's not toxic to tell someone their product needs work in a community that is arguably known for and built for just that kind of feedback. Not to mention that the folks bringing up issues with the product are providing detailed reasoning for their critiques and solutions. TL;DR Blunt, honest feedback != toxicity
mikegerwitz 8y ago
Most of my communication with various people/communities is done via mail. For those using Emacs: I use a Kanban (or GTD, depending)-style workflow using Org mode and Gnus. Org mode recognizes `gnus:'-prefixed links. For certain types of mail, I use an Org capture template within Gnus which inserts a TODO item into an Org document, along with a link to the original message (which can be opened in Gnus using C-c C-o). You can then go through your usual workflow as you would with any other item; mail is just another source of data. Considering that the task originated via mail, chances are it'll require some back-and-forth, potentially over the course of weeks and perhaps with a handful of people involved. I also keep detailed timestamped logs of correspondence and my actions, linking to important messages as needed. This is particularly useful for large threads, since I highlight the most important information. Since I'm logging via Org mode (and not my MUA), my logs can also include any other additional information and time tracking that has nothing to do with mail, so this creates a useful timeline that combines both actions and correspondence into a single view. Because this is married with the rest of my Org-based task management, my mail also shows up in my agenda and reporting.
- nextos 8y ago
  This is a great setup. I used to have the same configuration, but ended up replacing Gnus with Notmuch. I'm far from a Gnus guru, so perhaps I'm missing something, but why do you prefer Gnus to Notmuch or Mu4e? IMHO Notmuch has a very clear MUA model. Plus it's extremely fast and simple. Everything is done via tags. Notmuch never ever touches your email. This is the task of a backend, which has to translate tag changes into Mailbox actions. I do this using a few trivial Bash one-liners, which accommodate for Gmail's unusual IMAP implementation. Mu4e is more similar to Mutt, as it does touch email directly, allowing you to move emails across folders or delete them. I also found the interface a little bit less snappy than Notmuch. Gnus has some great ideas, but it's quite slow and the internals are a mess. It needs some serious refactoring.
  - mikegerwitz 8y ago
    I haven't researched Notmuch, but I've heard some interesting things about it. I used to use Mutt back in the day. Whatever I use would have to have Org integration, though. Tbh, I just haven't researched other things and I haven't had the time. But Gnus does seem to fit well how I organize my mail: I subscribe to a lot of mailing lists, each of which are filtered into their own folders via Sieve scripts, before they touch my MUA. I also organize normal mail similarly.
cranjice 8y ago
This seems useful in concept but $12/mo is more than I'm willing to pay for email. It's also unclear to me if this is a browser based email client (using imap/smtp etc.) or if it comes with it's own email address and handles final delivery/storage.
jtth 8y ago
The privacy policy is a blank page.
- gtdawg 8y ago
  Exactly. If this thing is accessing my email, I need to understand more about it, especially the privacy policy. A blank privacy policy page doesn't instill confidence.
  - Booligoosh 8y ago
    This is very odd... It shows up for me, should show up for you as long as you have JavaScript enabled (and if you don't I have no idea how you're going to use a web app :P)
Gertig 8y ago
This looks nice and kudos to the team (Ethan) behind it for shipping it! I have tried similar tools in the past that convert Gmail into a Kanban board (https://www.sortd.com/ https://www.sortd.com/ and https://www.dragapp.com https://www.dragapp.com) and have not had much success with that method of triaging emails. Perhaps it's a personal failing of my own.
TomAnthony 8y ago
Congrats on shipping this, it looks very intriguing! A few thoughts/ideas: - It would be helpful to see more product screenshots/videos of it in action. - It would also be useful to get more info on how this works and interacts with email services - perhaps easiest to add an FAQ page (this discussion thread should help get some ideas for the questions). - I echo what some others say - that I don't necessarily know whether this would work for all my emails. I tend to find some emails would suit this process. Therefore, I'd love a Chrome extension into this, where it is a tab added in Gmail. I could process emails and move some to the kanban board for when I'm in 'action things' mode, and they are out of sight when I'm processing emails - sort of a two step process. If you had that I'd sign up to at least try this right now. Good luck with it!
- bastijn 8y ago
  For what it is worth, this is how I use Todoist integration with my mail clients. I made categories according to GTD and assign emails to the right category. I tag them with my tags like "read/review", "reply", and other tags useful to me. Next to that I use Todoist for regular task management. Works quite well for me. Made all these additions to email clients like "snooze" redundant. P.s. key is to have the task management app with proper functionality which is available on your phones email clients as well as you read quite a lot of them there. This is why I chose Todoist as it integrates with my Newton email app which I use for my work mail.
meesterdude 8y ago
Well done! I would disregard much of the criticism on here as bikeshedding and not worth much merit. Reminds me of the dropbox HN thread. I often "hold on" to certain emails for certain reasons. Because I need to reply to them, or read them more, or am waiting on reply. I can see breaking it out into a kanban could be beneficial for that. I would never use though; because the service will never do what I need from an email client. It'll be more like an email backed trello, and even then I would bet the providers it works with will be gmail and gmail. Even then there are things like PGP, search, exporting, that a good client offers, and then issues with data security and exposing your inbox to a third party who could do anything - from data mining, to theft; with or without intent. But... as an app? I'd be down. Maybe not $12/mo down... but $4/mo for an email client that's both good and being improved upon would not be a bad deal for me. Maybe do personal/corporate licensing, as companies will have more money to throw at software; which would help with reaching sustainability. Anyway, great idea and I hope it really can become something. Launching anything is hard, doing it alone even harder. To deliver something that isn't completely nonsense is almost a feat in itself.
