Why The UX of Using Gmail Is Broken

And how Shift has transformed how I use Gmail, Calendar, and Drive

Can we talk about this screen for a moment? How many times a day do you see this screen? If you’re like me, too many.

Many of us have multiple Google accounts, one for work and one for personal, and often times even more.

Throughout the day, we constantly jump between our Google accounts. Send a work email. Create a new event on our personal calendar. Edit a work spreadsheet. Share a work Google Doc. Check our personal email.

Our lives don’t happen in a silo. Neither should our digital lives.

I cannot stand the constant switching. I get so frustrated when I get thrown into an infinite loop of permissions and account login screens.

This is why I’ve always had frustrating relationship with Gmail and other Google products such as Calendar and Drive.

I love the powerful search of Gmail and the ease of collaborating with others on documents and spreadsheets.

But the user experience of switching between Gmail accounts and accessing Docs, Drive, and Calendar causes me to throw my hands up multiple times a day!

I think to myself …. I can’t be the only person who has this problem? Don’t the people at Google also feel this pain too as they switch between their personal Google work email and their personal accounts?

I’ve tried a lot of workarounds including:

• Creating different user profiles in Chrome to go between work and personal accounts
• Using Google’s multiple sign in feature
• Using multiple browsers like Safari and Chrome, one for each account.

But these workarounds don’t solve my problem.

The experience of switching between the Gmail accounts can still be really cumbersome.

The reality is that most of us have a lot of browser tabs open at once. Our work Gmail, personal Calendar, etc end up getting lost in a sea of browser tabs. And we continue to waste time hunting around for the important tools that let us manage our work and personal lives.

As a UX designer, this problem really, really frustrates me because I know that so many people must also have this problem. So, I’ve been using this UX problem as a little case study for myself.

Any time I get a chance to watch someone use Gmail, Calendar, and other Google products I go into full research mode. I watch what they’re doing, how they react, and try to figure out their workarounds, problems, and the context of how they’re using the product.

When I thought about this problem, the key UX insight I had is that we’re using Gmail, Calendar, Drive etc in the wrong place. It’s like we’re trying to put a square peg in a round hole.

Instead of accessing these tools in the browser, what if we took them out of the browser and put them somewhere else? Could we re-frame how we access these tools?

Then, it dawned on me … that’s why I’ve never been able to convert to using Gmail and Calendar in the browser. I’ve always used the Mail and Calendar programs in the Apple OS. I like having Mail and Calendar in a separate place. When I open up Mail, I can easily switch back and forth between work and personal, without needing to fight login screens or get distracted with another tab in my browser. But even with this approach, I still have to switch between Mail and Calendar depending on what I’m doing.

Around the same time that I was thinking about this, I learned about a product on Betalist that had the promise to “Make it easy to switch between Gmail, Calendar & Drive accounts” … and that’s when I learned about Shift.

Shift is a free desktop application that lets you access and switch between your Google Accounts all from one central place.

With Shift, you can quickly and easily switch between your work or personal accounts and use Gmail, Calendar, and Drive.

Adopting Shift has honestly been really easy for me because it feels very similar to the way I use Slack; I can belong to multiple teams in Slack and seamlessly dip in and out of those teams as I need to throughout my day.

No logging in over and over. No typing in a URL or finding a bookmark or tab in the browser. It’s all just there for me in once place.

Shift also has desktop notifications, which I can easily control. It also works cross platform for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Another huge side benefit I noticed after using Shift is that I find I’m more focused when I am working on emails. When email was in the browser, I was more likely to get distracted or see a notification in a browser tab and then end up losing focus. But by having everything centralized in Shift I find that I am less distracted and more productive when I do sit down to do email.

So many UX designers ask me how they can get more experience. You can’t expect problems to fall into your lap.

No one is going to hand you a practice book of UX problems. It’s your job to spot problems in the world, be curious, seek to understand the root cause, and then imagine how the problem might be solved.

I honestly do this all the time. I have a running narrative in my mind when I travel, when I’m in line somewhere, when I’m in at a grocery store … I’m constantly examining how things work, how people behave, and whether or not an experience could be improved. This is how I get more experience and continue to develop myself as a designer literally every day.

Think about how you use Gmail, Calendar, and Drive? Does it work for you? If not, why? What are your workarounds? How could it be better?

If you’re tired of switching between your Google accounts then be sure to check out Shift today.

Shift is free and right now you can try Shift Pro free for 30 days.

And in case you’re wondering, you do not have to give your credit card to get the Pro trial (a very nice UX touch). If you love it, then the Pro version is only $20 per year. Otherwise, you can use the basic version for free forever.

If you’re on ProductHunt then you might want to head over there to check out a special offer that the Shift team has for Product Hunters 😸.