Abstract

"Electronic mail, or e-mail, is increasingly common as a means of communications, as ever more discover its advantages. It's one of the most important services on the Internet, where the e-mail users can reach millions of letter boxes. Consequently they have began to learn that the amount of letters they receive is becoming increasingly difficult to handle and survey -- they experience information overload.

The problem is that the e-mail tools that 'the man in the street' uses do not suffice for giving the overview and detail of the information that is necessary. Also, there are no possibilities to automate routine tasks.

The result from sixteen interviews with e-mail users is presented and is then used as a basis for design of CASUAR, a prototype of a user interface with functions that form a partial solution to the problem with too much information:

• filtering and searching of letters
• automation of routine tasks
• organization of letters in a hypertext space.