Knowledge Management Systems
• Email
- Readings
- Issues
• Blogging
• More Commentary
• Evaluations of the blog process
• Projects and Papers
Email Systems, Uses and Habits
• What email client(s) do you use?
- Why?
- How Long?
• Multiple Mailboxes?
- How many & for what?
- How long do you keep them?
• Filters?
- How many & for what?
- Searching instead of filtering?
• Searching email
- How often & why?
• Other Devices?
• An Influence on Social Networks
• Protocols
Email as Habitat
• Traditionally
- Messaging - Communication
- One to One, One to Many Communication
• Increasingly
- Information Management
• Access to Documents
• Address Books - Contacts
• Portal for (Networked) Information
- Coordination and Collaboration
• Tasks
- To Do’s
- Reminders
• Workflow
- Document Creation and Editing
- Meeting Planning and Coordination
Email as Habitat 2
• PC Users Spend Most of Their Day in their
Email Application
- Defining “Knowledge Workers”?
- Support Staff
• Personal Information Management
- To Do (Marking up or Sending to Oneself)
- Contact Management
• Project Tracking
• Email for EVERYTHING?
Email as Habitat 3
• Too Much of a Good Thing
- Filters
- Folders
• Searching May Be Faster
- Time to File
- Time to Find
• Searching Not Helping to Build (Traditional)
Conceptual Model of Tasks or Messages
Email as Habitat 4
• Types of Folders
-
Who – Sender
Where – Organization of Sender(s)
What – Project
Personal Interests
• Professional
• Private
- What Else?
• Archives
• Templates
Email as Habitat 5
• Problems with Email Applications
-
Folder Organization
Sorting
Finding
Filtering
• Easier to Set up
• Filter after Reading or Event
• One Application Not Suited for All Users
- Outlook - Outlook Express
- Status & Occupation
- Roles and Responsibilities
Email as Habitat 6
• More Exposure to Email Use = More Checking
Email
- Alternate Devices
- Always-on Devices
• More Experience = More Feature Use
• Different Features for Different Users
• Different Features for Different Uses
• Projects
• Types of Tasks
Improving Email
• Threads of Messages
- “Conversation Tree”
- Automatic vs. Manual Configuration
- Types of Conversations (GIBIS)
• “Thrasks”
- Individual (feedback)
- Group (assignments)
• Views & Visualization
- Oldest/First at Top (contrast with blogs)
- Multiple Windows, Icons, Graphics
Email Overload: Exploring PIM
• New Uses Causes Overload
- Task Management
- Personal Archiving
- Asynchronous Communication
• Study of Mailboxes and User Interviews
• Does Speed/Reliability of Email Transmission and
Replying Change It’s Use?
- Conversational
- Accountable
• Email not “One touch” (informational)
• Changes Work Throughout the Day
• Constantly Checking
Sequence & Reply Relationships
• Messaging is a type of conversation
- What are the characteristics of a conversation?
- How are conversations conducted in other media?
• Envisioning email as conversations adds
context and removes redundancy
- Time
- Complexity of topic
- Number of participants
Models of Conversations
• Sequence Model
- First message
- Before (context)
- After (how long to wait vs. too long?)
• Tree Model
- Root message & Replies to root
- Any replies, some replies or ranked replies?
- Replies to replies (eliminating redundancy, but not
losing context)
• Visualization for each won’t be universal
• Mailing lists could be improved for support
Taking Email to Task
• Many of us work out of our InBox
• Email becomes task-centric, not just info
- Actionable
- Trackable
• Study looked at “live” email use
- Filters are a key
- Examine Addressing and Threads
- Watched email triage
Task Results
• Quick responses
• Offline research or task required before reply
- To Dos
- Events later
- Delayed, dependent to dos
• Overload measure
- Number of threads/day + length of intervals
between messages in threads
• Message drift out of view in a mailbox
• Context is lost
Task Problems
• Keeping track of concurrent actions
- Your to dos
- Others, dependent todos
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Marking items as more important
Managing email over time
Managing deadlines and reminders
Collating collections of messages
Application switching & window mgmt
Task overview needed
Is email always the right tool?
• What functions make the most sense for
email?
• Is email better suited to some situations?
• What working styles are more & less
conducive to being productive with email?
• Are there personality types or work roles that
email is best for?
