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October 6, 2003
HP Labs on "When can I expect an email response?"
Posted by Clay Shirky
Last week, I posted about David Gelernter's
discussion on the effects of legitimate email volume, including his observation that the inability for the sender to know when they would receive a reply was damaging the medium.
I just came across a paper from Josua Tyler and John Tang, from HP's staggeringly prolific Information Dynamics unit, called
When Can I Expect an Email Response? which concerns exactly those dynamics. The overall answer to that question is (duh) "It depends", but Tyler and Tang documented what it depends on:
We found that users:
display typical patterns of response behaviors
maintain a responsiveness image
take advantage of contextual cues to explain responsiveness
use email with other media
use email peri-synchronously when quick replies are expected
reciprocate the email behavior of others
often experience apprehension when contacting a new email correspondent
Interesting reading for anyone contemplating replacing email.
Comments (1)
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1. adrian chan on October 6, 2003 5:43 PM writes...
Thanks Clay for digging around. The findings posted by the HP group make sense. They are each some kind of compensation for what goes missing when communication brackets out face to face interaction. Whether by establishing routine and habit, using other means to check delivery success, setting expectations, reciprocating style, etc.
Permalink to CommentI often think that what's interesting about communications technoloiges, and I don't know if this is unique to them, though it's testimony to the fact that they function by virtue of embedding deeply into user and social practices, is What happens when you turn them off? To figure out what a communication technology does, turn it off, not on. Then wait and see what you notice...
I'd be interested to see the results of that kind of study! It would tell us not only what we do to compensate for technical ambiguities and shortcomings in the medium, but how and how much we have adapted to and come to depend on its presence in daily life.