Community
I like getting emails from Ideastation, but there are some major issues with the formatting that make them almost pointless.
For reference, here is one on my Mac:
and the same / on my iPhone:
First and foremost - the wrong things are emphasized. At a glance, I see «Autodesk Community», and «Activity on a thread you're following». Both of these are completely redundant, but they're in a huge font and suck up 1/3 to 1/2 of the vertical space depending on where I'm looking.
The sender is «Autodesk Community», so looking at the from field is more than enough to tell us that.
«You're receiving this because you registered for Autodesk Community» is 68 characters that tell us something that (a) we should already know and (b) could easily be snuck in in the footer [with a simple / obvious one-click Unsubscribe link for anyone who may be confused / annoyed]
«Activity on a thread you're following» is 38 characters in a 26 point font that adds absolutely nothing and doesn't change from email to email, yet looks like a headline which should be the most important part. No matter how many of those I see, my eyes get immediately sucked to that line there and linger there wasting hundreds of milliseconds because I've been trained to put extra attention and thought into the headline.
Not only that but because it's burrying the lead, the preview for the email looks like this on my Mac:
or on my iPhone:
Other than the sender and subject, there is nothing there that is relevant to the discussion or that tells me anything about the discussion or what was said.
If the message just started here instead:
This would be a huge help. I can see many applications where company design standards can be set with parameters and spread accross multiple designs. That said, such a parameter may need a way to lock itself to prevent inadvertant or unauthorized changes.
then I'd get most of that at a glance without even opening the message [and if the comments were short enough, I'd get it all]
The subject, itself, is «Rép : Share Parameters Across Designs (Autodesk Community Subscription Update)». If it just said «Rép : Share Parameters Across Designs (Autodesk | Ideastation)», it'd make more sense and suck less attention.
Also, on the Mac, there is a ton of wasted space.. I get the idea with the border and padding, but I'd be happier not needing to scroll.
Personally, I'd rather it be unformatted text so the mail client can handle it appropriately on whatever device it happens to be on (or, if you really must format it, spend an insane amount of time with different devices to ensure that it works well for anyone)
Proposed revised email [unformatted HTML with no CSS; links in bold; ideally Reply would be removed and the reply-to field would go to that link so users can just hit their mail client's «reply» button]:
From: SGL-Design [via Autodesk Ideastation]
Subject: Share Parameters Across Designs
This would be a huge help. I can see many applications where company design standards can be set with parameters and spread accross multiple designs. That said, such a parameter may need a way to lock itself to prevent inadvertant or unauthorized changes.
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