April 11th, 2006: Design Session: Brainstorming E-mail Plan (Feature Set)

Original Agenda: http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-April/004507.html

Four Families of Usage Scenarios

1. Small working group/personal use-->Omni-outliner on steroids
2. Small group collaboratively manage information for a LARGE GROUP -->Design list, Wiki
3. Desktop GMail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail
4. Replace T-Bird, Apple Mail, Outlook Express

• Maybe we meet some subset of these Usage Scenarios, but we want to have the right set of things to be compelling and useful to some set of Target Users
• Philippe: Scenario 4 has a larger feature set than Scenario 1
• Mimi: No. 1. may overlap with No. 4.

• Email an article to your friend, the person may have an IMAP folder that syncs with Chandler
• How can Chandler leverage email functionality to enhance Task management
• What are you really using your email client for?

What are other examples that fall into No. 1

• PPD calendar and task list.
• Ted and Julie sharing a task collection
• Brian K and Jen sharing home/household
• Mikeal: Remember the Milk, send task to ppl who are subscribed, tasks and status. People subscribed to iCal.
• Alec: Bla bla list
• Priscilla: Personal/Stickies, GTD
• Grant: iCal
• Sheila: Jason, gets them in email, flight confirmation
• Subscribe to an RRS feed, how do you keep track of that sorta thing?

What are examples of No. 2

• Design List
• Wiki
• Katie: Product strategy list
• Bugzilla? (small projects)
• Jared: Help desk (three IT ppl. to help co-ordinate for a larger group of ppl – 30-70 ppl)
• Yahoo groups
• Mom website
• Newletters
• Pieter's daughter school
• OSAF office calendar
• Small book club
• Local bike club
• Blogs

No. 3

• Mikeal: archive al the email that comes in and and marks at red.
• Mimi: Hotmail for big spam, Yahoo for smaller spam
• bobby: personal mail Gmail, hotmail
• "Spamming accounts"
• All non-work -->web mail
• Ted: runs his own IMAP for rich client, web mail interface, on the occations for not having a computer w/ him. Mobile access. Put pluses in
• Katie: created a yahoo account when travelling to europe
• Brian: OSAF mail for work, yahoo mail for meeting all my needs when travelling (personal)
• IMAP
• Likes Gmail for threads
• Jared: uses gmail for testing
• Katie: uses gmail for the widgets less
• OSAF mail --> for organizing
• web mail is diff from the desktop
• Priss: yahoo several accounts, Gmail-->business stuff and flages things for travel itinerary
• Jared: flags webmail, 4 mail client running
• Sheila: uses Gmail for
• Katie: what you wouldn't use 3/4 for anything
• Mimi: don't compose long emails
• Jeffrey: one business account at skyhouse, sometimes flag things there. who happens happened to be around.
• has a notifier on

Examples No. 4

• More permninent
• offline use
• Mikeal offline and organization
• Compose big messages
• Multiple account
• "Live in TB", rarely use hotmail
• check-/place
• Ted: Off the IMAP server, mult-layer dealing w/ mail (extreme example of the spectrum)
• Scriptable; rich client
• portable--> feel free to mark up

No. 5. Mobile device

Errand Example: Pick up Milk

• Mikeal: Go into VI notes on to the ipod
• Jeffrey: ??
• Ted: Uses Quicksilver send to omni outliner-->
• Txt message to cell phone
• Flat file, Thursday buy milk
• Sheila: Send an email reminder

Remember to hand in your peer revies forms

• Ted: peer reviews in the GTD so it would get pick
• Jared: email
• Katie: omni outliners

For a Geek Talk

• Wiki
• Mailing list
• Jeffrey: send and email in TB and then put it on the wiki
• Ted: task into the omni outliner then back to GTD

OSCON ask permission Co-ordinate Hotel--> respond to an email

• Keep the email in the

Great RRS feed on a big topic

• subscribe filter into a directory and marked into red, mailing list

No. 1

• Milk - IIII
• Reviews - III
• Geek Talk - I
• OSCON - II

No. 2

• Geek talk - II

No. 3.

