The Nature of Email

“We are digitizing all of human culture. It’s not just media, it’s all of life, it’s dating, education, warfare…”
-Geoffrey A Moore

As the web has progressed in the past 10 years we’ve learned that some aspects of human culture are easier to digitize than others. Take eBay for example. New users intuitively know how the site works because they’re familiar with the real world concepts of auctions and marketplaces. Those things have been around since Roman times, and eBay is simply a digitized version of them. eBay’s success is partly due to how well their online marketplace mimicks the real world.

You might say ebay has a strong sociological UI (SUI?) because it successfully mirrors human experience.

Contrast that with the “Update Status” feature on Facebook which broadcasts your staus to each and every one of your friends. This frustrates users because there are things you would share with your friends that wouldn’t want Aunt Gerdie to see.

As human culture continues to get digitized, the successful companies will be the ones whose products mimic real life interaction.

Email fails in this regard. We believe most of the stress caused by overflowing inboxes is because email is a poor representation of the ways we communicate in real life.

Let’s look at someone who gets a large amount of email, Steve Jobs. Below are some diagrams of his social graph which compare email with the real life life equivalent.

With email, anyone can contact Steve. A stranger has the same access to his inbox that his wife does.

In the real world there are barriers like secretaries and security guards to protect Steve’s attention. They decide who is deserving of his time. Woz is certainly worthy of getting meeting whereas a childhood friend might not be.

With email, an unlimited number of people can contact Steve.

In real life, he can only handle a few messages at a time. Meetings provide a structure for him to organize his attention.

With email, there’s no way to let other people know when you’re busy. Their messages come through no matter what.

In real life you can remove yourself from the outside world to get things done.

At Smoke Signal we aim to tackle that last diagram of availability. We believe the first step in overcoming information overload lies is the ability to signal people when you’re busy.

If you let other people know when you’re busy, we think they’ll be less likely to email when your inbox is full.