Inboxintel/docs/discovery/03-user-research.md

03 — User Research: Personas & Journey Maps (Phase 3)

Personas are prioritised against the Design Brief audience: mainstream, power-capable. So the primary personas are everyday individuals and small-business owners; secondary personas are high-volume role users whose needs we support progressively (power features revealed as people grow into them).

Legend: 🟢 primary · 🔵 secondary

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🟢 Priya — Personal user (mainstream)

Busy professional with a personal Gmail full of subscriptions, receipts, travel, and the occasional important thread buried in noise.

• Goals: find things fast; not miss the important stuff; keep the inbox from feeling overwhelming.
• Pain points: can't remember where things are; newsletters bury real mail; unsubscribing is tedious; search needs the "right words."
• Daily workflow: skim inbox on phone/desktop → star/leave a few → hunt for a receipt or booking → ignore the rest.
• Search needs: natural, forgiving ("flight to Lisbon", "gym receipt March") — no operators. Attachment/receipt finding. Typo tolerance.
• AI opportunities: thread summaries, "what needs a reply," smart unsubscribe suggestions, receipt/booking extraction, gentle priority.

🟢 Marcus — Business owner / solopreneur (mainstream, high-value)

Runs a small business from one inbox: clients, vendors, invoices, admin — no assistant.

• Goals: never drop a client ball; find any past agreement/invoice instantly; spend less time in email.
• Pain points: follow-ups slip; important buried under admin; digging for "what did we agree?"; context-switching.
• Daily workflow: triage first thing → reply to clients → chase unpaid invoices → search for prior context mid-reply.
• Search needs: people-centric ("everything with this client"), attachment/invoice search, timeline ("our thread about the contract"), "did they reply?"
• AI opportunities: follow-up detection, "you haven't heard back" nudges, thread/relationship summaries, task/commitment extraction, draft replies with context.

🔵 Dev — Developer / power user

Technical inbox: GitHub, CI alerts, monitoring, mailing lists, plus real mail.

• Goals: cut notification noise; automate; keep signal. Strongly values local/private AI and self-hostable.
• Pain points: alert floods; wants rules/automation and keyboard speed; distrusts cloud AI on their mail.
• Daily workflow: bulk-archive alerts → scan PR/issue threads → deep-search history → automate the repetitive.
• Search needs: operators + regex-ish precision, entity/sender/domain, saved searches, fast keyboard-driven search.
• AI opportunities: local summarisation of long threads, auto-labelling/rules suggestions, semantic search across archives, duplicate/near-duplicate detection.

🔵 Rina — Recruiter (role power user, high volume)

Hundreds of candidate threads, CV attachments, scheduling, multi-stage follow-ups.

• Goals: find any candidate/CV instantly; track stage; never lose a promising lead.
• Pain points: attachments scattered; who's at what stage; follow-up timing; duplicate applicants.
• Search needs: attachment/document search (search inside CVs), people search, stage/timeline, entity extraction (skills, roles).
• AI opportunities: CV/document understanding, candidate summaries, follow-up detection, duplicate detection, relationship mapping.

🔵 Sam — Sales · 🔵 Tom — Support (role power users)

• Sam: pipeline follow-ups, response tracking, templates. Needs "who hasn't replied," saved searches, sentiment, reply suggestions.
• Tom: triage by category/SLA, canned responses, categorisation accuracy. Needs reliable auto-categorisation, priority prediction, phishing/spam confidence, thread summaries.
• (Both hint at collaboration/shared-inbox — deliberately a later opportunity; individual mainstream user is primary.)

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Cross-persona signal

Need	Who feels it most	Priority
Forgiving, natural search	Priya, Marcus (everyone)	🔴 Highest
Find people / attachments / past context	Marcus, Rina, Dev	🔴 High
Follow-up / "did they reply?" detection	Marcus, Sam, Rina	🔴 High
Thread & relationship summaries	Marcus, Dev, Rina	🟠 Medium-high
Noise reduction (unsubscribe, bulk, categorise)	Priya, Dev, Tom	🟠 Medium-high
Local/private AI	Dev (loud), all (latent)	🔴 Strategic
Explainability of results/priority	everyone (trust)	🟠 Medium-high
Collaboration / shared inbox	Sam, Tom	🟢 Later

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Journey maps

Format: stage → what they do → current pain → InboxIntel opportunity.

J1 — Morning triage ("what needs me today?") — Priya, Marcus

Stage	Action	Current pain	Opportunity
Arrive	Open inbox	Wall of mixed noise + important	AI priority lane + summary of "needs you" (local, explainable)
Scan	Skim subjects	No signal of what's urgent/awaiting reply	Follow-up/awaiting-reply badges; thread one-liners
Act	Reply/defer/clean	Repetitive, context-switch heavy	One-click defer/snooze; context-aware draft reply; bulk clean noise
Exit	Close, hope nothing missed	Anxiety of missed items	"You're caught up on what matters" confidence state

J2 — Find one specific thing (the flagship moment) — everyone

Stage	Action	Current pain	Opportunity
Recall	Remember fragments ("invoice, that vendor, spring")	Must guess exact keywords/operators	Natural-language + semantic search; typo-tolerant
Query	Type in search	Syntax anxiety; blank box	Suggestions, recent, filter chips; search-as-home
Scan results	Look through hits	Date-sorted, not relevant; no context	Relevance ranking + "why this matched" + instant preview
Confirm	Open the right one	Re-open several to be sure	Grouped results, inline preview, people/attachment facets

J3 — Reduce the noise — Priya, Dev, Tom

Stage	Action	Current pain	Opportunity
Notice	"Too many newsletters"	Unsub links hidden/dark-patterned	One-click unsubscribe (already seeded) + AI suggestions of what to cut
Decide	Which to keep?	Manual, per-email	AI bulk suggestions by sender/category with confidence + preview
Act	Unsubscribe / bulk clean	Risky, irreversible-feeling	Confirmed + previewed bulk actions (already a strength)
Trust	Did it do the right thing?	Opaque	Explainable "why suggested," undo, audit

J4 — Track a commitment / follow-up — Marcus, Sam, Rina

Stage	Action	Current pain	Opportunity
Send	Email a client/candidate	Then forget	AI follow-up detection: "expecting a reply?"
Wait	Time passes	No system nudges you	"No reply in N days" surfaced automatically
Recall	"What did we agree?"	Dig through thread	Thread summary + extracted commitments/tasks
Resolve	Chase / close	Re-draft from scratch	Context-aware draft nudge referencing the thread

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Research-driven product principles

1. Search is the front door, and it must work for someone who types "that gym receipt" — not just from:gym has:attachment.
2. Explain everything the system decides (match, category, priority) — it builds trust and teaches the app.
3. AI removes toil, never control — advisory, previewed, undoable, and fully optional/local.
4. Progressive power — mainstream-simple by default; operators, saved searches, automation revealed as users grow.
5. Reduce anxiety — "you're caught up," undo, and confidence states matter as much as features.