Future Time in Email - Design and Evaluation of a Task-based Email Interface

Email was originally designed as a tool for asynchronous communication. However, as the number of messages increased, so did their variety. A wide range of new and unforeseen email tasks reflects this variety. One of the most commonly performed activities in email is management of pending tasks. This research focuses on how to support this activity in email and explores alternative solutions that use different external representations of messages and associated tasks. Central to this research is understanding the role of both external artifacts in managing multiple pending tasks, as well as internal representations and processes and how they can be linked to external representations. In a recent study we compared the effects of two email interfaces (Microsoft Outlook Inbox and TimeStore-TaskView) on efficiency and effectiveness of information finding in email messages. We found that TimeStore-TaskView interface was overall faster for finding information related to task dates, time and task overviews, while the Inbox interface was faster for finding information from subject lines, senders or from the message body. Based on the results from the study, we are designing a modified email prototype and a follow-up user study.