Spark Reignites Love for Email with App Design

We have high standards for email apps these days, but Spark is revolutionising the way we work and collaborate on projects, as design consultant Simon McCade explores.

The Background

The self-proclaimed “best email client for iPhone, iPad and Mac” is not shy of bold claims, but it’s one that has great promise and an abundance of high-profile endorsements.

Spark pitches itself as “The Future of Email” and a revolutionary way to help you love your emails again — which is a cute way to tap into the constant complaints we hear around us about cluttered or nigh-on-impossible-to-manage inboxes these days.

It’s positioned as a collaborative tool that helps you work on projects as — you guessed it — a team and it comes at a time at which the likes of Slack have brought the convenience of instant messaging back to the fore in the work space.

Does It Work for Its Audience?

Spark, which was created by Readdle Inc., has been well-received on the app store with 4.7 out of 5 from over 24,000 reviews at the time of writing, so they clearly have done and are doing something right. First impressions of the experience show that the value proposition is clear, too — much like the Headspace app review. I conducted recently — it does what it promises, yet has a whole lot more to offer than basic email functionality.

Of course, you’d expect that from a specialist email app, but it’s part of a whole suite of specialist apps that are focused on redefining productivity for everything from document processing to calendar management.

Spark has a great onboarding process — crucial in this hectic day and age — with a splash-screen overview and an immediate introduction to the unified inbox after a swift setup process (mine was via Gmail). The interactive tutorial really makes it easy to get to grips with the feature-rich app from the outset.

It’s part of a whole suite of specialist apps that are focused on redefining productivity

Given how personal email is and, indeed, must be, it’s wholly necessary that Spark offers a high level of personalisation. It does this very well for its audience by allowing them to make almost everything about their experience personal to them — even down to customisable gestures to access hidden menus. Widgets are also entirely editable, which means you can jump to ‘recently seen’ or ‘draft’ emails in a single tap.