MailHistory: toward introspection and social translucence in email communication

Over the last few decades, email has become an important communication and collaboration tool. As a global, networked messaging system, email allows individuals to exchange information and carry on conversations, without requiring participants to gather at a physical location (as in face-to-face communication), at a particular point in time (as in telephone conversations), and with relative alacrity (as opposed to postal mail). Yet, email communication carries a fair degree of uncertainty, due to the nature of asynchronous messaging and the interaction design of the email system. Between the time that an email is sent and a response is received, there are few meaningful cues available to the sender about how the recipient is handling the message. “When will I get a response to this email?” is a common question for email senders [12]. Unless the participants have some other means of establishing context or a prior history of email interaction, answering this question is difficult. Deciding