A Future for E-mail
User Interface Design, Usability Engineering, E-mail.
MOTIVATION
This workshop addresses the user interface design and usability issues of
e-mail. E-mail has become a major mode of communication within and far
beyond the technical community. While ten years ago, an e-mail user might
receive a few e-mail messages per day, these days it is not unusual for
high-tech professionals to receive hundreds of messages per day. These
messages range from personal messages to professional announcements,
contributions to mailing lists, and even advertisements. This vast amount
of incoming e-mail contributes in great degree to the information-overload
perceived by users. Many people find it difficult to keep up with, and
track of, their on-line correspondence.
Coupled with this increase in e-mail is the reported increase in size
and number of networks joining world-wide connectivity. Recent reports put
the percentage of US adults with e-mail access at 14%, having doubled in a
year. If the increase in e-mail messages is related to the increase in
number of people connected, then we can expect even more e-mail in the
future. If the increase over the next ten years matches the increase of
the last ten, we might receive thousands of e-mail messages per day. That
is more than one message per half minute, per working day.
The time to address this problem is now, before the problem gets even
worse. Part of the difficulty of dealing with large amounts of e-mail is
the inadequate support provided by most e-mail applications. Most e-mail
programs have been designed for users who receive small amounts of e-mail.
An example of this is a response from the help line of the makers of a
popular e-mail program: "Try not to have more than 300 messages in your
Inbox." Unfortunately, many users have little control over the amount of
e-mail they receive.
TOPICS
The goal of this workshop is to address these and related problems from a
usability point of view, for example:
- How can we handle the problem of information overload? Is the
usefulness of agents hindered by issues of reliability and trust? Is the
overhead of setting them up and maintaining them prohibitive?
- Will there be a necessary integration of e-mail with related technologies,
such as groupware and the World Wide Web?
- Is the lack of standardization of e-mail (front-ends and back-ends) a
problem?
- How can large-volume sources of e-mail, such as mailing lists and
"listservs", be kept manageable? Is there a need to address social issues,
such as etiquette in e-mail application UI's? Are grassroots evolving
standards an indication of what's needed?
- How can the issues pertaining to realistic usability testing e-mail be
solved, e.g., creating sample "data" (messages, folders, aliases, etc.)?
Are testing results impaired by using such fake e-mail in testing,
due to ethnographic observation and privacy issues?
- What are some possible software and user interface technological
solutions to these problems?
PARTICIPANTS AND PLANS
This one-day workshop will be comprised of 15 participants, solicited from
relevant mailing lists and newsgroups. Workshop discussion topics will be
selected by the organizers from the two-page position statements submitted
by potential participants.
The workshop will be split into four sessions. The first session will
be dedicated to introductions and overviews of participants' interests and
positions. The following two sessions will be dedicated to discussions of
the predetermined tropics. The final session will be dedicated to
conclusions, future plans, and publishing plans.
