Is interaction

I’ve been using Gmail as my personal email client for a few years now. I recently stumbled upon a small piece of functionality in the program I’ve never encountered before. So I don’t know how long it has been there. I was trying to send an email off with an attachment. The email read something like this:

(Friend’s name),
attached are the updated/approved documents for the project.
Cheers,
(My name)

After composing my email, I clicked the “Send” button. What happened next stopped me in my tracks as I whispered “You’re awesome, Google.” See, the problem was, I didn’t actually attach anything to my message. Now, if this was Microsoft’s premier email application, Office Outlook running on a MS Exchange Server, my email would have been dutifully sent off, resulting in me looking slightly foolish to my work peers. I would have need to reply to everyone with a new email, being sure to include the attachment, as well as a sheepish one-liner explaining I forgot to include the attachment in the original mail.

So this is where the Google difference kicks in. Google is no fool and doesn’t want you to be one either. Rather than dutifully firing my email off into the ether, Google presented me with an alert box asking me if I was sure I wanted to send my message without an attachment. I’ve included a screen grab of the attending Gmail alert box.

There are no files attached.

It seems Gmail scanned my message, found the phrase “attached are,” recognized there was no attachment, and then presented me with a warning, asking if I wanted to send the message anyway. This is a delighter moment. You are unlikely to see this kind of message the first or even 3rd time you use Gmail. This is something that you stumble across at the exact moment it’s required. And it feels like the system is actively trying to help you out, at the exact moment you’d want the system to help you save face. This feels like care. Now, don’t get me wrong, this particular example is pretty rudimentary and the assistance is ultimately a pretty crude intervention via alert box. But it is this kind of attention and aid we are going to demand from our systems. Additionally, these kinds of things are market differentiators.

In my eyes, despite all the added functionality of Outlook, Gmail proved itself the better email client because the system helped me save face.