Mail/Threading/UserStudies

We conducted surveys with 4 people aged 30-40 working in different group teams in the Tech, UK and Marketing field, in UK and Italy.

These are the results:

Patty F - 23.01.25

• Age: Around 40
• Work: Channel Program Analyst, London

How many times I check my emails: all day during working hours.

Mattia N - 23.01.25

• Age: Around 30

• Work: Ux Designer for Accenture (Fintech), Milan

How many times I check emails: 10/12 times per day the personal one, esp because I receive many notifications on my mobile.

I check the work email less, only when I reveive a notification usually.

Personal: I use Spark, because I can use 4 accounts at the same time.

Work: Outlook

Outlook

In Outlook, I use thread view. I don't normally have long conversations, unless there are long threads with multiple people, that happen during often long periods of time (some weeks or even months).

How do I manage long threads: The reading is sometimes a little difficult, because in Outlook, you don't understand start and end of the reply. It's too plain. There is a divider that doesn't help.

In very long threads, it would maybe be useful to summarize the content.

I read everything, because I am usually interested in the whole conversation. I know all people who send replies. But I don't think I'd like to choose the people I read the replies from. I would not choose which one I'd like to read. I read everything.

Feedback to our UX idea

I showed a picture of the mockup with threading graph

Feedback: It's similar to what Outlook does already, but Outlook does it in a less structured manner and only in the web. You can expand and see the whole thread.

It doesn't use avatars, but you can see the chronological order of the replies that sometimes helps.

I am not able to tell you if I'd like your idea, I am not used to see it. Also, people don't have often an image in the avatar, so one character is hard to interpret.

Riccardo B - 22.01.25

• Age: Around 30

• Work: Marketing in a multinational company that builds CNC machines, Padua

How many times I check mails: around 10 times per day

I use Outlook for work, Gmail for personal

How many colleagues do I have: around 300

Usually, when sending emails, I try not respond in a way that does not encourage a long discussion. I try to be concise. I send very precise emails, I don't leave space for pointless wandering of the conversation. I prefer using WhatsApp for fast conversations, or I normally talk with a person face to face, if I need anything. Why? Because it's more immediate. Sometimes I force the person that I need to give me an answer in that moment.

It happens that I get CCed in long threads, but I am not directly involved. The content of the conversation is often not pertinent with what I do, so I don't even read it.

Maybe I don't need to follow the whole thread. Maybe some part of content is relevant to my work, but they put me in CC, and everybody posts, and I don't need to read what they write.

This often happens to most of my colleagues as well.

Feedback to our UX idea

Yes, great.

Difficult to be more selective in choosing the content we want to see than that, indeed. Good idea.

But not applicable in my company, we have so many security policies that they were not even allowing me to download Adobe.

Due to the projects with the clients. Already in the past they had secutiry issues. I think you should consider that.

Maybe your target can be less structured companies. Difficult for the IT department to approve a software different from what they are using.

Your idea is certainly intriguing. In my specific situation, its relevance is somewhat limited as I don't often deal with lengthy discussion threads. However, based on my observations of others' experiences, I can see how this could be a valuable concept. It's an interesting idea.

Andrea B - 23.01.25

• Age: Around 40
• Work: Project manager, Milan

How many times I check mails: around 10 times per day.

I use Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo with corresponding app. Outlook for work.