Submitted by Bea Lam
For the Bachelor of Information Environments (Honours)
October 2005
Supervised by Ian MacColl
Overview
Current email applications offer a conventional but limiting file-and-folder system for email organisation. This project presents a fresh approach with MailStacker, an email application which uses a visual "pile" interface metaphor for email management. In deviating from the traditionally favoured interface of email applications that uses textual lists of emails within "folders", the pile interface offers unique features such as spatial email organisation, graphical representations of emails for non-textual recognition of email messages, and visual task reminding for task-related emails. This project examines the effectiveness of the pile metaphor for email management, particularly for email organisation and task management. User evaluations indicate piles can be useful for quick and casual email organisation, but further work is required to integrate digital email piles with existing email collections.
The MailStacker interface.
Poster submission
- Download as TIFF image
- Download as Powerpoint file
Thesis submission
- Download in PDF format
- Download in Word format
MailStacker application and source code
MailStacker's source code is located in the Piles3/ directory. The MailStacker standalone application build is located at Piles3/build/Piles3.app. The files are also zipped [ zip ]. Please note: this tool is a prototype only. Also, personal email is not affected by the application.
Please note MailStacker is a native Mac OS X application, and cannot be run on other platforms.