HTML5 game implemented with processing.js. Like all the other doodles on this blog, it’s a personal project for learning purposes (read: the code is not pretty) ~  I learn better through mistakes so without apology, here it is ~ the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s not perfect but I know it’s progress.

Some notes on inspiration:

Googlers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time to persue an idea or concept. Sometimes these ideas just feed back into something else internally but sometimes, they are launched as a beta product for the rest of the world to use. Gmail was one of those beta products, launched back in 2004 and built upon the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful.

Previously, latency as a result of unnecessary page reloads, poor filtering of spam, heavy reliance on folder structures (mainly due to a lack of effective search), and the constant need to delete emails (to make room in limited inboxes) were just some of the usability aches & pains that I (and I’m sure many other webmail users) had somehow learnt to live with. It’s easy to take for granted our AJAX driven interfaces, practically unlimited inbox capacities and search engine powered interactions with our emails and so, for this reason, I felt a little celebration of how far we’ve come was in order (via a doodle).

One final note ~ there are still many things I would improve about Gmail and I still expect the product to grow and surprise me with an even faster and more intuitive experience ~ perhaps like my own journey with learning, I’m not expecting finished perfection… just continued progress.