1. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information Marie Hwang INF 385T: Knowledge Management Systems February 18, 2003 Week 6: Email

2. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information 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 haven’t used email for one the uses listed?

3. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information Email’s 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”“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?

4. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information 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.)

5. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information Issue: Overload Usage: People are using email applications for tasks they’re not designed to handle well Quantity: people get too many email messages –Spam –Other people –Ephemeral information Whittaker & Sidner: users 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.

6. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information 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 people’s 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”

7. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information 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?

8. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information 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?

9. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information 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

10. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information 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.

11. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information 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)

12. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information Miscellaneous thoughts Palm Desktop –Easy categorization tool –Bring some aspects of that into email applications?

13. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information 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)

14. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN School of Information 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)