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• Accounts: 3 times as many email accounts as Facebook and Twitter combined.
• Social Activity: total posts on Facebook and Twitter combined add up to 0.2% of email traffic.
• Searches: total number of searches on Google, Yahoo and Bing combined equals just 1.1% of email traffic.
• There are 2.9 Billion email accounts, generating 188 Billion messages.

Questions

Q1. What are areas where Social Media is more effective than email? For example instead of soliciting over email, solicit over LinkedIn.

Q2. What are areas where email is the only solution for communication in a social economy? For example area of collaboration and coordination.

Q3. How can we bring some of the great features of social media into email? Like tagging groups conversation by context.

Q4. How can we move some of the relationship oriented conversations from email to social media and other sharing platforms?

Q5. What addon’s and functionality that you will like to see in email clients, for better access to social networks, coordinating and collaborating with others?

Collaboration as we are using it includes working together, brain storming, creating a common vision, bringing people on the same page, or coordinating with each other to fulfill an objective, mission where tasks are interdependent, or the last category that they are all cooperating.

Culture is more than simply your nationality or ethnicity.

Culture as we are using it is not limited to different ethnicity, or different countries but also the culture of east coast vs. west coast, people working in engineering firms to people working in a design firm, all of them different cultures and even if they all speak English, they have different interpretation of what they hear.

Moving beyond the Industrial Age mindset.

In the US we have been moving from an industrial economy, where it was all about personal productivity, how fast can you make a widget, or bolt a nut to a very collaborative economy, where to fulfill an outcome you have to work with others (knowledge workers). Your personal productivity cannot fulfill the outcome, and you need to learn and develop skills in collaborating with others.

Collaboration has its stumbling blocks.

In most cases the “others” that you “have” to collaborate with are a mixture of different cultures. You cannot depend upon, being a great communicator, but have to start recognizing and learning how others interpret what you are saying, and what are their cultural differences. I have seen many examples of this, coming from India 15 years ago, and working in the Bay Area where every one is nice and polite; Sally and Ram work for the same organization, Sally is in the Bay Area, Ram is in Bangalore, India. Sally says “Can you please send me the report as soon as possible”, Ram interprets the request as “oh, Sally is not really in a hurry for the Report.” This is an example of classic mis-coordination.

So the big question is how do we close the gap between the speaker’s intention and the listener’s interpretation in a multi-cultural collaborative economy?

One of the way email is used is to record agreements (micro) between people. It serves as a tool to memorializing these small agreements. I just finished a lunch meeting with a friend, and walking away I would start composing him an email

To: Bill
From: Ritu

“Thanks for taking the time to have lunch, as usual the conversation was rich and I feel enriched. Good luck with closing the deal with ABC Inc.

On another note can you please send me the service agreement that you use with contractors, love to have it before the weekend. Also can you send me the name of the book you mentioned, I cannot remember the name for the life of me.

Best to Betsy and the kids, till next time.

Thanks

Ritu”

Another email sent. Another email added to Bills already 200+ emails he gets a day. I am sure he has read my email, but he has other pressing matters to deal with.

If you look at the email, I sent, I am re-iterating on something that we agreed upon at lunch. And I am asking for something or making a request, for the name of the book.

Now I am at work and I will forget everything about the agreement and the book. Comes Friday I have not got the agreement from Bill, and naturally I will send him an email reminder, and I would wait till Tuesday and send him another reminder.

Does this sound familiar.

In companies this gets out of proportion. Every meeting generates a load of such emails, stating what the people agreed to. And then there is the inevitable followup and reminders.

This compounds the email overload. In Corporate America, our studies show that 12-15% of all email sent were followup and reminders.

There is no way in email to list our say open agreements. And really search, sorting and everything fails. There are some creative ways to keep on top of this, I put actioned emails in their respective folders and keep the ones with open agreements in the Inbox, however its good for a few days and then the number of emails just grow out of proportions and I am barely keeping up… leading to a sense of overwhelm.

In my opinion I just want to know that Bill (from the example above), has seen my email and he cannot do it by Friday, but he can send it to me by Wednesday. This return message, gives me some amount of certainty, and I don’t really care that he did not do it by the time he said he would.