omot 8y ago
Cool idea, I would like to challenge his $12/month price point. Subscriptions I could get cheaper than $12 a month: Netflix Youtube Red Amazon Prime Dollar Shave Club All of which provide higher value than reorganizing email. I think he should price in relation to other subscription services that exist.
- Booligoosh 8y ago
  If you're happy to pay $10/month for Netflix to waste your time, why aren't you happy to pay $12/month for KanbanMail to save your time?
- tyrex2017 8y ago
  i take the opposite side: even saving one hour per month with this tool is worth more than 12 usd, to me (compare hourly wage). i just want a free month to be sure i am not giving out money to a bad product.
rcdwealth 8y ago
Full privacy? LOL! People don't subscribe there, they will steal all your emails. Just use secure email provider like protonmail.com or even better, register your domain, and fetch emails offline to your computer as soon as they arrive. Don't addicted to "online" storage of your personal data. Do you know those people? You have to be independent. Who does that server really serve? http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-se... And use mutt email software, the best in the world http://www.mutt.org http://www.mutt.org
oyebenny 8y ago
Damn, nope. Gotta spend $12 a MONTH?! I don't even pay that for my Netflix or Spotify.
- Booligoosh 8y ago
  If you're happy to pay $10/month for Netflix to waste your time, why aren't you happy to pay $12/month for KanbanMail to save your time?
randoramax 8y ago
This proves again that software engineers have a strange understanding of kanban :)
lowonkarma 8y ago
A todo app where anyone can put shit in
stockkid 8y ago
I love it! The thing I would like to improve is that there as a user I am a bit confused about what it is and how it can provide value to me when I land on the product's page. * Pricing is hidden.you can only view it when clicking "join" but I do not want to click join until I know that price. * When I land on the page I see two calls to action ("join" and "login") and no indication of if there is more content. Naturally I'd bounce from the page most of the time. Good luck!
dawie 8y ago
My biggest question is: Does it work with Gmail, but this is no answered anywhere, so I am not keen to sign up. (I also don't really know what I am signing up for.)
mezzode 8y ago
Using this workflow for email is pretty interesting. I'm currently relying heavily on snoozing in Google Inbox to manage email tasks, but this takes things a step further. I will say though that $12/mo is too steep compared the upside for me when you can hack together a workflow for free relatively easily.
apatters 8y ago
Congrats on shipping an MVP! In my humble opinion however Kanban and email are not a match. In fact for most people (definitely for me) I believe email is a very poor backend for a todo list. My reasoning is that your email inbox is something that anybody can add items to -- even if those items start out as uncategorized, you still need to decide whether they deserve action or not. And when you receive 100+ emails a day, that's a job in and of itself. The essence of any prioritization system should be that it helps you focus on the most important things first. And you already know what those things are -- you don't need dozens of people proposing them to you. My personal system is to sit down every Monday morning, think about the absolute highest impact things I need to accomplish that week, and write them down in an old fashioned paper notebook which I refer back to any time I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. Fundamentally the value I generate doesn't come from reacting to people all day, it comes from identifying outcomes that truly matter and doing whatever is necessary to advance those outcomes. There absolutely are jobs where the inbox-as-todo model makes sense: customer service agent and certain kinds of sales rep come immediately to mind. But I think this model where externals just keep on pushing new tasks onto you is fundamentally not a great tool to help most people generate value. Also not good for mental health. If you have a boss, a personal assistant, a spouse or kids those are people who should probably be able to reach you immediately and easily. Outside of that I think we should generally start at zero and have to whitelist specific people. In the old days this was accomplished by giving them your phone number.
- schwinn 8y ago
  > Fundamentally the value I generate doesn't come from reacting to people all day, it comes from identifying outcomes that truly matter and doing whatever is necessary to advance those outcomes. Amen. I've never written a performance review (or received one) applauding email reaction time. Think about it. The stuff that gets accolades are accomplishing the things that "truly matter."
wizardofmysore 8y ago
Hahaha the landing page quotes the creator of the app.
some_account 8y ago
Hn went down the rabbit hole and got stuck on Gui design... Did anyone try it? To me it seems like emails are long, have images and attachments and are part of a conversation. The home page just shows almost tweet like emails in those boxes, without pics or attachments or threading.
eksemplar 8y ago
The efficient ways of handling emails is to do it a few times a day, and then either deal with them to the point where you can delete it, or turn it into a task. (I have employees who are masters of efficiency and lean and this is their thing, but I’ve seen the benchmarks on departments where it was implemented, and it works.) I can see how you could use kanban to do this, but most offices already have dedicated systems for handling their tasks, and honestly, even outlook tasks are better at this than a kanbanboard. Why would you need multiple lines for an email? And why would you keep you emails on your email account, where no one else can get it, client if it’s important enough to archive? Best of luck though, maybe there is a usecase I’m not seeing.
nodesocket 8y ago
Late to the party, but if this is going to be a commercial product here are my thoughts: 1.) Add a quick 30 second or 1 minute demo video 2.) Pricing should be a visible (in the header) and a dedicated page 3.) Pricing of $12/mo seems high. I'd recommend something like $4.99/mo early adopter pricing. Then if demand, increase. 4.) How it works. Show technology and how you don't store sensitive e-mail details like subject and body.

