[IxDA Discuss] discuss Digest, Vol 34, Issue 12

[Luke Ball]

> its basic format of all the day's mails at once will remain the  
> same as it has been for the last 15 years.

True. But so is the general listserve format of email for group  
communication and collaboration. I know newer mail clients have  
helped this with threading, etc. But the format as a whole is still  
relatively antiquated. I don't feel like online forums are that much  
more modern or usable (arguable worse).

(caveat: I'm working on a related problem. replying to this is  
contributing indirectly to user research)

Let's "pretend it's magic" a little bit... in a dream world, whether  
online, or in your email (or some other application), what sort of  
things might improve the group communication/collaboration  
experience? (some obvious "web2.0" ideas might include tagging,  
wikis, and rss...)

As a whole, I see the problem as breaking down into four main behaviors:

1) Monitoring. viewing incoming information. This is what Email (and  
rss) do very well.

2) Retention. If you find something you like, can you get to it  
again? I personally get very frustrated searching past emails for  
that-one-I-think-talked-about-this-about-four-months-ago.

3) Discovery. browsing and surfing content. Listserves are very very  
bad at this.

4) Contribution. Posting back is also pretty easy via email. But if  
you widen this to "Collaboration", email is pretty limiting, and  
forums are no better.


Any thoughts? Fresh ideas? I know I'm sort of rehashing a topic from  
a few weeks ago, but I was on vacation when it happened! (another  
problem of email lists - it took a while to catch up!)

Luke Ball