THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
School of Information
Week 6: Email
Marie Hwang
INF 385T: Knowledge Management Systems
February 18, 2003
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
School of Information
What is Email?
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Messages sent and received electronically over a computer
network.
Email is ALSO a system (“habitat”) for personal information
management:
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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?
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”
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?
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
School of Information
How is Email accessed?
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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.)
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
Does the manner in which a person
– Spam
– Other people
– Ephemeral information
maintain their inbox reflect how they
manage other things in life?
For example: paper and mail
-Junk mail
-To do lists, bills, appointments, etc.
• Whittaker & Sidner:
users have expressed “disgust” at amount of
messages in their Inbox
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”
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?
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
School of Information
Research Prototypes/Tools
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Email applications with the 3 traditional panes: folder list, list of
messages, preview pane
– Not adequate anymore?
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Taskmaster Prototype (Bellotti, et al.)
– Adds alert bar, action clusters, task-specific contact lists
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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)
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IBM: best choice buttons
IBM: Panes, presentation, meaning
– Document preview
– Auto-summarization…
– Synchronous awareness (email vs. IM)
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Ishmail
– alarm states filter, email deferral
Do you think these papers are
presenting ideas that would be useful
to you?
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
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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
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.
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)
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
School of Information
Miscellaneous thoughts
• Palm Desktop
– Easy categorization tool
– Bring some aspects of that into email applications?
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)
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 rightclick)
• This item would then show up in special TO DO list,
where other attributes can be assigned (e.g. with due
date)