When Can I Expect an Email Response? A Study of Rhythms in Email Usage Joshua R. Tyler, HP Labs...

When Can I Expect an Email Response?

A Study of Rhythms in Email Usage

Joshua R. Tyler, HP [email protected]

John C. Tang, Sun [email protected]

ECSCW 2003 -- Email Rhythms

When Will I Get an Email Response?

• What rhythms do people have for reading email?

• What governs the timing of responding to email?

• How do people form email response expectations?

• How do these expectations affect behavior?

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Our Perspective

• Build on prior studies of email (but email usage continues to evolve)

• Current practice places burden on receiver– Filtering– Foldering– Email is the killer app, how can we keep it from

killing us?• Meanwhile, the sender is left in the dark

Email traditionally viewed as asynchronous, actually is negotiated between sender and receiver


Method

• Sun, HP, Stanford GSB “Office Workers”– Researchers, Developers– Admin Assistants– IT Consultants, Technical support personnel– Marketing/communications, Sales– Managers

• Phase I: Exploration (16 interviews)• Phase II: Focus on Rhythms (24 interviews)• Semi-structured Interviews

– Inbox walkthrough– Relationship walkthrough


Context of Findings

• Email clients: – HP, Stanford – Outlook (23)– Sun – CDE Mailer (9), Netscape Messenger (8)

• Inbox size: from 0 to 17,000• Typical response expectation for email: 24 hours

(but ranges from a few minutes to a few days)• Many factors influence response expectation

– Many messages do not implicate a response– The senders/receivers involved– Inferred urgency/content– Email culture


Overview of Findings on Email Rhythms

In our study of temporal aspects of email usage, we observed a general but consistent motivation:

People want to have an expectation of when and how their messages will receive a reply

Techniques have developed in an effort to do so:• Contextual cues surrounding email responsiveness• Asynchronous vs. peri-synchronous email• Email used in tandem with other media• Reciprocity of email styles and patterns• Managing a “responsiveness image” through

email


Contextual Cues

• Cues used to explain slow email response:

… this week she happens to be in class. So she'll check her email on a break.

My manager … he’s very busy, at meetings all day.

I’m guessing, [X] doesn't respond as quickly as I wish because, they’re so busy they can’t get to their email.

I think it depends upon what he is doing when he gets the email.


Contextual Cues Within Email

• Historical response rate• Vacation auto-reply message

– Vacation message through first day back– Only sent in response

• Status messages through email• Recurring lack of response

“She must be overloaded with email”

Design Implication: An email backlog indicator


Contextual Cues Outside Email

• Checking online calendar • Job role context• Social context of email usage

– Sharing email reputations– Talking about email behavior


Cues: Talking About Email

• Talk among a team about a lack of email response from their manager who was travelling:

Once [our manager] was travelling … but we didn’t hear from him for a day. And we thought, you know, something’s going on. There must be some bad meetings, something bad must have happened. It was a day. None of us, we checked, none of us had heard from him.


Asynchronous vs. Peri-Synchronous

• Email touted as asynchronous communication – Don't need to catch person to communicate– No context shared between sender and recipient

• Much email use is now peri-synchronous– Expecting a response shortly– Allows for several iterations within a day– Overlap with IM

• Some email is asynchronous– International colleagues time shifted by 8 hours– Personal email where responses not expected

within a day


Composing Asynchronous Email

• An American field services team member on email correspondence with Europe and Asia:

You have to get everything that you need down in one shot, in order to get the turnaround time… So instead of saying “I think it could be this, look here and tell me what that says”, I will list out four or five possibilities, “Here’s what I think it probably is, if it’s not that it might be this and if it’s not that it might be this other thing.”

Design Implication: Better integration of email (asynchronous) and IM (peri-synchronous)


Email + Other Media

• We saw interesting ways people combined email with other media for desired effects– Supports previous work on media choice

• depends on message type, preferences, etc.

• Common tactic observed: Email + Voice/Pager– Typically, email is primary message

• Email contains attachment or important info

• Voicemail signals urgency

• Tradeoff: Reduces response time, but creates more work for sender and receiver

– Depends on culture (HP: 10/11, Sun: 4/13)

+

+


Reciprocity in Email Rhythms

– People also monitor their responsiveness vis-à-vis their correspondents • Try to avoid “responsiveness debt”

• Examples…

• “Quid Pro Quo”– People tend to reciprocate

the responsiveness, media choice, and message style of others• Works in positive and

negative directions



• A business development leader describes her reciprocity:

I’ve discovered that people do adjust their responsiveness… I’ve seen that happen. Because I try to be very responsive to people, and I expect that same responsiveness. So if they don’t match up, then I’m going to change my responsiveness level. It’s a real tit for tat kind of a mechanism.



• A solutions professional frequently assesses her relationships, mindful of responsiveness debt:

I also take a look a lot at what’s happened in the last seven days, and did I respond to everything that’s been going on… I do it on a daily basis… In the last seven days, I’ve gotten three messages from Annie, seven messages from John, that kind of thing, what were those messages about, and am I still keeping up with all that.

