Some time ago, I praised the URL design of Flickr, and the URL design of Unsung tries to follow a lot of the same principles. I’ll write about it some day.

But those principles do not just apply to URLs, and I was just reminded of it when using Gmail.

Since its beginnings, Gmail has had a concept called labels (reigniting the age-old debate between folder users and label users). True to Google’s origins, it’s also had a prominent and powerful search box.

You can navigate to a label by clicking on the left…

…but you can also search for it by typing its name:

Clicking on the left actually pre-fills the search, teaching you that next time you can also do this from the keyboard – and also that you can combine it with other things you see or type in that box:

It all feels pretty natural, and I believe this was hard effort by the team, back in the day. I think so because the default/​cheap way to do it would be something like this:

I can see products choosing to do that, and I bet many did.

But just like with poorly-designed URLs, this forces the user to jump through all the UI hoops to get somewhere. In Gmail, at some point, instinctively and without thinking, and having never done it before, you might find yourself typing label:unsung "molly guard" and it will work, and you might not even realize what your fingers just learned.