Kanban for E-Mail

300 points by humbfool2 8y ago

marrone12 8y ago

You don't list anywhere on the site how it actually works. Is it IMAP?

appleiigs 8y ago
and are there rules for sorting or do I manually move all of them? Can the columns be customized?

giancarlostoro 8y ago

Pictures are huge and font is huge on my 1080p display. Is this just designed for a 4K audience or something? Starting to feel like the whole move towards supporting mobile should include 4k devs supporting lower resolutions too? Or is it just me...

anothergoogler 8y ago
The header font is huge and doesn't scale with the viewport, that is not a requirement for mobile/responsive design though.

tejasmanohar 8y ago

Nice job getting a landing page on the front page :-) This is an interesting product. I've been using Google Inbox at work for the last ~6mo. I really like the snooze feature that removes an email from your inbox until a set time. I check my Inbox every few hours and try to keep it squeaky clean by snoozing emails until I plan to attack them. When something's snoozed over and over due to procrastination / poor time management, you really feel it. How does everyone else manage their email? I don't get that many emails, probably < 10/day.

tofflos 8y ago
I read them and mark them as unread until I have time to deal with them. Every once in a while I try to clear out "sections" of time such as the current day, week or month by either responding or by performing the requested task - hoping that one day I'll get my unread count down to zero. ;-)

hknd 8y ago

This looks nice! I'm using gmail exactly like this with the "multiple inbox" experiment. I'm triaging my mails a couple of times per day and assigning them to the correct inboxes via labels (ctrl+l).

lucisferre 8y ago

This is neat, and I could see it potentially being a useful way to categorize and organize e-mail, though I personally find e-mail clients that allow for deferral/scheduling sufficient for my needs. However this trend of using lean and Toyota production system terminology to sell stuff that has no real relationship to it is starting to get tired. None of these card column systems has any real relationship to the Kanban process outside of the use of cards. The similarities tend to end at a completely superficial level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban Rule #1 of Kanban is that it is a "pull" system. By design e-mail is push. It would also be difficult to limit work-in-progress here, which is another cornerstone feature of a Kanban system.

