Redesigning the email experience: stressors

Transcript

1. A college student who leads a busy life needs a way to prioritize and organize emails that they want to reply to later because they receive a large amount of emails to which they cannot write thoughtful responses immediately, which then pile up in their inbox and reach an overwhelming and unmanageable amount.
2. User Interviews Chrystal Lau, Human Biology '15 "Sometimes, I read an email but I keep it in my inbox if I want to save it for later. But then I forget, and it stresses me out when they get lost in the pile. Jenny Chen, Mathematical and Computational Science '15 "I get stressed out if I take more than a day to respond. There's some emails that I just don't want to reply to, and I put it off and it stresses me out, leaving them in my inbox and knowing that I have to get back to them." Anisha Mudaliar, Public Policy '15 "I organize my emails by putting the unread at the top. So, even when I read something, I'll mark it as unread and put it at the top of my inbox, so I can reply later. But it builds up really quickly, and when it reaches a certain threshold, I just give up." "Emails that require me to reply with substantive material stress me out, because I know I could just take 15 minutes to do it, but I put it off for later for some reason." "There's something about deleting emails, and putting them into my GCal that's very therapeutic."
3. Stress Model Feel discouraged + give up Don't have time to check periodically Read but don't have time to reply Mark as unread and store for later Email threads result in a huge amount of reply alls and can't keep up Huge pile of pending emails Feel behind and there's too much to handle