Paper Reading #17: Agent-assisted task management that reduces email overload

Comments:

TBD

Reference Information:

Title: Agent-assisted task management that reduces email overload

Authors: Andrew Faulring, Brad Myers, Ken Mohnkern, Bradley Schmerl, Aaron Steinfeld, John Zimmerman, Asim Smailagic, Jeffery Hansen, Daniel Siewiorek, all from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Presentation Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Summary:

The researchers of this paper are attempting to find a way to create an AI agent that will assist the average user such that it will reduce email overload. The system is called RADAR. The RADAR system observes the strategies devised by expert users of email and analyzes the things they do to make the process of dealing with email more efficient.

The RADAR system has an Email Classifier which learns to identify tasks needed to be accomplished and find other emails that have similar tasks. The Multitask Coordination Assistant figures out the efficient way in which the expert process email and suggests a similar schedule and operating procedure to the end user. A Progress Bar tailored specifically to this allows the user to see where in the process they are to better understand how to make their procedure more efficient.

Discussion:

With as much email as I get, some additional visual tools would be nice. I deal with a lot of text description, which admittedly, is nicely separated into columns I can sort to get a better idea of what's in there. But when I receive a few hundred emails in the space of a couple of days, much of which is not spam, it would be nice to have another tool to help me out. It is still easy to misplace an email I needed to deal with and it gets buried in all of the text on the screen.

I like the idea of the Progress Bar. Being a really visual person, I tend to be able to multitask ONLY when there is some sort of a visual cue which will keep me on task and in mind of where I am in my current tasks. The application of this Progress Bar to email sounds interesting and I would love to have one to manage my several accounts and keep me organized!