Week 6: Email

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Week 6 Email
Marie Hwang INF 385T Knowledge Management
Systems February 18, 2003
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What is Email?

• Messages sent and received electronically over a
  computer network.
• Email is ALSO a system (habitat) for personal
  information management
• To do items
• Reminders
• Appointments and meetings
• Collaborations workflow tracking, task
  delegation
• Access to reference material such as files and
  links

How many people havent used email for one the
uses listed?
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Emails effect on society

• Business
• Growth of distributed companies
• Increased information flow
• Increased amounts of asynchronous communication?
• NYTimes.com article The Efficient Way to Not
  See Each Other

Has email promoted the practice of asynchronous
communication? Or was there just as much
communication before email? (through the written
word) With so many technologies available (cell
phone, email) do people communicate more or less
than before?
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How is Email accessed?

• Lotus Notes
• Outlook
• Eudora
• Browser-based interfaces
• Command-line based interfaces

What are the stats for the usage of these email
applications? (by person, by context/persona,
etc.)
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Issue Overload

• Usage People are using email applications for
  tasks theyre not designed to handle well
• Quantity people get too many email messages
• Spam
• Other people
• Ephemeral information
• Whittaker Sidnerusers have expressed
  disgust at amount of messages in their Inbox

• Does the manner in which a person maintain their
  inbox reflect how they manage other things in
  life?
• For example paper and mail
• Junk mail
• To do lists, bills, appointments, etc.

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Issue Attention

• Whittaker Sidner
• Opportunistic reminders in email applications
• compromised when there are too many messages
• Diverts attention, sidelines plans
• E.g. something (seemingly) more pressing is
  brought to attention
• Occupies peoples minds
• E.g. I need to check email during the class
  break
• E.g. I wonder if anything needs my attention
• E.g. Maybe I should check my email on this
  flight

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Issue Maintenance

• Staying on top of things is hard
• Rapid vs. extended response
• Folders can be ineffective
• Searching through emails vs. sorting and finding
  items
• Too many folders, changing needs

In the papers we read, there was a lot of study
on folders, filing, etc. Do you think that
having an application file things away for you
effectively is important?
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Research Prototypes/Tools

• Email applications with the 3 traditional panes
  folder list, list of messages, preview pane
• Not adequate anymore?
• Taskmaster Prototype (Bellotti, et al.)
• Adds alert bar, action clusters, task-specific
  contact lists
• Bifrost
• Pre-sorts the email into high level categories
• Timely, VIP, Personal, Small, Large
• It is only as smart as I can keep it smart
  (116)
• IBM best choice buttons
• IBM Panes, presentation, meaning
• Document preview
• Auto-summarization
• Synchronous awareness (email vs. IM)
• Ishmail
• alarm states filter, email deferral

Do you think these papers are presenting ideas
that would be useful to you?
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Miscellaneous thoughts

• All of the papers have discussed building
  features into email applications that would allow
  users to supplement email with
• Instant messages
• Online awareness tools
• Workflow management features
• Etc.
• ? What about incorporating email into other
  tools?
• E.g. ICQ has to-do list management
• E.g. IM tools allow file transfers
• E.g. bulletin board systems allow threaded
  message views

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Miscellaneous thoughts

• How are non-researchers supplementing their
  email?
• IM in place of email
• E.g. leaving messages when the recipient is
  offline
• Greeting cards
• E.g. my mother uses Yahoo! Greetings as she
  should email. Using a greeting card makes it
  harder for me to respond to her.

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Miscellaneous thoughts

• Bulletin board systems have the ability to
  designate items as sticky or pinned
• This ensures that an item remains at the top of a
  list, regardless of the freshness of the thread
• Why not in email? (vs. marking something unread)

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Miscellaneous thoughts

• Palm Desktop
• Easy categorization tool
• Bring some aspects of that into email
  applications?

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Miscellaneous thoughts

• Adobe Acrobat
• There is a pane with multiple tabs for bookmarks
  and thumbnails
• Add ability to view a list of comments in message
  separately, in such a pane (email message would
  be marked up)
• Add ability to view to do items in a separate
  list in such a pane e.g. email is marked up by
  recipient or sender
• Ability to store information about a
  thread/message (recipient side)

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Miscellaneous thoughts

• Select and Affect
• E.g. Highlight some text and designate it as a TO
  DO item (via a menu selection, button, or
  right-click)
• This item would then show up in special TO DO
  list, where other attributes can be assigned
  (e.g. with due date)