Ceci n'est pas un Objet? Talking About Objects in E-mail

Abstract

E-mail, far from being a poor, technically limited substitute for face-to-face communication, has some unique and compelling properties that make it ideally suited for talking about objects. In this article we show how e-mail users have evolved new forms of electronic deictic references to refer to work objects and have taken full advantage of the fluid boundaries between the different roles that e-mail can assume. We also illustrate how e-mail users draw on the persistence of the medium to make sense of the objects being talked about and sometimes even transform the conversation itself into an object of conversation. We conclude with several design suggestions for future electronic mail software based on these findings. his research interests include computer-supported cooperative work, computer-mediated communication, and the social impacts of information technologies in organizations. Victoria Bellotti is a senior research scientist in the Computer Science Laboratory at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC); her research interests include design-oriented ethnography, applying user-centered principles in iterative design settings, computer-supported cooperative work, computer-mediated communication, and technology and its implications for personal privacy.

Discovery of implicit and explicit connections between people using email utterance

“…A feature of current email use is its ubiquity: Ducheneaut and Bellotti (2002) commented that "while this [people spending a lot of time on email] may not be surprising for those who collaborate over distance, we have observed that even colleagues having offices next to each other, or sitting in plain sight of each other, still use email as a principal communication medium." "Work objects are easily accessible while communicating over email in a way that they cannot be in most face-to-face encounters."…”

“…"…email conversations are grounded in sufficient mutual understanding to allow very brief, sketchy and implicit references to succeed without posing significant problems in interpretation." (Ducheneaut and Bellotti, 2002).…”

Enabling the blind to see gestures

“…When the task is to coordinate schedules, assign tasks or make progress reports, e-mail is the preferred medium [75]. The e-mail preference is interesting to discuss because despite the fact that it is an unimodal application which basically supports only text, participants do not get confused in e-mail discussions even when the subject is complex [70]. Maybe it is because grounding constraints like sequentiality, reviewability and revisability are more important for those tasks and are nicely implemented in e-mail.…”

The Boundaries of Natural Language Processing Techniques in Extracting Knowledge from Emails

“…Email enables greater knowledge work than possible in earlier technological eras [51], [52]. It enables knowledge, creation [53], [54], knowledge sharing and knowledge flow [55]. According to Tedmori et al, Email provides several important, often unexploited, opportunities for expertise-finding.…”