Gilad: Gmail's tabbed inbox was first tested via an HTML facade
Itamar Gilad · Becoming evidence-guided | Itamar Gilad (Gmail, YouTube, Microsoft) · Sep 21, 2023 · at 52:25
Itamar Gilad describes how the Gmail product team validated the tabbed inbox feature using a Wizard of Oz prototype before writing any backend production code.
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“We used a lot of those in the tabbed inbox, by the way, one of the first early versions was actually, we showed the tabbed inbox working. To people, but it wasn't really Gmail. It was just a facade of HTML and behind the scenes. And according to the permissions that the users gave us, some of us moved just the subject and the sender into the right place. So initially the interviewer kind of distracted them and then they showed them their inbox and in it, the top 50 messages were sorted to the right place, more or less if we got it right. And people were like, wow, this is actually very cool. And that gave us a lot of evidence.”
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