The Collaborative User Experience (CUE) team in IBM Research has spent nearly a decade studying email. Not only has email become one of the most pervasive and successful collaborative tools available, it has also become a key component of IBM's Lotus Software offerings. In many ways, email can be seen as a victim of its own success - users increasingly suffer from overload and interruptions as well as use email in a manner for which it was not intended.

To meet the challenges in researching email, we have taken a multifaceted approach to data collection. This approach combines lessons from a variety of sources, ranging from formal lab tests to feedback from customers gathered in informal settings. Our research has included:

• field studies,
• statistical analyses of the structure of people's email,
• collections of email histories,
• traditional usability tests,
• focus groups,
• design explorations,
• stories and visionary design pieces,
• experimental tools that subjects could run using their own mail, and
• directed functional prototypes that people can use for real work with their own mail.

Our observational and market studies, conducted primarily through focus groups and interviews, have identified a number of key areas in which to make user-focused improvements to email tools. Three themes that repeatedly arise are:

Pressure to Respond Quickly. People report feeling pressure to be more responsive to their email. Messages arrive continuously throughout the day, contributing to the sense of urgency to respond quickly.

Losing Track of Email and the increasing fear of doing so. High volumes of email cause important items to quickly move out of view. Users must hunt down their mail, often having to scroll to other parts of their mailbox. This problem is exacerbated as email arrives in a single, undifferentiated stream. The mailbox becomes an assortment of items requiring action, informational items, and items with no value to the user at all (e.g., spam).

Overwhelming Volumes of Mail. People are overwhelmed by the volume of new email they receive each day. They report spending increasing amounts of time simply managing their email. Email is an endless cycle of catching-up and falling behind. New messages arrive regardless of the activity the recipient is engaged in, causing a backup in the user's mailbox. To prevent this backup and stay on top of action items, people have developed the habit of checking their email frequently, adding to the overall disruption email can bring.