• Mailing list - I

No. 4

• Milk - I (reminder)
• Review - II
• Geek Talk - II
• OSCON - II
• Mailing list to read - V (mail tags/flags or labels in Thunderbird)
• Alec: Bulk deleting, delete a month at a time, fliter to the top of the folder

No. 5

• Remember to pick up Milk - III

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High level characteristics of each Family of Usage Scenarios

No. 1

• Adding items one at a time via Drag and Drop
• Person-to-Person communications
• ø Broadcast
• Must-have features: [Reply, Reply all, Forward][Threads??][DnD][Attachments][Printing][Private Groups][Search][Multiple identities]

No. 2

• Notifying large groups of people
• Broadcasting--> and the follow up, making changes to them/ it's an interactive process
• Pre-coordination amongst the small group
• More robust/ requires organization/search

[Reply, Reply all, Forward][Threads??][Organization??][Read HTML][Spellcheck][Rich Text Formatting][MF][Attachments][Printing][Private Groups??][Scoring/Weighting??][Keyboard Shortcuts][Search][Multiple identities]

No. 3

• NOT - Mobile/Portable
• Temporary
• Pseudonymity
• Personal
  • Not very task - intesive
  • Slightly Spammy
    • Less organization
• Not for composition
• More private

More notes on No. 3

• Email is the primary mode, task things come via email. 250 task for personal email vs a work email. A lot of things are errands
• People using GTD won't be using
• Won't be tracked by viruses, comfortable it's not on their machine
• They don't want their personal email on their work machines
• BrianK^?: It's free and portable, jobs come and go, ppl don't want to pay and set up an ISP/IMAP, ppl want simple needs and don't want to pay.
• Ted: Generational thing, they are younger.
• PPl don't tend to file, trying to keep

[Reply, Reply all, Forward][Threads][Read HTML][Spellcheck][Rich Text Formatting][MF][Pop?][Attachements][Printing][Private Groups][Keyboard Shortcuts][Search][Multiple identities]

No. 4

• Mobile
• Task
• Work
• Y - Organization - heavy
• Syncing w/ IMAP folders

[Reply, Reply all, Forward][Threads][Organization][Read HTML][Spellcheck][Rich Text Formatting][Mail Filters][Spam Filter][Pop-consolidating multiple email accounts into 1 repository][Attachments][Printing][Private Groups][Scoring/Weighting][Keyboard Shortcuts][Archiving][Search][Multiple identities]

Additional Notes:

• Both No. 3 & No. 4, both high volume
• Two types of users: making things pretty, can receive some complex table and reply, rich text vs. html mark up

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• Ways to cut down on features, difficulty on the back end and make it more realistic for 0.1 email. Lite Gmail, OSAF actually hosting the email. client does not have to work against a gazillion back ends. OSAF can pick the server they want to work with.
• One person would subscribe to the mailing list and share the collection w/ other ppl.
• One server
• OSAF hosted server/service?
• Everyone subscribe to the list as is today, everyone shared the same collection, Chandler has to figure out the same collection

Options

1. one person has OSAF service account --> shares
2. one person shares list, sub services using whatever server one server?
3. everyone subscribes to tthe list, somehow we figure out?

Notes

• Jared: regular email coming to the cleint and have it process into the Chandler folder
• Mikeal: something inbetween, built into the chandler client/ back end, if
• Not using Chandler as an email client, but using Chandler to support task mng.

Next actions

• what are other options that will constric the feature set?
• OSAF hosted, think about an interesting path that way
• Clean sheet path/just starting chandler, other path that didn't fall into this framework, chandler can see the email
• PPL have ideas, please post ideas to the design list, will be framing follow up activities.
• All the options include the ecosystem/web and server included.
• Creative options product/service 12/18 months to reach No. 4

-- PriscillaChung - 11 Apr 2006