Research Resources

Research Papers on Email Overload

• Begole, James “Bo”, John Tang, Randall Smith, and Nicole Yankelovich, (2002) Work Rhythms: Analyzing Visualizations of Awareness Histories of Distributed Groups, Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work(CSCW 2002), New Orleans, LA, USA, Nov 16-20, 2002, ACM Press, NY, pp. 334-343. (ACM Digital Library) [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=506443.506618]
• Dabbish, Kraut, Fussell & Kiesler (2004): To reply or not to reply: Predicting action on an email message [1] a look at the decision making process once an email is looked at.
• Horvitz, E., Jacobs, A., Hovel (1999). Attention-Sensitive Alerting, Proceedings of Conference on Uncertainty and Artificial Intelligence (UAI 1999), Morgan Kaufmann:San Francisco, pp. 305-313.[ http://research.microsoft.com/~horvitz/priorities.pdf ] – Machine learning to triage email by urgency in Priorities system and then balancing costs and benefits of alerting with decision-theoretic model.
• Horvitz, E., Koch, P., Kadie, and Jacobs, A. (2002). Coordinate: Probabilistic Forecasting of Presence and Availability. Proceedings of the Eighteenth Conference on Uncertainty and Artificial Intelligence (UAI 2002), Edmonton, Canada, July 2002, pp. 224-233. [ ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/ejh/coordinate.pdf ] – Machine learning to forecast presence and availability, including time until next email review.
• Jones, Q., Ravid, G., & Rafaeli, S. (2004). Information overload and the message dynamics of online interaction spaces: A theoretical model and empirical exploration. Information Systems Research, 15 (2), 194-210. [http://sheizaf.rafaeli.net/publications/JonesRavidRafaeliInformationOverloadISR.pdf]
• Kalman, Y.M. and Rafaeli, S. (2005) Email Chronemics: Unobtrusive Profiling of Response Times, Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 38. pp. Ralph H. Sprague, (Ed.), p. 108. [http://sheizaf.rafaeli.net/publications/KalmanRafaeliChronemics2005Hicss38.pdf] – Analysis of the Enron email database uuncovvers response time patterns that corroborate the “24 hour expectation” conjecture: a message that is not replied to within 24 hours will very likely remian unanswered altogether.
• Kalman, Y. M., Ravid, G., Raban, D. R., and Rafaeli, S. (2006). Pauses and response latencies: A chronemic analysis of asynchronous CMC. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(1), article 1. [http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue1/kalman.html]
• Gonzalez, V. and Mark, G. (2004). “Constant, Constant, Multi-tasking Craziness”: Managing Multiple Working Spheres. Proceedings of ACM CHI’04, Vienna, Austria, April 26-29.
• Mark, G., Gonzalez, V., and Harris, J. (2005). No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work. Proceedings of ACM CHI’05, Portland, OR, April 2-7.
• Gonzalez, V. and Mark, G. (2005). Managing currents of work: Multi-tasking among multiple collaborations. Proceedings of the 8th European Conference of Computer-supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW’05), September 18-22, 2005, Paris, France.
• Tyler, Joshua R. and John C. Tang, (2003) When Can I Expect an Email Response? A Study of Rhythms in Email Usage, Proceedings of the Eighth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW) 2003, Helsinki, September 2003, pp. 239-258. [http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_people.nsf/pages/johntang.EmailRhythms.html/$FILE/ECSCWFinal.pdf]
• Danyel Fisher; A.J. Brush; Eric Gleave; Marc A. Smith (2006). Revisiting Whittaker & Sidner’s “Email Overload” Ten Years Later. [[2]]

