Gary Hsieh and Jennifer Mankoff

EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley

Technical Report No. UCB/CSD-03-1286

2003

Email overloading is an ongoing problem for information workers. One critical phase of email management involves deciding whether to respond to the arrival of a new message. We present the design and evaluation of two displays intended to support this activity (a Ticker and a physically-based colored Orb). Both are peripheral displays, designed to sit at the periphery of a user's attention. Unlike previous displays, our most successful display was easily visible even off the desktop, and both our displays limit notifications to emails that pass through a filter, thus limiting notifications about spam and other less useful emails. Surprisingly, our animated Ticker was not distracting. Both displays were well liked and supported awareness. We also present a comparison of the relative merits of different methods for measuring usability, awareness, and distraction in the lab and the field. Our results suggest that a combination of techniques is most informative for peripheral display design.

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BibTeX citation:

@techreport{Hsieh:CSD-03-1286,
    Author= {Hsieh, Gary and Mankoff, Jennifer},
    Title= {A Comparison of Two Peripheral Displays for Monitoring Email: Measuring Usability, Awareness, and Distraction},
    Year= {2003},
    Url= {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2003/5776.html},
    Number= {UCB/CSD-03-1286},
    Abstract= {Email overloading is an ongoing problem for information workers. One critical phase of email management involves deciding whether to respond to the arrival of a new message. We present the design and evaluation of two displays intended to support this activity (a Ticker and a physically-based colored Orb). Both are peripheral displays, designed to sit at the periphery of a user's attention. Unlike previous displays, our most successful display was easily visible even off the desktop, and both our displays limit notifications to emails that pass through a filter, thus limiting notifications about spam and other less useful emails. Surprisingly, our animated Ticker was not distracting. Both displays were well liked and supported awareness. We also present a comparison of the relative merits of different methods for measuring usability, awareness, and distraction in the lab and the field. Our results suggest that a combination of techniques is most informative for peripheral display design.},
}

EndNote citation:

%0 Report
%A Hsieh, Gary 
%A Mankoff, Jennifer 
%T A Comparison of Two Peripheral Displays for Monitoring Email: Measuring Usability, Awareness, and Distraction
%I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
%D 2003
%@ UCB/CSD-03-1286
%U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2003/5776.html
%F Hsieh:CSD-03-1286