Design Implication: Responsiveness indicator, by message or recipient


Projecting a “Responsiveness Image”

• There is a desire to project a specific level of responsiveness– The projected image is often not consistent with

reality– Use tools to help craft this image

• Auto-reply, read receipts, etc.– Frustration is evident when unable to do so– Overcoming assumptions, contextual cues

– Examples…


Responsiveness Image – Artificially Responsive

• An engineer who works at home 2x/week wants to counter assumptions of (un)responsiveness:

I check mail more often when I’m at home. Because I feel I’m out of the group, say if they suddenly set up a meeting, I think I should know, I should keep checking.


Responsiveness Image – Artificially Unresponsive

• An admin assistant, normally very responsive, was more deliberate in a new relationship with a niece:

It’s something I want to keep open, and so I may, on purpose, spread out my responses a little bit, so that she doesn’t think it’s a chore to respond to me, and then we can have more of an interaction, actually, than we’ve been able to have in the past.


Responsiveness Image – Artificially Unresponsive

• An admin assistant for a senior manager handles low-priority requests with delayed responses:

I don’t want the people to think that they can get an immediate, ‘I’ll drop anything for you’ … people tend to think they can get [my manager] any time. I won’t respond usually, not until the next day.

(my favorite)


Responsiveness Image and Read Receipts

• The effects of “read receipts” (sender notification of message receipt), and how people fight them to maintain their responsiveness image:

– One user, who did not previously know about read receipts, became quite upset when he learned of them

– An advanced user scanned her inbox for messages requesting read receipts, and avoided opening them until she had prepared a reply – she composed a reply without reading the message!


Discussion: Mutually Setting Expectations

• Expectation of when email will be read • Expectation of receiving a response• Negotiation, sharing cues between sender and

receiver• Crossing the threshold to breakdown that

requires follow-up

• What if there are no expectations?– Email “virgin” anxiety…

• No expectations of when email might be read or replied to

• Occurs even if the recipient is a personal acquaintance, but not an email acquaintance


From Expectation to Breakdown

• Key Factors:– Time/date– Location– Urgency– Other media


Design Implications

• Based on the timeline, provide a responsiveness service– Alert users when breakdown has occurred:

• a sent email has not received a reply in an expected amount of time

• the user has not replied to a received email in an expected amount of time

• Combine with context awareness services• Show data in a general way (such as a graphic)

– simpler interface to understand– protects privacy by hiding details

• Can help alleviate email virgin anxiety


In Summary

• Email is an impoverished communication medium

• We identified some techniques people use to add richness and context back to the medium (by means of timing and responsiveness information)– One of the driving forces behind this behavior is

the desire to set expectations

• Applying these findings to new email services could create a richer, more effectively negotiated communication channel


The End

Authors:• [email protected]• [email protected]

Paper: • www.hpl.hp.com/shl/papers/rhythms/index.html

Questions please…


Deleted Slides


Relevant Work

• Sproull and Kiesler (1986) – Email changes information flow within an

organization• Mackay (1988)

– Email is more than just communication• Whittaker and Sidner (1996)

– “Frequent filers,” “spring cleaners,” and “non-filers”

• Balter (1998)– Awareness of recipient context could reduce email

overflow• Ducheneaut and Bellotti (2001)

– People live in email


Project Background

• Stanford class project on Contextual and Organizational Issues – Kyle Forster– Jason Heidema– Randy Schwemmin – Josh Tyler

• Josh graduated, continued work at HP Labs• CSCW 2002 poster, CHI 2003 submission


Methodology

• Phase I: Exploration (16 interviews)– General questions/observations about:

• Where, when, and how email is checked

• Prioritizing in email management

• Use of advanced features

• Perceptions of others’ responsiveness

• Use of other communication media


Methodology

• Phase II: Focus on Rhythms (24 interviews)– More specific questions about:

• How users decide when to reply to a particular message

• How users form expectations of when they will get a response

• Exploring the “Responsiveness Image”…


Methodology

• Technique– Semi-structured interviews

• Open-ended set of questions (guide)

• Probing for stories, examples

– Inbox Walkthrough• Step through inbox/outbox

• Sort by sender (“relationship walkthrough”)– discovered that rhythms are based more on relationships than

isolated messages


Baseline Findings: What Makes People Read an Email?

• Sender– 1st or 2nd-level manager

• Expecting a reply– Looking for messages in response to a request

• Urgency– Inferred from the subject line– “Priority” flag (yes, it means something)

• Voicemail sent in conjunction• Attachments


Baseline Findings: What Makes People Respond to an Email?

• All of the above, plus…• Content importance• Time zone differential

– Reply before 9 am to Europe, after 4 pm to Asia• “Flag for follow-up”

– Works because of “annoyance factor”

• Maintaining a “Responsiveness Image”


Responsiveness Image

• A woman who maintains an image of responsiveness out of social obligation:

“I usually will get back to email or people the same day, … even if it’s just to say ‘I need to look into that and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’ Because I kind of think it’s rude if you ask someone for information and they just totally ignore you. It’s one thing if they need time to find out the answer, but it’s nice to hear that, that they’re in the office, that they received your message but just need some time to think about it.”

When Can I Expect an Email Response? A Study of Rhythms in Email Usage Joshua R. Tyler, HP Labs...

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