peterwwillis 8y ago
The Kanban the author is using is "software development Kanban", not "lean manufacturing Kanban". There is a subtle but useful distinction. Most of the people who use TPS-derived methods in IT are actually using models that were adapted over time in software development lifecycles. The names are the same, but they're actually different processes. (I find this annoying too, I'm just giving context for why this is) A more accurate term for the author's board may be "Scrumban", but I'm not a Scrum or Agile expert by any means. You can use e-mail as a sort-of pull-based JIT system. You're constantly getting new resources, but you can't necessarily use them all immediately or action them all at once. So you stage the work in planning, and "pull" work into "doing" when you're ready. The lifecycle continues until an item ends up "completed" and archived. I don't think work-in-progress is all that difficult to manage with e-mail, as your e-mails are basically feature requests or alerts that lead to a story, and once the story is planned and ready for working, you can determine what a suitable work limit is. The author's e-mail model may need a bit of modifying to create actual stories rather than just tracking an e-mail, which may not be enough in itself to begin working on.
- lucisferre 8y ago
  Work is still meant to be pulled in software development Kanban. WIP limits are still a key feature. They are different processes because Kanban is not the process, it is the mechanism for displaying the work in progress.

mattl 8y ago

“Indie Maker” —- is this a new term or am I missing something about this?

antoineMoPa 8y ago
I like the concept.
Alex3917 8y ago
It basically just means that the product isn't made by a VC-funded company. C.f.: https://www.indiehackers.com/ https://www.indiehackers.com/ https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/ As a customer, the main advantages of using indie products is that there aren't investors telling the founders that they need to shut down if they don't get millions of users in the next 18 months, or that they need to start selling customer data. And if you're a big enough customer, it means potentially being able to own part of the company. (Since turning a business into a co-op and selling shares to the existing customers is a common exit strategy, but is rarely possible once a company has taken venture capital.)
- KaoruAoiShiho 8y ago
  However, has an arguably higher chance of outright failure.
- cabaalis 8y ago
  > As a customer, the main advantages of using indie products is that there aren't investors telling the founders that they need to shut down if they don't get millions of users in the next 18 months, or that they need to start selling customer data. I get that, but companies exist to get paid. And therefore a successful product will attempt to grow, which often means a change in business processes or pricing. So if I make a product like this indispensable to my workflow or company, I could be faced with a change being forced upon me when they go to scale. All that to say I'm not 100% it's effective marketing.
  - Alex3917 8y ago

rjacksonm1 8y ago

What a fantastic idea! I know many folks, especially in small business, who would get a massive productivity boost from something like this. I'd recommend explaining how the service integrates with people's emails, before asking them to hand over any details. That's the only thing that would stop me from giving it a go.

tehabe 8y ago

This would be neat if it were a local application.

athenot 8y ago

This workflow can already be done with good old Apple Mail. The ability to open multiple windows all showing a personalized view (both in the selection of emails and what you want to see about them) allows for this flexibility. As a bonus, the views can be compact and take up very little screen space.

mattl 8y ago
I miss Lip Service from NeXTMail. The ability to quickly add an audio note to an email was very useful.

bachmeier 8y ago

Let me state my personal experience trying something like this. I get a ton of email on all sorts of different topics and projects that may be old or may be currently in progress. I did something like this inside my file manager. Just download all new messages into a directory a couple times a day. Delete the junk. Put email needing to be processed into one directory. Put processed email into a different directory. The system didn't work at all. Sure, it works great for certain tasks, like responding to "What time will we meet for lunch?" I had to add extra directories to allow archiving messages by project. An email is a piece of reference material. You appear to be constructing a walled garden that makes it hard to do anything with messages once they're inside your service. What do I do with messages that don't need a response but that provide information? How do I view past email related to a project? Hopefully the answer is not "use your regular email client". Looks good but unless there's more than shown on this page, I don't see it yet being a solution for the people that would be willing to pay for it, if it does nothing more than sort through messages needing a reply.

