Designing Calm | February 2013 “I’m normally aware of what's coming in, because I check it on my phone. But I don't think it's efficient. It's putting mindshare... It puts something in my head that stresses me out, but I can't do anything about it.”
Designing Calm | February 2013 Stress Model New email Requires me to do something? N Y Action is required: Later Now Am I able to take action? Y N High Stress requires tracking the task to be done Low Stress
Designing Calm | February 2013 The stressor we’re addressing is having to mentally manage emails that require future action for technologically-savvy people with lots of email. The calmor is automatically creating calendar reminders from starred emails, which users will experience by freeing themselves from having to worry about keeping track of read emails.
Designing Calm | February 2013 The stressor we’re addressing is having to mentally manage emails that require future action for technologically-savvy people with lots of email. The calmor is automatically creating calendar reminders from starred emails, which users will experience by freeing themselves from having to worry about keeping track of read emails.
Designing Calm | February 2013 All 10 people reported that “before using this service, it was stressful to open an email and know you had to come back to it later.” 3 of 10 people felt less stressed after the test Only 3 of 10 people actually took action on their email at the time of their calendar reminder 7 of 10 people said that they would continue using this system
Designing Calm | February 2013 All 10 people reported that “before using this service, it was stressful to open an email and know you had to come back to it later.” 3 of 10 people felt less stressed after the test Only 3 of 10 people actually took action on their email at the time of their calendar reminder 7 of 10 people said that they would continue using this system
Designing Calm | February 2013 All 10 people reported that “before using this service, it was stressful to open an email and know you had to come back to it later.” 3 of 10 people felt less stressed after the test Only 3 of 10 people actually took action on their email at the time of their calendar reminder 7 of 10 people said that they would continue using this system
Designing Calm | February 2013 All 10 people reported that “before using this service, it was stressful to open an email and know you had to come back to it later.” 3 of 10 people felt less stressed after the test Only 3 of 10 people actually took action on their email at the time of their calendar reminder 7 of 10 people said that they would continue using this system
Designing Calm | February 2013 “It felt somewhat reassuring to feel like if I did star an email, there was a service looking out for me, but I never really went back to my calendar to look for emails that I had to deal with.”
Designing Calm | February 2013 Stress Model New email Requires me to do something? N Y Action is required: Later Now Am I able to take action? Y N High Stress requires tracking the task to be done Low Stress
Designing Calm | February 2013 Stress Model New email Requires me to do something? N Y Action is required: Later Now Y N High Stress requires tracking the task to be done Low Stress Am I able to take action?
Designing Calm | February 2013 The mere fact of taking action on an email so you don’t have to worry now gives users a sense of mental relief. Reeta Banerjee | [email protected] | @ReetaTweets Jonathan (Jasper) Sherman-Presser | [email protected] | @jasperjonathan Borui Wang | [email protected] | @borui_wang
Designing Calm | February 2013 Users appreciated explicitly calling out whether an email was important when being notified on their smartphone... ...but few users benefited from a system notifying them of important emails as few test subjects previously received PUSH notifications for all new email. Prototype 1: Results
Designing Calm | February 2013 Make it easier for people to select when to come back to an email. “This would be more useful to me if I could quickly and easily place an email in to one of four priority buckets. One might be something like, ‘deal with later tonight’ (which is helpful when I star an email on my phone), the next would be ‘deal with tomorrow,’ then maybe a ‘remind me in a week’ and finally a ‘I need this for reference’ (like a plane e- ticket or a bill). This would be a great service.” Next Steps
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