TaskMaster
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Keeping Track of Concurrent Actions
Marking Items
Managing Activities Over Time
Managing Deadlines and Reminders
Collating Related Items and Associated Files
and Links
6. Application Switching and Window
Management
7. Getting a Task-Oriented Overview Easily
TaskMaster
• Helping with Overload
- Number of Threads
- Frequency of Related Messages
• Assigns Meta-Information
- From the Thrask View
- Within an Open Item (Contact Info)
• Warning Bars
• Action Clusters
• Task-Specific Contact Lists
TaskMaster
Reinventing Email
• What Kinds of Messages are Suited for
(Current) Email ?
• What Other Types of Messaging Tools?
- Instant Messaging
- Newsgroups
- Document Management
• Annotations
• Approval
• Distribution Lists
Reinventing Email
• Separation or Integration?
-
Messages
Address Book – Contacts
Documents
Links
Web (other)
• Indexing and Classifying Email
- Logging (transaction, permission, task)
- Searching (internal, personal, external)
- Ranking (most email currently equal)
Redesigning Email for 21st Century
• Little Change – GUIs & Attachments
• Overloaded & Overwhelmed
- Slow Response – No Response
- Loss
• No One Solution
- Multiple Features
- Appropriate for each User, Organization or Task
- Improved Interface & Interaction
• Timelines
• Document Summarization
• Annotations
21st Century Email Interfaces
Bitfrost
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Categorizing Messages from Inbox Automatically
“Programming” Filters Too Difficult
Categories of Interest
Improve on Known Email Use
- Four Types of Users
- Filters vs. Losing Sight of Email
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Understanding Automatic Categorizing Difficult for Users
Too Much Categorization?
Categories vs. Folders
New Messages Difficult to Deal With
Notification vs. Filing or Hiding
MailCat
• Filing with an Intelligent Assistant
- Adaptive Text Classifier for Guessing (3) Folders
- Action Classifier? (Maxim’s Memory Based Retrieval
Matching)
- 80-90% Accurate
• Filing Can Compliment Searching
- How Many Actions to File?
• Multiple Locations (Aliases, Links)
• Simple (Only) Interface (“Move To” buttons)
Ishmail
• Support 3 Basic Methods
- Don’t File & Search
- File Frequently in Many Mailboxes
- File Intermittently
• Server-Based with IMAP extension
• Filtering
- Alarms
- Mailboxes
- Incoming & Outgoing
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Interface with Multiple Windows/Views
Deferral of Message (Sending) Delivery
Archiving – Periodic & Stack
Personas
Back to basics: Email Protocols
• POP
- Decentralized Storage
- Personal Archives
• IMAP
- Centralized Storage
- Server Archives
• How Will New Devices Extend These Protocols?
- Filtering as Ringtone?
- Caller ID
• How Will P2P or other Collaborative/Cooperative Technologies
(or paradigms) Change Email Use?
- Always On (for Categorizing, Filtering and Automatically
Respondng)
Email on the Desktop?
• Computers have transitioned from calculating tools to
communication tools.
• Studies show that email is the #1 internet use.
• Integrate Mailboxes with OS File Structure
• Group Files and Messages in Interface
• Provide Direct and Indirect Manipulation of
Information
- Centralized on Servers
- Synchronized with All Devices (PIM Hub)
• Does embedding email into the operating system
make email more efficient, pervasive, overly important
or all three?
Email Use Improvement
• New System Evaluation (for Improvement)
- Real Users
- Actual Work
• Difficult to Get Individuals to Switch to New
Applications or Technologies
- Current Features Not Used
- No Learning Curve for Critical Application
- Lock-in vs. Import/Export
• More Difficult to Get Organization To Switch
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Installed Base
Migration
Licensing
Training
Email Issues
• Email should be used for email
• Offload messages for other tasks to the
appropriate applications
-
To Dos
Contact Information
Documents
Projects
• Tasks
• Threads
• Update intervals
- How often do you check?
- How often do you act?
Email: Social Computing vs PIM
• MIME & Web server based application specific
email (and attachment) handler and viewer email like Web pages
• Designs for working with email threads
• Trackback for email
• RSS newsfeeds instead of email
• How email fits into a framework for a KMS
• “Smart” email with built in logic
• Sending, reading & retrieving with different
interfaces
• Messages integrated with todo lists
Email & (knowledge) work?
• Does email create more work?
• Does email cause more work?
- Increased volume of work
- Increased pace of work
• How does email change knowledge work?
• Is managing email a KM process?
- Efficiency vs. Costs
- Lost time vs. gained time
• Including attachments
• Inserting task & appointment information
• Process & project tracking
- How can it be verifiable?
- Legally binding?
• What’s the role of metadata in email use & archving
(retrieval)