ScoutOrgo 8y ago
I already do something like this, but with a lot of success: anything that requires an action on my end stays in my inbox and anything that I get done or is purely informational goes to a folders (typically project related). All this seems to do is break out my inbox/"to do" into "uncategorized" and 3 other "to do" categories. I don't know if totally needed. If someone already has a problem organizing their main inbox, how are they going to stay organized with this kanban flow?
- bachmeier 8y ago
  > how are they going to stay organized with this kanban flow? That's exactly right. Processing your email does not mean you reply to every message. It means every task related to every email has been completed and you have access to that information everywhere its needed - even if you forget about it.

echan00 8y ago

cool stuff, i actually do kanban on my gmail by tagging them with different colored stars. i'm not sure i want the UI though, but maybe because i'm already used to my workflow

devm33 8y ago
Yeah, I have a very similar set up to this on gmail using labels and the multiple inboxes feature. Which also has the benefit of working with filters to automate some sorting, e.g. certain emails going straight to todo.

neogodless 8y ago

I'm not sure what the research shows on this sort of thing, but when I loaded up the landing page on my desktop browser, I saw two buttons, and neither applied to me. "SIGN UP" and "LOG IN". Since I did not yet know what this thing is, beyond my vague knowledge of Kanban and email, I wanted it to explain that to me. Instead, I have to take action. Oh wait... after a while I look for a UI element - a scroll bar. And this is the only clue I get to tell me how to navigate. Is this a good design choice, to make it appear like your only options are one of two actions, while relying on a native browser control to hint to the user that they can scroll to get down to the information they are going to need to start making decisions? (I'm not arguing that this can't be a good design choice, but at least for me, personally, it seemed pushy, while also being unintuitive if you're not there to take one of those actions.)

sam0x17 8y ago
For me, this was a self-explanatory app. Just seeing the background image told me everything I needed to know.
- lttlrck 8y ago
  sure, but enough to sign up?
  - sam0x17 8y ago
    not for me, but maybe for my co-worker
cellularmitosis 8y ago
Came here to say this. I really don't like this UI/UX trend of "If the user isn't smart enough to test and see if they can scroll, screw 'em!". Apple did something similar in their Podcasts app (when you are playing a podcast, it turns out you can scroll down on the "card" to see a lot of additional features. It took me months to discover this, and reminded me of the months it took me to discover that the Calculator app can rotate into a scientific calculator).

sam0x17 8y ago

This is a really good idea. If it works well, this is a god-send for product managers. I've forwarded it to my company's product slack room.

cryptozeus 8y ago

Definitely add video showing how it works. Great job !

ronreiter 8y ago

An MVP to check if there's product market fit for something like Drag. nice. how's the stats? :)

nautilus12 8y ago

I find that for email the Getting Things Done framework works the best.

Operyl 8y ago

Cool looking project, but I'm not about to give a third party that I know nothing about access to my emails since this is a hosted service. Good luck.

insensible 8y ago

As Getting Things Done taught us, our inbox is not our to-do list. For example, in the screenshot at the top of the landing page: what action do I take on "Jennifer: Privacy Policy draft #3"? So in this state this would not be a benefit to me. But a fairly simple tweak would change the equation: a feature to process emails by converting a message into 0, 1, or multiple actions that would then go through the board. Those actions would include the email for context. A card board that allows me to stay on top of my duties without a separate email client (and without turning my inbox into my todo list) could be a very nice tool. Congrats on shipping this!

vxNsr 8y ago

I do this already with categories in Outlook, plus I use the single line view so I can see all my tasks on one screen. I hate the trend of apps following google's lead and putting eons of white space in their apps forcing tons of scrolling to get anything done. Chrome apparently will be updated sometime soon with a UI that adds two or three horizontal lines of white space above the tab bar, and they will be totally changing the way tabs look in general to make it much harder to differentiate different tabs. I will probably be moving to firefox after that...

yannovitch 8y ago

I would be very interested by this if it was opensource with integrations to major clients and open source web clients like Roundcube. But until then, I don't want to give always more private information to any new third party, even very cool Indie Maker ones.

jscholes 8y ago

This sounds like it could be potentially useful, as an alternative to unopinionated productivity tools which force you to make far too many decisions upfront. On the other hand I've never heard of Kanban and I'm not the only one. I feel like the name alone is intended to communicate what this does to a core part of your target audience, but if you've never heard of Kanban explaining that it's a "Kanban board for your emails" in the tagline doesn't make it that much clearer either. Either way, good luck with it! I'm a screen reader user so would be interested to see how accessible and usable it is from the keyboard alone. That's also why you should read what I've said above in the context of not being able to see your visual design, which might instantly make it clear what it does.

adreamingsoul 8y ago

I wish this was open source.

