I keep receiving lots of mails, and each time I have to search for a particular mail, I have to use the Gmail’s search functionality using search parameters to filter unwanted results.

I wanted to search a particular mail that I have received from a client. Since there were several mails from him which were threaded by Gmail because of the same subject, it became difficult for me to identify it. This is where I missed “tagging” feature the most.

“Labels” can form the outer layer for mails whereas “Tags” can act as a sublayer thereby narrowing your search results. The users can then get to see all the TAGS associated with that particular label and easily search the mails they want.

Incorporating the “tagging” functionality will not only improve the overall interaction of searching the mails in Gmail, but will also help in quickly identifying the mail from the bunch.

Update:
Interestingly, Glattli has come up with a unique way of tagging your mails using del.icio.us. You can view the complete screencast at his website.

Though this is a temporary solution, I hope gmail does incorporate the “tagging” feature permanently in its future releases.

How do you define the term “usability” in the context of Indian IT companies? It has gained several meanings over the years there by clubbing non-usability related stuff like development as part of the UCD groups.

It’s always difficult to gauge the quality of UCD projects other companies get. One feels let down when they start comparing themselves with their counterparts in other companies. But the ground reality might be different!

Following are the questions I’d like to have answers to  to clear the misconception about “User Experience Design” group.

• How do other companies preach usability in their organization?
• What kind of projects to they get?
• Do they get a complete life cycle projects?
• Do a usability group in an Indian IT companies restrict themselves to User Research and Analysis and pass on the prototype development process to some other group within the company.
• Do they hire people having a good knowledge of usability or do they hire the ones with proficiencies in HTML/CSS/Flash, etc… and ask them to do certain usability related tasks
• Do they have a separate web development team that looks into development and is in no way related to the usability aspects of the project?

Answers to these questions would solve many misconceptions people have pertaining to a “Usability Group”

Something that I had wished for long is now a reality! I can now edit CSS live in Internet Explorer. The feature that was available only in Firefox. Isn’t that cool!!

CSS VISTA
CSSVista is a free Windows application for web developers which lets you edit your CSS code live in both Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously.