Article: “Visualizing Email Content: Portraying Relationships from Conversational Histories”
Authors: Fernanda B. Viégas, Scott Golder, Judith Donath
Summary
The authors of this paper developed Themail a tool that parsed user email correspondences and displayed yearly and monthly keywords. They implemented two modes “haystack” and “needle”. Haystack mode displayed words on the screen that showed more general, big picture themes and trends. Needle mode picked out more minute detail. Most users preferred haystack mode, specifically reflecting on their discourses with family and loved ones. One of their methods included taking special measures to isolate and consolidate correspondences with specific individuals. That is, they made sure that if a user had several email addresses associated “John Smith”, the addresses were consolidated into a single contact.
Reflection
Themail is and interesting social tool. One might use it like a photo album or an evolving time capsule. It would be interesting to integrate other media and info such as photos, gifs, videos, location crossovers, routes, etc.
Questions
What would be the effect of “facebooking” this tool such that users were exposed only to correspondences that they were more positively engaged in?
Another leaf out of facebook – might users enjoy a video-graphic memoir of their meaningful correspondences?