• Dabbish, Laura, and Kraut, Robert (2006) Email Overload at Work: An Analysis of Factors Associated with Email Strain [[http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1190000/1180941/p431-dabbish.pdf?key1=1180941&key2=0562674611&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=15151515&CFTOKEN=6184618
• Croson, David, D’Arcy, John, Schuff, David, and Ozgur, Turetken (year?). MANAGING E-MAIL OVERLOAD:CLUSTERING TO INCREASE ATTENTION SUPPLY [[3]]
• Hogan, Bernie, Fisher, Danyel (2006) A Scale for Measuring Email Overload [[4]]
• Zeldes, Nathan, Sward, David and Louchheim, Sigal (2007) Infomania: Why we can’t afford to ignore it any longer [[16]]

Research Papers on Distractions and Interruptions

• Amabile, T., Hadley, C.N., and Kramer, S.J., (2002), “Creativity Under the Gun.” Special Issue on The Innovative Enterprise: Turning Ideas into Profits. Harvard Business Review 80, no. 8 (August 2002): 52-61. – Field research that actually links interruptions and workplace pressure to reduced creativity.
• Cutrell, E., Czerwinski, M. & Horvitz, E. (2001). Notification, Disruption and Memory: Effects of Messaging Interruptions on Memory and Performance. In Human-Computer Interaction–Interact ’01, Hirose, M. (Ed.), IOS Press, pp.263-269. Copyright IFIP, 2001. [5]
• Czerwinski, M., Cutrell, E. & Horvitz, E. (2000). Instant Messaging and Interruption: Influence of Task Type on Performance, In Paris, C., Ozkan, N., Howard, S. and Lu, S. (Ed’s.), OZCHI 2000 Conference Proceedings, Sydney, Australia, Dec. 4-8, pp. 356-361.[6]
• Czerwinski, M., Cutrell, E. & Horvitz, E. (2000). Instant Messaging: Effects of Relevance and Time, In S. Turner, P. Turner (Eds), People and Computers XIV: Proceedings of HCI 2000, Vol. 2, British Computer Society, p. 71-76. [7]
• Czerwinski, M., Horvitz, E. & Wilhite, S. (2004). A Diary Study of Task Switching and Interruptions. In Proceedings of ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2004, p. 175-182. [8]
• Horvitz, E., Apacible, J., and Koch, P. BusyBody: Creating and Fielding Personalized Models of the Cost of Interruption, Proceedings of CSCW, Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, ACM Press, November 2004. [ http://research.microsoft.com/~horvitz/busybody_cscw.pdf ] -Bayesian models of the cost of interruption.
• Matthews, T., Czerwinski, M., Robertson, G. & Tan, D. (2006). Clipping lists and change borders: Improving multitasking efficiency with peripheral information design. In Proceedings of ACM’s CHI 2006, 989-998. [9]
• Russell, Purvis and Banks (2007), Describing the strategies used for dealing with email interruptions according to different situational parameters, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 23, Issue 4, July 2007, Pages 1820-1837 [10]
• Sutherland, Ivan. Technology and Courage. An essay/talk by computing pioneer Ivan Sutherland that addresses how “courage” is necessary for us to work on the creative/hard projects rather than continually seek distractions so that we don’t have to work on them. http://research.sun.com/techrep/Perspectives/smli_ps-1.pdf
• S. T. Iqbal and E. Horvitz, Disruption and Recovery of Computing Tasks: Field Study, Analysis, and Directions, Proceedings of CHI 2007, San Jose, California, April 2007. [11]

Web Sites with Information Overload Resources

• Xerox Corporation’s Information Overload site – insights, resources and articles.
• Interruptions.net – A compilation of over 200 articles related to Interruptions and Distractions!
• Challenge Information Overload – a blog dedicated to the subject.

E-mail Related Social Issues

• [12] – E-mania — Ethical Approaches to E-mail Overload!

• “Yours Truly,” the E-Variations [[13]]
• BlackBerry Orphans: The growing use of email gadgets is spawning a generation of resentful children. Katherine Rosman, Wall Street Journal 2006. A look at furtive thumb-typers, the signs of compulsive use and how kids are fighting back [14] and blogs about this article at [15]

BASEX Information Overload White Papers

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