In Corporate America these micro-agreements and one of emails, collectively become a part of deliverables and initiatives. In diverse emails that we get during the week, we know for example Jean’s son is not well, and she is the only one who knows how to extract the data, Ram wants to take a day off, he is the only one who knows the API’s inside out, Johns project is running late and he has promised to get it done by next week, and so on and on.

Each of the above email has effect on the delivery. And here we are not even talking about critical emails that have not been answered. I call this “email intelligence”, and there is no way to see the whole picture, so that you can bring some certainty and be able to predict to your management on the health of the project, deliverable or initiative.

So whats the solution. One of the options is to turn these emails with the micro-agreements into Tasks.. Then suddenly there is a huge list of personal tasks. It robs the ability to negotiate with sender of the email, to come up with another date.

OrchestratorMail presents a very simple solution. It defines the terms of the agreement right up front. You define the email as a  “Request”, or if you get an email from someone who you have made an agreement over lunch into a “Request” with a very specific due date.

Now at least you have in the subject line “Request| please send me the agreement” by Due Date 10/10/11. You can list by subject and you can see your open agreements.

That’s just a start. OrchestratorMail provides pre-set selection  of responses based on where you are in the conversation and who has the ball. Example you made the request to Bill, now Bill has the ball and he needs to respond, his pre-set responses could be any of the 7 [Accept, Decline, Counter Offer, Delegate, Already Responded, Clarify]. There are only a finite set of responses to any state of the conversation, however in language the same thing could be said 100′s of different ways.

Having the finite pre-set responses, takes all the ambiguity and chance of misinterpretation away, and creates a structure of common understanding.

Finally, OrchestratorMail, sends a Summary of all Open Conversations (or Agreements) every day in the morning (and on demand). This list all the open emails divided by is the response due from you and by when, or, if the response is due from them and by when. It keeps all the conversations in existence.

You now have access to the unfolding of the project or deliverable in conversations, and can predict the health of them with more certainty, and not after the fact.

Oh did I tell you the other person who is in the conversation also gets the Open Conversation Summary, making sure critical emails don’t get missed.

The Open Conversations disappear at the logical conclusion of the conversation.

Abstracting the intelligence out of email, will make delivery of critical projects and initiative on time, or better still give some certainty, which would help set expectations all around and a perspective on how it would effect the cash flow, even before the budget/actual numbers are produced.

OrchestratorMai is currently being used in the Supply Chain and Manufacturing division of one of the largest publishing company in the world, and the SVP predicts what will happen in the next 2 weeks to update his CFO. He says that before that he never ever had visibility across hundreds of initiatives and projects.

For more information, check our website OrchestratorMail or please feel free to send an email to Ritu Raj ritu@orchmail.com or call him at (415) 876 7000.

Design Principles

In understanding how technologies can support self-fulfillment, and the designer’s role as shaper of perception, we have the opportunity to apply a new perspective to the considerations we make on a daily basis. Here are some principles to follow in designing research methodologies, products, and services that not only facilitate action, but inspire lasting change.

1. Shift Focus

Less “whats,” more “whys.” Design researchers should look beyond behavioral patterns, task analysis, and workflow, into belief systems, values, attitudes, and motivators.

Less practical, more possible. Our inquiry should focus less on what individuals are performing, completing, and obtaining, and more on understanding what they are trying to become, achieve, and create.

2. Baby Steps

Continually visualize the user’s step-by-step transformation. By emphasizing cause and effect, progress, and projected outcomes, designers can motivate individuals to take action. This can also generate the momentum necessary to continue or increase levels of effort.

3. Unveil the Alter Ego

Focus design research on revealing the ideals of achievement imagined by the user. Pay attention to the individual’s fantasies, aspirations, and role models. Understand how close or far from these goals she believes herself to be at any given point.

4. Don’t Objectify, Identify

Empathize with others by drawing upon similarities within your sphere of personal experience. Reflection on personal limitations can shed light on the challenges of others and expose opportunities for overcoming them.

While in the midst of researching and designing tools for diabetes health management, I took up the routine of testing my blood glucose levels and recording my diet and exercise. In doing so, I was able to internalize some of the self-consciousness and emotional discomfort caused by a life of constant self-moderation and discipline. As a result, my designs were more sensitive to the opportunities and demands of this specific lifestyle.

