[Sigia-l] IBM Reinvents E-mail

[Tom Chi]

The thread visualizations are pretty, but their usefulness is not clear.


They are drawn as a line, but they could also be seen as a tree.  The
branches with the greatest depth are the ones where a piece of the
conversation has gone into detail.  The short branches might be one-off
comments or unanswered questions.  This is valuable information.  When
arranged in a line the relative depth of branches is hidden, so the
arrangement is suboptimal unless it reveals some other valuable
information that a tree wouldn't.

A bigger question is whether threads are an artifact of email being
"misused" or whether they are the correct model for asynchronous
communication.



-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] On Behalf
Of Thomas.Donehower at eurorscg.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 7:51 AM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [Sigia-l] IBM Reinvents E-mail

Sneak peak at IBM's prototype E-mail interface.

http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/index.html

The thread visualizations have captured my imagination, but I'm having 
difficulty seeing how useful they are. 

Thomas Donehower
Manager, Information Architecture

EURO RSCG Life Interaction
200 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10016

------------
When replying, please *trim your post* as much as possible.
*Plain text, please; NO Attachments

Searchable list archive:   http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/
________________________________________
Sigia-l mailing list -- post to: Sigia-l at asis.org
Changes to subscription: http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sigia-l