A Time-Based Interface for Electronic Mail and Task Management

Email overload is a growing problem for many users in the workplace [1]. Users often have trouble retrieving messages for use later or in remembering to reply or to act on a particular message. There are two causes. The first is due to the problems associated with maintenance and retrieval in a semantic hierarchical structure. The second is due to current email systems are designed around the assumption that messages are informational and are read upon arrival, and that important messages are filed. The use of a semantic hierarchy for filing presents many problems for dealing with a large volume of data. Filing and maintenance is very time consuming and cognitively intensive. Since there can be hundreds of new messages arriving each day, it is difficult to file and maintain a reasonable hierarchy that facilitates efficient retrieval. Moreover, categories can become obsolete over time, and messages in different categories may become semantically related. Therefore, the user must spend time periodically to reorganize their mail hierarchy. People use email for more than communication. On the surface, email is a form of asynchronous communication. In reality, email are actually used for purposes such as document delivery and archiving, work task delegation, storing personal names and addresses, and scheduling appointments [1]. Also people need better tools to remind them of their tasks [2, 3] and current email systems lack such support.