Mailbox takes the mystery out of waiting

Throughout the weekend I’ve been hooked on a simple app that actually tells me very little. Last week, based on stellar reviews (and maybe some hype), I signed up for an account with the email inbox management app Mailbox. That’s when the waiting game began.

Unlike many online services that do slow rollouts, only alerting you when you have access and your account is ready, mailbox turned the time in line into an experience and connection point. The app shows not only how many people are in front of me in line, but also (and perhaps more interestingly), how many people have signed up since I did. It becomes fascinating to watch the progression of a shrinking wait and an increasing number of those to follow.

Just enough information

This dashboard is simple and keeps me coming back. Mailbox has my curiosity in direct competition with my patience. That’s a better place to have me than waiting impatiently with little information. I feel satisfied with my wait.

This experience has me thinking about how many ways we could provide information that satisfies curiosity with a fairly low overhead. What numbers would we use to keep our variety of customers happy while waiting in queue’s? It seems we could apply this in many areas where we currently leave people in the dark.

Oh, and in case your wondering, I now have 308,610 people in front of me and 407,697 behind me.