MinEMail: SMS alert system for managing critical emails

Abstract

Email is the primary method of digital communication for most people, but the overwhelming quantity has led to a poverty of attention. Existing manual and automatic solutions that aim to save important emails from falling through the cracks have begun to address this problem, but may increase user workload, sacrifice efficiency, or fail to identify high value communications. In response, we developed MinEMail, an alert system that uses a text message (SMS) to remind and notify users of critical emails that may have been missed or forgotten. MinEMail provides an alert infrastructure as well as accurately labeling and predicting which emails are critical, and when and how they need to be addressed. To motivate our system, we also present an up-front study with 777 participants that aims to understand the state and limitations of email and SMS in enterprise. We conduct an experience sampling study of over 3000 emails in order to construct MinEMail's predictive models. Finally, we present the results from a 15 user ecologically valid real-world deployment of MinEMail in enterprise.