TrevorAustin 8y ago

Lol that the hero quote is just by the founder

sakopov 8y ago
Yeah that's a little awkward. Should've just made it a statement instead of a quote.

pknerd 8y ago

I use Trello for my day to day official/personal task. This idea looks good, especially when dealing emails with clients related to tasks

addicted 8y ago
You can use Trllo for this as well. Each board has an associated email which converts any messages sent to it into a card. I've created a hotkey for my email client so any email that may require an action can easily be added to the Inbox list on my GTD Trello board. It works really well as long as I am maintaining it.

menacingly 8y ago

I saw "kanban for email" and thought "ugh.", because it sounds like a very "an engineer thought of this" idea, but then I saw the product shots and the usefulness of it did jump out at me. This looks handy. Email-based task systems tend toward clutter, but if you have some way to deal with that onslaught, this could be really useful

s73v3r_ 8y ago

The concept is cool, but the website needs far, far, far more information. And having the very first thing you see is a giant "SIGN UP" screen is a pretty big turn off.

golem14 8y ago

I wish there were more information on how data is accessed / stored. The site claims that the only thing that is stored is the email address of the user, the rest lives in gmail. Is there an app that can read all the email and then store metadata back into each thread ? Can this app 'tee' my data somewhere else without me knowing? I guess a lot of people are not excited to give anyone else access to their email.

lurkman 8y ago

This community can be fucking toxic sometimes, at least this person created something. Get off your high horse and write positive criticism / offer help / suggest improvements or just stfu.

EpicEng 8y ago
>write positive criticism / offer help / suggest improvements or just stfu Interesting that you did exactly zero of the things you suggest (and used a throwaway knowing you'd be downvoted.)
- FPGAhacker 8y ago
  What do you mean? Aside from the stfu, you quoted their constructive criticism. I don’t know what posts they were talking about though. I came late to this conversation and voting moved the interesting posts up already.
j2bax 8y ago
If I were posting my project to this community it would be for brutal honesty from my peers, not just to drive sales and get accolades.
farleykr 8y ago
There's a time/place for encouragement, and a time/place for criticism. I've only found a few comments in this thread that are even remotely derogatory or toxic. There's nothing toxic about blunt, honest, criticism. HN is known for this type of feedback anyways. It might be abrasive and tough to swallow but it's not toxic to tell someone their product needs work in a community that is arguably known for and built for just that kind of feedback. Not to mention that the folks bringing up issues with the product are providing detailed reasoning for their critiques and solutions. TL;DR Blunt, honest feedback != toxicity

mikegerwitz 8y ago

Most of my communication with various people/communities is done via mail. For those using Emacs: I use a Kanban (or GTD, depending)-style workflow using Org mode and Gnus. Org mode recognizes `gnus:'-prefixed links. For certain types of mail, I use an Org capture template within Gnus which inserts a TODO item into an Org document, along with a link to the original message (which can be opened in Gnus using C-c C-o). You can then go through your usual workflow as you would with any other item; mail is just another source of data. Considering that the task originated via mail, chances are it'll require some back-and-forth, potentially over the course of weeks and perhaps with a handful of people involved. I also keep detailed timestamped logs of correspondence and my actions, linking to important messages as needed. This is particularly useful for large threads, since I highlight the most important information. Since I'm logging via Org mode (and not my MUA), my logs can also include any other additional information and time tracking that has nothing to do with mail, so this creates a useful timeline that combines both actions and correspondence into a single view. Because this is married with the rest of my Org-based task management, my mail also shows up in my agenda and reporting.

nextos 8y ago
This is a great setup. I used to have the same configuration, but ended up replacing Gnus with Notmuch. I'm far from a Gnus guru, so perhaps I'm missing something, but why do you prefer Gnus to Notmuch or Mu4e? IMHO Notmuch has a very clear MUA model. Plus it's extremely fast and simple. Everything is done via tags. Notmuch never ever touches your email. This is the task of a backend, which has to translate tag changes into Mailbox actions. I do this using a few trivial Bash one-liners, which accommodate for Gmail's unusual IMAP implementation. Mu4e is more similar to Mutt, as it does touch email directly, allowing you to move emails across folders or delete them. I also found the interface a little bit less snappy than Notmuch. Gnus has some great ideas, but it's quite slow and the internals are a mess. It needs some serious refactoring.
- mikegerwitz 8y ago
  I haven't researched Notmuch, but I've heard some interesting things about it. I used to use Mutt back in the day. Whatever I use would have to have Org integration, though. Tbh, I just haven't researched other things and I haven't had the time. But Gnus does seem to fit well how I organize my mail: I subscribe to a lot of mailing lists, each of which are filtered into their own folders via Sieve scripts, before they touch my MUA. I also organize normal mail similarly.

