I'm exploring alternative user interfaces to the standard web form for Journalong. In the quest for something simple, there's an obvious answer.

The simplest user interface is no user interface was a common theme in web design about a year ago. It's misleading right away because without any user interface how are we supposed to interact with our product? There's a problem with this statement because there's always a user interface, it can just take many forms. In building Journalong I've tried to keep to a simple user interface but what would be even simpler than this is a user interface that already exists elsewhere.

One of the most popular user interfaces has to be email. Lots of products and services provide interaction through email and it can be effective. All devices provide some form of email client and it's easy to regardless of your experience with technology. When using to interact with other products and services you just need to know what information goes where in your email. With just a subject and a body this can be easy to remember.

This simpler interface is something I'm keen to explore using Journalong. Being able to write journal entries should be easy for anyone to do but the web user interface for it is something I find distracting. I've built a few forms around different ideas but nothing so far has offered the simplest method of using an alternative user interface like email.

Maybe I'm wrong and the best user interface to use isn't email. There's only way to find out and that's trying it out for a few weeks with some users. The option to use a form will still be available, but I'm keen to see how people will choose between using email or the form. Either way, I'm off to brew some coffee and crack open my text editor. I've got some code to write.