Using bluemail to renew the design and study of enterprise email

Google Tech Talks
May, 20 2008

ABSTRACT

The bluemail research prototype is a web-based email client that we have been designing to renew the email experience in the enterprise in two ways. We want to renew the design of email through a novel combination of conversation threading, message foldering, and message tagging features. Bluemail was also designed to support "orienteering" to find messages in email. We also want to use bluemail to renew our understanding of email practices in the enterprise. We deployed bluemail within IBM for over three months and have used it to collect data on current email practice from over 6000 users in over 60 countries. We also focused on a subset of more active users of bluemail to evaluate how people used bluemail's threading, foldering, and tagging features through focused data analysis and interviews. Most users liked threading and continued to use email folders, but only a small percentage began using tagging. Our research helps us understand how users reacted to bluemail's novel combination of features and provides an updated view on enterprise email practice to guide ongoing email innovation.

This talk will be taped.

Speaker: John C. Tang. IBM Almaden Research Center
John C. Tang is a Research Staff Member at the Almaden Research Center of IBM Research. John's research interests focus on understanding the needs of users and designing new technology to support collaboration. He applies a mix of qualitative (interviews, surveys, video-based observation) and quantitative (usage logs) methods to understand people's current work practices to design new prototypes for tools to support their work. John received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and worked on shared drawing prototypes at Xerox PARC (1985-1990) and tools to support collaboration and awareness at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (1990-2003) before joining IBM.

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