[Design] Stamping from the perspective of Dealing with Email Overload

[Mimi Yin]

Reflections on a night at BayCHI: BayCHITalk

I had the opportunity at BayCHI to re-experience Merlin Mann's (of  
http://www.43folders.com fame) view of all things Productivity, in  
particular the problem that's become a cliche of modern life: Email  
Overload. His unapologetic characterization of the great majority of  
email we receive as the effluent of information work got me thinking  
about the converse of the problem:



Why are we NOT more mindful about the email that we send?

Well, for one thing, email is by it's nature ephemeral. Modeled on  
snail mail, email communication is structured as discrete messages  
that are composed, sent and for the most part discarded (by both  
senders and receivers) except for occasional dives into our email  
repositories for select pieces of information. (Although not typical  
of data-happy information geeks, there are a lot of people who  
literally DELETE, not archive, all their email...OR worse, email you  
again and again for the same information. In the last year, I have  
been asked for and provided my home mailing address to my parents at  
least 6 times.)



Why are emails discarded? (Out of sight, out of mind)

For most people on most email clients...email is not editable. As a  
result, any one email can't evolve with you as you make progress on a  
problem. It's a snapshot of a piece of information, at a given moment  
in time. Often times by the time an email is received and read by the  
intended recipient, that piece of information has already become  
obsolete. (Ever make the mistake of replying to email in a thread "in  
the order you received it"?) Email as it turns out is a great  
conveyance for dumping information straight into the archive.

The email communication is given priority over the "information item"  
transported by the email. How so?

Just look in your Inbox. Some emails are tasks. Some are reading  
material. Some are event invitations. Some are documents, drafts of  
proposals, questions, discussions. How do you know this? You look at  
each individual email and figure it out. But after you figure it out,  
you have no way of recording what you just figured out. As a result,  
there is nothing on the "outside" of the email that helps you figure  
that information out: e.g. A task icon. Reading glasses. Question  
mark. Talk bubble for discussions. Instead, we're provided with  
generic tools like Flags and Color codes to add Semantics to  
information. Was the Red flag for "Proposals I need to review" or was  
that Green? Which begs the question, am I using the right tool? Why  
is color appropriate for visually communicating something as complex  
as Proposals versus Tasks? Would we ever use that in our verbal  
communications with each other? "Well I've got 3 Reds and 1 Green to  
tackle this week." It sounds like Pentagon obfuscation. Even if you  
had the memory power and discipline to institute this system for  
yourself, how would you share it with others?

In the end, your email client is dumb and makes you dumb along with  
it. All it knows is that you have emails with different colored  
flags. Anything beyond that and you're on your own.



The Art of Addressing emails

The lack of meaningful semantics is most egregious in the Addressing  
fields, which is where I think most of us go wrong when composing  
emails. The fields we're offered are for the most part, too generic:  
To, CC, BCC.

What is TO? Isn't this email technically TO everyone? Out of all the  
mail you receive, how many people do you feel take great care in how  
they address their emails?

However, if the "information item" emerges into the forefront of the  
communication workflow (aka Stamping in Chandler: This is Task, this  
is a Meeting invite, this is a Proposal), context-specific semantics  
can help ask the right questions.

INVITE: Who are you Invite-ing to this meeting?
FYI: Who just needs to know about it?

ASSIGNED TO: Who are you asking to complete this task?
QUESTION FOR: Who are asking for input from?
FYI: Who just needs to know about it?

I'm not proposing that we change the email protocol. What I'm  
describing is purely smoke and mirrors that information management  
clients need to pull off in order to help users be more mindful about  
how they utilize incredibly generic

On the receiving end, the client needs to be able to parse these  
semantics and present them to the recipient in order to help them  
pick out signals from the sea of noise. "This is something that's  
Assigned to me." "Oh look, someone's asking me a question." "All this  
other stuff is just chatter and FYIs." Instead, all we have today in  
email clients is the "Danger, Will Robinson" flag called "High  
Priority." And there are only so many times Chicken Little can squawk  
about the sky falling before we become immune to such stuff. "High  
Priority" has no texture, no nuance. "High Priority" for whom? in  
what context? in what way? (There's also the little problem that just  
because something is High Priority for YOU...doesn't mean it's high  
priority for ME.)

However, IF we could have texture, nuance and subtlety in our  
communications, courtesy of richer user semantics, then perhaps: The  
"information we email" would become more than just one-off blobs of  
text we lob into other people's Inboxes and the Inbox could stop  
being where people catch up with yesterday's news, which is a waste  
of effort for both the sender and the receiver.

Instead, the "information we email" can become the "data  
representation" of the problems and issues that we're tracking in our  
heads. And like the stuff that floats around in our head, the tasks,  
drafts, discussions and issues in our information managers will  
evolve and change as "new information about our information" (meta- 
data) come to light. "This task needs to be due when? It's a good  
thing you told me."

Practically speaking, it means that rather than having 8 separate  
emails, all of which are really just "Oh I forgots" and addendums to  
the original email, you have a single "information item" that  
everyone can edit and update, that is a LIVING record of the progress  
that you make on it.



That's when "email" as a technology will become something helps you  
keep track of information, rather than something you lose track of.
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