As a part of a product team I was responsible for overall design of a new email cleanup tool for iOS. Our main goal was to help people with overwhelming amount of messages to organize and clean their inboxes.

Instead of overly relying on AI, Chuck groups messages by various categories. You can manage sets of messages at once, while having full control over the app.

I worked on mockups, live prototypes, and UI designs. I designed for web, iOS, ipadOS, watchOS and macOS. I also worked on product strategy, marketing and App Store optimization.

When I first started, the company already had feedback from beta testers. My first step was to go through all of those insights and group them into themes. This helped us greatly with defining goals for the redesign.

The most common complaint was that the design felt outdated. To some people it resembled an Android app. Additionally it was considered to be overwhelming, with too many buttons on the main screen.

From the onboarding standpoint, people were not sure what to do at first, what would be the best first step. However, once they got going, they were able to figure out what works for them.

To better understand the problem space, users and business goals I led an UX workshop. We’ve reviewed user feedback and set priorities for the redesign. We also did competitive analysis and brainstormed features we might need in the future.

Features and issues were then prioritized and I could move on to the prototyping phase.

Workshop helped us set the following goals:

• Follow platform standards
• Visual refresh
• Simplify the main view
• Add Onboarding
• Explore features that will be possible after the backend code rewrite
• Transition into subscription-based model, identify pro features

We agreed that:

• Each major change will be A/B tested
• Analytics will be used to track the adoption of new features
• Subscription conversion rate, Day7 retention and subscription churn will be the key metrics

Getting the app up to standards was my main focus.

I started with UX improvements, like adding iOS-style buttons, correct modals animations (in iOS the edge from which the modal slides over is important and depends on the relation with other views).

Major redesign allowed us to properly show key features of the app without making it overwhelming.

Analytics helped mi to identify features that could be moved to less prominent space. Easy to find when you look for them, but not in the way for those who don’t need them.

Onboarding experience was improved, integrated within the UI, giving more guidance if you are not sure how to start.

Smart, ML-based features were also added to keep power users’ interested.

Visual Design was another important item on our roadmap. The new design needed to be sleek, modern, and most importantly, follow the iOS platform standards.

Illustrations were a fun addition, to give the app an unique identity. I came up with over 20 images showing our mascot in various scenarios. It presented new features, explained errors and appeared in empty states.

I created a component library, to quickly prototype and speed up the app development.

To maintant consistency and smooth development handover, I came up wiath a modular design system, based on reusable components. Every component had all basic variations we might need.

Visual Design phase also required me to prepare App Store page assets and marketing materials. Updating those graphics, in search for the best conversions, was an ongoing process.

Major code rewrite allowed for a better cleanup experience, which was the core functionality. Better backend allowed us to process even the biggest inboxes. Finally people could start their cleanup right away. there was no need to wait for everything to load. We were finally able to match user expectations, fully.

With all key functionality in place, our challenge was to increase the revenue – through the series of incremental changes and design tweaks we were able to double it in a year.

The app underwent two major pivots, full redesign and a code rewrite.

Everyone has a different idea of which features are crucial for an email client. We were a small team, so we had to study analytics and pick our challenges carefully.

Each big feature was split into small releases to get feedback sooner. Most of email client features were met with mixed response. The most popular requests were “nice to have” only, and not the reason people were considering our app at all.

Chuck stayed a productivity tool, with only the essential email features, rather than fully fledged email client.

That’s the main takeaway, they didn’t want AI to remove messages for them. Fewer than 5% of DAU used any of AI features. Turns out they just wanted to know what to remove.

Cleanup suggestions ended up as our most popular feature. Over 40% of DAU started relying our recommendations.

Initially our IAP page had a scroll-list of all pro features you would unlock. Analytics showed that few people reached the end. I replaced it with a carousel showing an interactive list of all pro features. This tweak alone increased subscription rate by 20%.

Multiple tests consistently proved preference towards two column grid. Since swiping on cells is was a key interaction, showing more messages on screen drastically improved productivity and led to much better retention.