The document proposes designing emails to incorporate more social networking features in order to humanize email communications and foster social connections. It discusses precedents from social networks that could be applied to emails, such as identity, presence, relationships, conversations, groups, and reputation. Potential features are outlined, like displaying contact details and notification preferences. The goal is to provide more context around email senders and recipients to facilitate relationship building and evaluation of message importance through a more visual email experience.

1. From messagesTo communication

2. IMPETUS How can we humanize emails by making them not only a functional information exchange but also social connections, through visualization? FromTo€€€network€emails€€€€€€€€€€€€

3. PRECEDENTS / INSPIRATION What the key features provided by online social network are? Identity – ability to uniquely identify people in the systemPresence – ability to know who is online, available or otherwise nearbyRelationships – ability to describe how two users in the system are relatedConversations - ability to talk to other people through the systemGroups - ability to form communities of interestReputation – ability to know the status of other people in the systemSharing – ability to share things that are meaningful to participantsSource: http://nform.ca/publications/social-software-building-block

4. PRECEDENTS / INSPIRATION Some social networks featuresPresenceFlickrTwitterSharingRelationshipsIdentityConversationsReputationDiggLinkedinGroupsEmails ?FacebookSource: http://nform.ca/publications/social-software-building-block

5. PRECEDENTS / INSPIRATION How to create connections through emails ?To be developedNice to haveCould be improvedPresenceRelationshipsSharingIdentityReputationConversationsGroups

6. Presence

7. Identity

8. Groups

9. Groups

10. PRECEDENTS IN EMAILS VISUALIZATIONIBM - THREAD ARCS: An Email Thread Visualization 2003

11. PRECEDENTS IN EMAILS VISUALIZATIONXobni - Outlook plugin

12. TARGETED AUDIENCE“The average businessperson is getting around 80 e-mails per day and many feel that about 80% of the messages in their “In Box” are of little or no value.”Targeted audience is email user for professional purposes. - How can I feel the people behind the messages ?- How can I evaluate messages value? - How can I browse messages in a different way than the standard time based sorting?

13. USES CASES 1As an user, when I receive an email from someone I have never seen before, I would like this person to be more tangible for me by seeing his face, know who he is connected with. €As an user, sometime I don’t know the gender of the person I am writing an email to. I would like to know without asking to him€As an user, before connecting with someone, I would like to know where he is located and what the weather is like for him. If I have to call him, it will make the connection easier. €

14. USES CASES 2As an user, I want to navigate through the history of my communication with someone in a simple and visual way. It covers, emails shared, it is also the meetings we add, phones calls, …€As a user I want to be able to follow the email activity of my contacts in my peripheric vision. €As an user, I want to be able to feel the importance of an email depending on who sent it and who received it. €

15. SYSTEM FEATURESContact details

16. SYSTEM FEATURESEmail notification

17. SYSTEM INTEGRATION