Summary
This article discusses how email archives can be visualized to show individual relationships over a span of time based the frequency of and distinction of the words used in the interactions called Themail. They discuss other similar programs created to analyze email archives, but this is the only program that analyzes it based off the relationship between the user instead of just simply header information. Through their research they have found that the patterns displayed over time are significant to that persons life. This application is aimed at the end user instead of other sectors of the social network analysis community. Their visualization is comprised of two types of words: yearly and monthly. Yearly words are static and are large an grey, and faint in the background showing the most commonly used words over the year. Monthly words are interactive, yellow, and shown in the foreground as stacks on the timeline of the screen as a space. These words can be selected and interacted with to see the emails they showed in and other contexts. Additionally, there are circles that are exchanged in a month, the size of the circle indicates how lengthy the message was. The main functionalities this application tries to accomplish is to show the user (1) what do I talk about with a specific person in my email and (2) what are the differences in my conversations between people. This was used in user studies and case studies that gave positive feedback on this application, in which most users preferred the overall view (called haystack), instead of the detailed view you get from clicking on each word monthly (called needle). They liked the application to be able to see and remember their interactions with people. Some of the disadvantages to the way this application was created are that it does not differentiate between expressions, it only sees individuals words, limiting its accuracy in portraying an exact relationship in social terms we have learned as humans in society.
Reflection
I understand why they chose to do the project and that there was positive feedback from users who volunteered to use the software. However, I do not actually see the value this applications brings to society. That might be because email is outdated, if they were to look at my vt email, it would just show the amount of work I have done, and not personal relationships, or travel records at the most. This applied to messenger applications might be interesting, but still I don’t know what value that brings, besides a emotional value. This emotional value of “looking back” is something a lot of companies deal with our online data have seemed to integrate into their applications. Both Facebook and Google Photos have a “rediscover this day” and “friend-aversairy”. Which at times I, as a user, enjoy when its applicable, sometimes they choose people I no longer have a strong connection without or funerals. I think the concept of reflecting on your life is interesting and something that is good for social media applications. I think this being applied to a different messenger might be something I could see more applications for, but honestly, now that the “rediscover this day” has been out a while, it has lost a lot of steam. I no longer share those anymore, I sometimes take a second to smile, or just simply think “oh yeah that happened”. But I don’t see a long term usage or need for an application like this. What value does this bring? Its the same concept that by the time Google Photos came out with “rediscover this day”, I was already over it. Because it doesn’t really add that much value, and multiple interfaces are reminding me of that event or lots of events. I don’t see a user sitting down at the end of every week/month and using this application to review what interactions they had because its not fulfilling an need they have. I see a user maybe every year, or every few years looking back at it, but then why develop this for an user to barely use unless its just for other purposes and other applications within the industry. This application extended and maybe integrated into the already existing thoughts of “rediscovering” a time, a relationship. or a place, might be of some use. I think users like it in the study like, cause I would like it and think its interesting, but not daily use applicable or even weekly or even monthly.
