Tim Smith Projects

Inbox by Gmail

Inbox is a completely different type of email management product, designed to focus on what really matters. With new features such as highlights, snoozing, reminders, assistive tasks, and a category triaging model, this is Google's bet on the future of email.


As the Visual Design Lead for the Inbox team, I was responsible for setting the aesthetic specifications for the product across all platforms (web and mobile, iOS and Android). I collaborated directly with the Material Design team, who were working in tandem on Google's latest design system. Since Inbox would be one of the first core products to launch with this new look and feel, I had a lot of opportunity to contribute to the larger system design process.

As a UX team, we relied heavily on user-testing and research to determine how best to represent new key features and balance information density.

iOS Gmail / Inbox Comparison

Web Gmail / Inbox Comparison



Inbox was released October 22nd, 2014 with an invite-only model, similar to Gmail. In the first 24 hours of launching, we experienced more than 1 million requested invites, resulting in more than 100,000 active users on its first day live.

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