Note: I had previously opened this issue as https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-android/issues/3903. I hereby open it as a feature request in the forum.
When adding a new contact via email, Delta Chat used to automatically set the subject to “Message from NAME”. This seems to have changed recently. If I add a new contact via email in Delta Chat for Android version 2.11.0, I am now presented with a screen that strongly resembles that for adding a new group, but instead of asking for a “Group Name” it asks for a “Subject”. I believe that this is a bad UX for two reasons:
- If I want to add a new contact via email, I want to input that contact’s email address and maybe their name. I do not want to answer entirely unrelated questions. And I certainly do not want to answer entirely unrelated questions first.
- For the most part, Delta Chat hides the complexity of Email from users. This is what sets it apart from other email clients. However, this also means that Email-UI-concepts like “Subject” are not necessarily familiar to Delta Chat users. If Delta Chat asks for the “Subject”, it implicitly assumes that users know other email clients. It even assumes that users know how to do the mapping between Delta Chat’s messenger-like UI and the UI of more classical email clients. I myself can of course do that mapping. However, I also believe that a user’s ability to do that mapping should not be generally presupposed.
Current state
To recap, the current UI works like this: Open the “New E-Mail” screen by tapping (+) followed by (+) New E-Mail. This brings up the following screen:
New E-Mail
[ Subject ]
(+) Add Recipients
(M) Me <myself@example.com>
After I fill in the subject, I can tap (+) Add Recipients followed by (+) Add Contact Manually. This, finally, brings me to the old “Add Contact Manually” screen I remember from earlier versions of Delta Chat:
Add Contact Manually
[ Name ]
[ E-Mail Address ]
Manually added contacts can be used to text to
classic e-mail and are not guaranteed end-to-end
encrypted.
I do know that I can also get to this “Add Contact Manually” screen by navigating to the “New Contact” screen that shows the QR code, tapping on the three dots and then selecting “Add Contact Manually”.
Proposal
However, I believe that the following UI (which I hereby propose) would be preferable: Directly open the “Add Contact Manually” screen by tapping (+) followed by (+) New E-Mail. On this screen, maybe add an additional, optional setting for changing the subject:
Add Contact Manually
[ Name ]
[ E-Mail Address ]
Manually added contacts can be used to text to
classic e-mail and are not guaranteed end-to-end
encrypted.
________________________________________________
Advanced Options
[ Use a custom e-mail subject (optional) ]
The advanced option might even be hidden from view by making “Advanced Options” collapsible.
Final thoughts
I do realize how the new behaviour for adding a contact via email has been motivated by conceptually splitting groups into end-to-end encrypted groups and regular-email groups. I also get that the current behaviour for adding emails is kind of elegant. There is no entry for “chat with a single peer using email” any more since this case is simply the same as “chat with N users using email” for N=1. I do think that this is elegant. I also suspect that many users – especially non-technical users – might find this kind of elegance a little confusing.
I would therefore suggest to bring the “Add a single peer via email” case back to the (+) menu. I am not sure how to go about the separation of end-to-end encrypted groups vs. regular-email groups; but maybe it could be an option to treat regular-email groups as a special case of groups. Like: “Add Group” and if you are not satisfied with the number of people you see and you want more options, on the “New Group” screen choose “I want to add non-chatmail peers to this group; yes I do accept that this will turn the group into a regular-email style group which means that I will loose support for end-to-end encryption and for all the other nice features provided by Delta Chat’s chatmail extensions.”
In the end, this is only my own two cents, of course. But maybe my thoughts are useful. And I myself would certainly be very happy if I could regain the ability to add regular email peers with relatively few taps – since for me, adding regular email peers is still the norm, and adding chatmail-capable peers is the exception.