cranjice 8y ago

This seems useful in concept but $12/mo is more than I'm willing to pay for email. It's also unclear to me if this is a browser based email client (using imap/smtp etc.) or if it comes with it's own email address and handles final delivery/storage.

jtth 8y ago

The privacy policy is a blank page.

gtdawg 8y ago
Exactly. If this thing is accessing my email, I need to understand more about it, especially the privacy policy. A blank privacy policy page doesn't instill confidence.
- Booligoosh 8y ago
  This is very odd... It shows up for me, should show up for you as long as you have JavaScript enabled (and if you don't I have no idea how you're going to use a web app :P)

Gertig 8y ago

This looks nice and kudos to the team (Ethan) behind it for shipping it! I have tried similar tools in the past that convert Gmail into a Kanban board (https://www.sortd.com/ https://www.sortd.com/ and https://www.dragapp.com https://www.dragapp.com) and have not had much success with that method of triaging emails. Perhaps it's a personal failing of my own.

TomAnthony 8y ago

Congrats on shipping this, it looks very intriguing! A few thoughts/ideas: - It would be helpful to see more product screenshots/videos of it in action. - It would also be useful to get more info on how this works and interacts with email services - perhaps easiest to add an FAQ page (this discussion thread should help get some ideas for the questions). - I echo what some others say - that I don't necessarily know whether this would work for all my emails. I tend to find some emails would suit this process. Therefore, I'd love a Chrome extension into this, where it is a tab added in Gmail. I could process emails and move some to the kanban board for when I'm in 'action things' mode, and they are out of sight when I'm processing emails - sort of a two step process. If you had that I'd sign up to at least try this right now. Good luck with it!

bastijn 8y ago
For what it is worth, this is how I use Todoist integration with my mail clients. I made categories according to GTD and assign emails to the right category. I tag them with my tags like "read/review", "reply", and other tags useful to me. Next to that I use Todoist for regular task management. Works quite well for me. Made all these additions to email clients like "snooze" redundant. P.s. key is to have the task management app with proper functionality which is available on your phones email clients as well as you read quite a lot of them there. This is why I chose Todoist as it integrates with my Newton email app which I use for my work mail.

meesterdude 8y ago

Well done! I would disregard much of the criticism on here as bikeshedding and not worth much merit. Reminds me of the dropbox HN thread. I often "hold on" to certain emails for certain reasons. Because I need to reply to them, or read them more, or am waiting on reply. I can see breaking it out into a kanban could be beneficial for that. I would never use though; because the service will never do what I need from an email client. It'll be more like an email backed trello, and even then I would bet the providers it works with will be gmail and gmail. Even then there are things like PGP, search, exporting, that a good client offers, and then issues with data security and exposing your inbox to a third party who could do anything - from data mining, to theft; with or without intent. But... as an app? I'd be down. Maybe not $12/mo down... but $4/mo for an email client that's both good and being improved upon would not be a bad deal for me. Maybe do personal/corporate licensing, as companies will have more money to throw at software; which would help with reaching sustainability. Anyway, great idea and I hope it really can become something. Launching anything is hard, doing it alone even harder. To deliver something that isn't completely nonsense is almost a feat in itself.

omot 8y ago

Cool idea, I would like to challenge his $12/month price point. Subscriptions I could get cheaper than $12 a month: Netflix Youtube Red Amazon Prime Dollar Shave Club All of which provide higher value than reorganizing email. I think he should price in relation to other subscription services that exist.

Booligoosh 8y ago
If you're happy to pay $10/month for Netflix to waste your time, why aren't you happy to pay $12/month for KanbanMail to save your time?
tyrex2017 8y ago
i take the opposite side: even saving one hour per month with this tool is worth more than 12 usd, to me (compare hourly wage). i just want a free month to be sure i am not giving out money to a bad product.

rcdwealth 8y ago

Full privacy? LOL! People don't subscribe there, they will steal all your emails. Just use secure email provider like protonmail.com or even better, register your domain, and fetch emails offline to your computer as soon as they arrive. Don't addicted to "online" storage of your personal data. Do you know those people? You have to be independent. Who does that server really serve? http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-se... And use mutt email software, the best in the world http://www.mutt.org http://www.mutt.org

oyebenny 8y ago

Damn, nope. Gotta spend $12 a MONTH?! I don't even pay that for my Netflix or Spotify.

