Best Paper Award, CHI 2016 (San Jose, CA).

1. Finding Email in a Multi-Account,
Multi-Device World
Marta E. Cecchinato1, Abigail Sellen2, Milad Shokouhi2, Gavin Smyth2
1University College London
2Microsoft Research
Email: m.cecchinato@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @martacecchinato

2. What is the fate of email?

3. Growing numbers
Emails sent per day (Radicati, 2015)
Email accounts per user (Radicati, 2015)
Device ownership (PEW research, 2015)
×

4. Prior work on re-finding email
Preparatory behaviour: users take time to file and label
email in anticipation of retrieving the information.
Opportunistic behaviour: users rely on sorting, scrolling or
searching at the time of need, delaying the burden.
Whittaker et al. (2011)
Search

5. What retrieval strategies do
users employ across work and
personal accounts?
Do users’ email retrieval
strategies differ across devices?

6. Participants
• 16 users (9 women)
• 22-54 years old (median: 28)
• Various professions
physiotherapist, nurses, PhD students,
researchers, post-doc, high school
teacher, teaching associate, barista,
software engineer, graphic designer, and
marketing coordinator.
3 email accounts each
4 devices each
2 smartwatch users
© Marta Cecchinato

7. Initial
interview
General
understanding of
email use.
45 to 80 minutes.
Diary study &
data logging
239 diary entries
were collected.
RescueTime was
optional: 6 out of 16
agreed.
7 days.
Follow-up
interview
Further insights on
diary entries.
Scheduled within 7
days from the end of
the diary.
20 to 60 minutes.
Pre-study survey & pictures (physical desktop + folders)
Method

8. Main findings
1. Retrieval across accounts
2. Issues and workarounds across accounts
3. Issues and workarounds across devices

9. 1. Retrieval across accounts
Preferred retrieval strategies based on type of account:
• Personal accounts: opportunistic strategies
• Work accounts: preparatory + opportunistic strategies
Search
Search

10. 2. Issues & workarounds across accounts
Boundaries between accounts are not always well defined

11. 2. Issues & workarounds across accounts
My sister might send me this really interesting thing to do with academic
things […] and she might have put some personal information about a
holiday… I’d be really confused about where to put that [in folders].
(P10, first interview)
“
”
P10’s home office (work)
P10’s home office (personal)

12. 2. Issues & workarounds across accounts
Before [my colleague and I] set
[Slack] up, it was really horrid, […] it
would all be like, ‘Oh, I sent you an email
three months ago’ or ‘I sent you a text’ or,
like, ‘I’ve got this like WhatsApp chat
thing’. But [now with Slack] it is all in
there and it’s all curated heavily and there’s
no, like, subject changing […] you’re
not posting something about
going for drinks in the thread
about the job we’re working
on.
(P12, first interview)
“
”

13. 3. Issues & workarounds across devices
Smartphones are associated with storage and connectivity issues

14. 3. Issues & workarounds across devices
Re-sending
Switching application
External copies
Pictures & screenshots

15. 3. Issues & workarounds across devices
Re-sending
Switching application
External copies
Pictures & screenshots
Email app Webclient

16. 3. Issues & workarounds across devices
Re-sending
Switching application
External copies
Pictures & screenshots
It’s like keeping a single post-it note for it
[…] so its ephemeral. I mean, I don’t
search in the same way […] I don’t keep
an archive of all the post-it notes because
once that’s reached its purpose, it’s often in
the recycle bin.
(P1, follow-up interview)
“
”

17. 3. Issues & workarounds across devices
Re-sending
Switching application
External copies
Pictures & screenshots
Had previously taken a screenshot of my
confirmation email from Trainline containing
info about both the outbound and inbound
train + went on my photo album on my phone
+ found the picture to collect my tickets.
(P7, diary)
“
”

18. Take home message
1. Work and personal emails are
managed and retrieved differently.
2. It’s important to consider multiple
devices: emails are primarily
retrieved on laptops/PCs &
smartphones are rarely used for
finding emails.
3. Email retrieval is a frustrating
experience.
4. As a result, users create
workarounds, i.e. using Slack or
taking screenshots.
≠
×

19. So what? We need to…
Better integrate email for work.
Learn from other communication tools.
Design for short-lived and long-lived content.
Optimise smartphone search.
Image source: h9p://www.justynsmith.com/
2012/01/short-term-is-the-new-long-term/
Image source: h9p://hop.media/read/tech/always-
on-your-phone-usage-is-pissing-off-everyone

20. Take home message:
1. Work and personal emails are managed and retrieved differently.
2. It’s important to consider multiple devices: smartphones are rarely used for finding
emails.
3. Email retrieval is a frustrating experience.
4. Users create workarounds.
Email: m.cecchinato@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @martacecchinato
Finding Email in a Multi-Account,
Multi-Device World