Ask HN: How would you reimagine email?

[kuro-kuris]

Hi HN, In a couple weeks I am going to work on an email redesign project. My initial idea is to use topic extraction to extract "events" from emails inspired by gmail. The events themselves could present the underlying graph to the users. What would you like to see for a smarter email client / assistant?

[mpbm]

The search function in gmail sucks donkey balls. Since a lot of stuff gets buried under the sediment of new emails, being able to search it properly is valuable.

[kuro-kuris]

Yeah my initial idea was to build graphs based on emails about the same "event" and perhaps show the emails for the largest graph in addition to the option of getting the latest email. Any ideas how you would see this visually?

[mpbm]

I'm working with graphs myself. There's some good research on graph visualization, but most of it is behind paywalls. If you're a student you can probably get in. The hardest part is combining the graph (nodes & links) with labels. I think most people let the graph itself dictate the drawing, which is a mistake. The labels are probably more important, so the layout of the graph should be rectilinear. Visio does a good job of that. Also, it seems more important to layout the graph starting from the node the reader is focused on, rather than layout the whole graph like a static map, because the reader cares about the thing they're looking at and what it's related to most.