Booligoosh 8y ago
If you're happy to pay $10/month for Netflix to waste your time, why aren't you happy to pay $12/month for KanbanMail to save your time?

randoramax 8y ago

This proves again that software engineers have a strange understanding of kanban :)

lowonkarma 8y ago

A todo app where anyone can put shit in

stockkid 8y ago

I love it! The thing I would like to improve is that there as a user I am a bit confused about what it is and how it can provide value to me when I land on the product's page. * Pricing is hidden.you can only view it when clicking "join" but I do not want to click join until I know that price. * When I land on the page I see two calls to action ("join" and "login") and no indication of if there is more content. Naturally I'd bounce from the page most of the time. Good luck!

dawie 8y ago

My biggest question is: Does it work with Gmail, but this is no answered anywhere, so I am not keen to sign up. (I also don't really know what I am signing up for.)

mezzode 8y ago

Using this workflow for email is pretty interesting. I'm currently relying heavily on snoozing in Google Inbox to manage email tasks, but this takes things a step further. I will say though that $12/mo is too steep compared the upside for me when you can hack together a workflow for free relatively easily.

apatters 8y ago

Congrats on shipping an MVP! In my humble opinion however Kanban and email are not a match. In fact for most people (definitely for me) I believe email is a very poor backend for a todo list. My reasoning is that your email inbox is something that anybody can add items to -- even if those items start out as uncategorized, you still need to decide whether they deserve action or not. And when you receive 100+ emails a day, that's a job in and of itself. The essence of any prioritization system should be that it helps you focus on the most important things first. And you already know what those things are -- you don't need dozens of people proposing them to you. My personal system is to sit down every Monday morning, think about the absolute highest impact things I need to accomplish that week, and write them down in an old fashioned paper notebook which I refer back to any time I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. Fundamentally the value I generate doesn't come from reacting to people all day, it comes from identifying outcomes that truly matter and doing whatever is necessary to advance those outcomes. There absolutely are jobs where the inbox-as-todo model makes sense: customer service agent and certain kinds of sales rep come immediately to mind. But I think this model where externals just keep on pushing new tasks onto you is fundamentally not a great tool to help most people generate value. Also not good for mental health. If you have a boss, a personal assistant, a spouse or kids those are people who should probably be able to reach you immediately and easily. Outside of that I think we should generally start at zero and have to whitelist specific people. In the old days this was accomplished by giving them your phone number.

schwinn 8y ago
> Fundamentally the value I generate doesn't come from reacting to people all day, it comes from identifying outcomes that truly matter and doing whatever is necessary to advance those outcomes. Amen. I've never written a performance review (or received one) applauding email reaction time. Think about it. The stuff that gets accolades are accomplishing the things that "truly matter."

wizardofmysore 8y ago

Hahaha the landing page quotes the creator of the app.

some_account 8y ago

Hn went down the rabbit hole and got stuck on Gui design... Did anyone try it? To me it seems like emails are long, have images and attachments and are part of a conversation. The home page just shows almost tweet like emails in those boxes, without pics or attachments or threading.

eksemplar 8y ago

The efficient ways of handling emails is to do it a few times a day, and then either deal with them to the point where you can delete it, or turn it into a task. (I have employees who are masters of efficiency and lean and this is their thing, but I’ve seen the benchmarks on departments where it was implemented, and it works.) I can see how you could use kanban to do this, but most offices already have dedicated systems for handling their tasks, and honestly, even outlook tasks are better at this than a kanbanboard. Why would you need multiple lines for an email? And why would you keep you emails on your email account, where no one else can get it, client if it’s important enough to archive? Best of luck though, maybe there is a usecase I’m not seeing.

nodesocket 8y ago

Late to the party, but if this is going to be a commercial product here are my thoughts: 1.) Add a quick 30 second or 1 minute demo video 2.) Pricing should be a visible (in the header) and a dedicated page 3.) Pricing of $12/mo seems high. I'd recommend something like $4.99/mo early adopter pricing. Then if demand, increase. 4.) How it works. Show technology and how you don't store sensitive e-mail details like subject and body.