Designing Remail: Reinventing the email client through innovation and integration

Abstract

The Remail design team defined a specification for an innovative and integrated email client. This design-lead effort tackled three key problems that email researchers have discovered: lack of context, co-opting of email, and keeping track of too many things. Based on earlier design and research explorations, we conceived of a client from the ground up that attacked these problems in an integrated fashion. Our solutions were based on three constructs: showing message context, marking email, and selective display. A small team of programmers implemented much of the design in a functional prototype. This experimental client continues to allow researchers to expand and explore these concepts. © 2004 ACM.