This is a push notification system - it turns the recipient's problem into the sender's. This is fine if communicating across a hierarchy or for a public address. It could be obnoxious, however, with peers, particularly those outside tech.
Consider, instead, a pull notification system. The first time a sender emails the recipient they are sent a link (also in the recipient's signature) to a page providing expected response times for various email forms along with the option to convert your already-sent email into a short-response form, e.g. yes/no.
> The first time a sender emails the recipient they are sent a link (also in the recipient's signature) to a page providing expected response times for various email forms along with the option to convert your already-sent email into a short-response form, e.g. yes/no.
This is pretty much what Inbox Pro already does, no? I tested it by sending an email, and got an automated response:
> Hi [my name],
> Your email is #85 in Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten's inbox. You can __optimize your message__ so it will be easier to answer.
Clicking the link leads to a webpage showing average response times for Yes/No questions (5 days), Short questions (I think 14 hours?), Long questions (3 days), and FYIs (3 days). I converted my message into an FYI and submitted it.
I think the only difference in what you proposed is your version limits it to "the first time a sender emails the recipient", while this system would presumably give the same treatment to future emails from me.
"One way this might be implemented is by charging senders a small fee per e-mail sent, often referred to as a "Sender Bond." It might be close to free for an advertiser to send a single e-mail message to a single recipient, but sending that same e-mail to 1000 recipients would cost him 1000 times as much. A 2002 experiment with this kind of usage-based e-mail pricing found that it caused senders to spend more effort targeting their messages to recipients who would find them relevant, thus shifting the cost of deciding whether a given e-mail message is relevant from the recipient to the sender (Kraut 2002)."
Comments
This is a push notification system - it turns the recipient's problem into the sender's. This is fine if communicating across a hierarchy or for a public address. It could be obnoxious, however, with peers, particularly those outside tech.
Consider, instead, a pull notification system. The first time a sender emails the recipient they are sent a link (also in the recipient's signature) to a page providing expected response times for various email forms along with the option to convert your already-sent email into a short-response form, e.g. yes/no.
> The first time a sender emails the recipient they are sent a link (also in the recipient's signature) to a page providing expected response times for various email forms along with the option to convert your already-sent email into a short-response form, e.g. yes/no.
This is pretty much what Inbox Pro already does, no? I tested it by sending an email, and got an automated response:
> Hi [my name],
> Your email is #85 in Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten's inbox. You can __optimize your message__ so it will be easier to answer.
Clicking the link leads to a webpage showing average response times for Yes/No questions (5 days), Short questions (I think 14 hours?), Long questions (3 days), and FYIs (3 days). I converted my message into an FYI and submitted it.
I think the only difference in what you proposed is your version limits it to "the first time a sender emails the recipient", while this system would presumably give the same treatment to future emails from me.
> it turns the recipient's problem into the sender's.
I've read about a very similar phenomena over at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy.
"One way this might be implemented is by charging senders a small fee per e-mail sent, often referred to as a "Sender Bond." It might be close to free for an advertiser to send a single e-mail message to a single recipient, but sending that same e-mail to 1000 recipients would cost him 1000 times as much. A 2002 experiment with this kind of usage-based e-mail pricing found that it caused senders to spend more effort targeting their messages to recipients who would find them relevant, thus shifting the cost of deciding whether a given e-mail message is relevant from the recipient to the sender (Kraut 2002)."