I see 2 major divergences in email usage (or 3, actually).
1) a lot of people see email for personal use - as a TODO list, as a collection of your own information, etc. I think this constituent is made of of mostly males < 30 years of age.
2) a lot of people use email for conversation; ie, leaving messages to people where they know they will see it. Facebook is gaining ground on email because people feel more at ease gossiping through Facebook (which they associate with social activities) than email (dull, boring, practical). This constituent is probably the younger generation (< 22), and females.
3) the rest, which uses email casually or for business reasons. Email is just an open channel to talk or conduct business. The older generation uses it like this.
Email is difficult because people use it in so many ways that one interface for all the different uses of it fails to address specific needs. I think email needs to be sorted into categories that have their own user-interfaces that are optimal for that type of email (ie, email that is back and forth communication should look more like IM, an email that stores information should have the information distilled and be easily searchable, etc)
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These posts on email are fascinating.
I see 2 major divergences in email usage (or 3, actually).
1) a lot of people see email for personal use - as a TODO list, as a collection of your own information, etc. I think this constituent is made of of mostly males < 30 years of age.
2) a lot of people use email for conversation; ie, leaving messages to people where they know they will see it. Facebook is gaining ground on email because people feel more at ease gossiping through Facebook (which they associate with social activities) than email (dull, boring, practical). This constituent is probably the younger generation (< 22), and females.
3) the rest, which uses email casually or for business reasons. Email is just an open channel to talk or conduct business. The older generation uses it like this.
Email is difficult because people use it in so many ways that one interface for all the different uses of it fails to address specific needs. I think email needs to be sorted into categories that have their own user-interfaces that are optimal for that type of email (ie, email that is back and forth communication should look more like IM, an email that stores information should have the information distilled and be easily searchable, etc)