5. Show and Tell

Involve others in the process of an individual’s transformation. Share achievements among members of the wider community and leverage them as competition or support. Highlight the shared experience of failure and re-motivation, in addition to success.

6. Design for Failure

Change is difficult. Expect individuals to have unique emotional and situational influencers that limit their success. Identify, highlight, and disassemble those influences. Also take into account that new ones will arise, and that performance will inevitably plateau. Be prepared to revisit goals regularly.

7. Send in the Experts

Provide users with access to experts for guidance and scaffolding. Those new to change lack the insight and comprehensive vision of more experienced individuals. Experts can guide what users see and do, point out relationships, and explain overarching concepts. By connecting individuals with experts, designers enable users to achieve more than they would on their own.

The question is not whether designers should leverage our skills to help users achieve their personal objectives. Rather, it is which goal we should choose to address with each new project. Change agency offers fascinating insights into the identities and motivations of the people we serve, renders pathways to achievement, and ultimately contributes to the fulfillment of human potential. It is human nature to dream. And it is the designer’s role to help people achieve those dreams.

Understanding the power of design to facilitate positive change in the end-user. By Eric Bailey, Principal Designer, frog San Francisco

I believe that people carry with them hidden notions of the self and what they can and should be – concepts that are packed deeply into the background of their behavior. Even while performing the most mundane tasks, there is some element that is motivated by a vision of what they might accomplish and who they might someday become. Psychologist Abraham Maslow placed this natural inclination towards self-actualization at the apex of his hierarchy of human needs. But for many people, these possibilities remain mere concepts, their realization thwarted by habit and deliberation.

At the most basic level, the role of the designer is to create products and services that address human needs. But as our field advances, we must find new ways to extend this calling further, beyond basic needs for survival or even higher-level needs for aesthetics and belonging to this critical desire for self-improvement. Can personal development be better shaped by the technologies we, as designers, create? What if products and environments were designed to acknowledge individual aspirations and facilitate the realization of users’ potential? Could our products not only change users’ behavior, but actually foster within them the qualities that they seek?

Virtuality offers an interesting testing ground for these notions. Millions of people have turned to online environments, such as Second Life, World of Warcraft, and Spore, in order to experience life as an alternate self; in many cases, an avatar can represent the ideal self whose actualization has proven challenging in the real world. These worlds provide a safe space for rehearsing ideal behavior and achieving preferable outcomes.

Although the virtual world holds value in depicting human aspiration, I believe that technology can play a more generative role in defining and fulfilling human potential in the real world. It can support our physical and cognitive development, helping us grow stronger, wiser. As the stewards of technology, designers must begin to see even the most basic design problem as an opportunity for facilitating human transformation.

Persuasion and Designing Experiences

As a designer of digitally integrated experiences, I’m intrigued by this “change agency” perspective, which transcends typical design issues of efficient use and enjoyment to provide a more aspirational view of products’ potential influence on people.

Personal transformation occurs through an alteration of thought and behavior. But facilitating change that endures beyond the moment of direct user-product interaction requires some knowledge of human motivation – in order to effect ongoing change in a user’s actions, we must also shape her values and beliefs. The rational model of persuasion can be a useful framework for understanding how design might assert its influence in the fulfillment of users’ aspirations.

Beliefs
(What I understand as fact. What I know.) + Values/Motives
(What I judge as good/bad. What I want. My self interest.) = Attitudes
(What I like and dislike.) —> Behavior
(What I do. How I do it. What I say. How I say it.)

Can we shift these attitudes, and thus behaviors? How do we, as designers, make this happen? Experiences and perception play a pivotal role in the success of this equation. While someone may believe that a particular action is beneficial, and value that behavior, if the experience itself is unpleasant, it may never be adopted. Designers shape experience. We control how objects and ideas occur to an individual. In doing so, we have an opportunity to define experiences that engender specific attitudes, and ultimately change the individual.

Designers can look to theories in education and communications for tactics in exerting influence.

• Information processing: William McGuire’s 6 steps to persuasion
• Maxwell & Schmitt’s Taxonomy (1967) of 16 influence tactics
• Levine & Wheeless (1990) 53 influence tactics
• B.J. Fogg’s Principles of Persuasive Technology

These can be useful to us in guiding users toward certain behaviors, but must also be supplemented with an understanding of the unique stated and latent aspirations of our audience.

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