Mail/Threading/UserStudies
We conducted surveys with 3 people aged 30-42 working in different group teams in the UX and Commercial field in Italy.
These are the results:
Mattia N - 23.01.25
- Age: Around 30
- Work: Ux Designer for Accenture (Fintech), Milan
How many time I check the mails: 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: Commercial in a multinational company that builds CNC machines, Padua
How many time I check the mails: around 10 times per day
I use Outlook for work, Gmail for personal
Usually, when sending emails, I try not to dwell too much (I try to be concise)
How many collegues do I have: around 300
I send very precise emails, I don't leave space for pointless wandering. I prefer using Whatsapp for fast conversations, or I normally talk with a person face to face if I need anything.
It happens that I get in CC in long threads but I am not directly involved. Even the content of the conversation is not pertinent with what I do, so I don't even read.
Maybe I don't need to follow the whole thread. Maybe some part of content is relevent to my work but they put me in the middle and everybody answers and I don't need to read what they write.
This happens often to most of my collegues as well.