Author: Jacek Gwizdka
Publisher: IBM Center for Advanced Studies Conference
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/13700
Abstract of the article:
The use of email has become important in our daily lives, because they are used for scheduling, management of to-do’s, reminders and contacts, documenting activities and file transfer. There are two general approaches to widen the tasks which can be done through emailing. These include: (a) making it easy for information to be transferred from email to other media, where tasks are typically performed and (b) adding support for new tasks within email programs.
Older studies were conducted wherein email and personal information management tool use were conducted. A study conducted with Microsoft Outlook an email program which utilizes a number of features that support various aspects of managing pending tasks (a to-do list, a calendar, general email flags, etc.) resulted in low utilization of these features.
Email interfaces are (1) design of linear/tabular form of email folders for support of one-touch model of dealing with email messages (authors of the project reported that users like the visualization of their email and found it useful for retrieval of both old and new messages) and (2) design for temporal reference of messages used in facilitating the management of pending tasks embedded in messages in “Timestore – Taskview”. TimeStore-TaskView tasks embedded in messages are made by small icons on a 2-dimensional grid with temporal and other task information shown on both the horizontal and vertical axis. Task View Interface is important for benefitting task visualization as it also affects the efficiency of finding information in messages related to pending tasks. This benefitted the “task D performance” (pertaining to pending task date, time or task overview) while negatively affecting the “type C performance” (pertaining to subject, sender and content).
Three things I learned from my Reading Assignment:
1. The study shows that there is the presence of resilience from people with different high cognitive abilities to different interfaces.
2. In designing the interface of email programs, importance must be given to creating alternative interfaces for different population groups and for different tasks.
3. The study focused on pending tasks in emailing. "Pending Tasks" denote activities which are performed in the future, such as attending meetings, visiting friends, writing papers and or replying to emails.
Application:
Email functions which can be found on Microsoft Outlook can be further enhanced by utilizing these capabilities (calendar, general email flags, specialized reminder flags, journals) into the day to day activities. The function of the email can only be further enhanced by providing opportunities for enhancing user-interface.
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