Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Working Together Inside an Emailbox (02 Nov 2005) In this paper we look at a situation in which email is not simply a channel for collaboration and communication but a site of collaboration itself, involving email in-boxes that are jointly accessed by more than one person. We conducted two studies of shared email usage. We learned about a diversity of shared email practices in 14 schools, museums, and support centers through semi-structured interviews and (where feasible) site visits. We also explored in depth one type of shared email usage: executives and assistants sharing an emailbox. We describe the strategies that people use today to meet their collaborative needs by exploiting mailbox structures they currently have. We close with a discussion of email as a site of reinvention – i.e., where users’ work practices have given existing technology new meanings. Article URL: http://domino.research.ibm.com/cambridge/research.nsf/2b4f81291401771785256976004a8d13/75b1309ed1cfff27852570a5006c18f4?OpenDocument Read 241 more articles from IBM sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: 10 principles of effective information management          Books about Usability | Information Architecture | Information Visualisation | Technology History This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy