{"id":308201,"date":"2005-11-30T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2005-11-30T20:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/?p=308201"},"modified":"2016-10-19T09:12:31","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T16:12:31","slug":"many-e-mails-snarf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/blog\/many-e-mails-snarf\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Many E-Mails? SNARF Them Up!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research<\/em><\/p>\n

Vacation\u2019s over. You\u2019ve had a grand time: intriguing locales, fun events, delicious food, memorable moments. You\u2019re relaxed, your batteries recharged. Life is good.<\/p>\n

You get home and fire up your laptop to see how things have been going at work while you were gone. That\u2019s when you\u2019re accosted by grim reality: hundreds upon hundreds of e-mails, each demanding your attention, your action, your time. How can you even begin to sort through this informational assault? Panic and dread set in. Vacation\u2019s really over.<\/p>\n

Unless you have SNARF, that is.<\/p>\n

SNARF, the Social Network and Relationship Finder, developed by Microsoft Research and available for download<\/a>, is designed to help computer users cope with precisely such scenarios. SNARF, a complement to e-mail programs such as Outlook, filters and sorts e-mail based on the type of message and the user\u2019s history with an e-mail correspondent. The result: a collection of alternative views of your e-mail that can help you make sense of the deluge.<\/p>\n

\u201cSNARF grew out of an exploration of how people triage their e-mail and whether social information would help,\u201d says A.J. Brush<\/a>, a researcher within Microsoft Research\u2019s Community Technologies Group who, along with then-intern Carman Neustaedter, devised the project in the summer of 2004. \u201cWe often say, \u2018Your dog knows the difference between strangers and friends who visit your house; why shouldn\u2019t your e-mail client?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The process on which SNARF is based is called social sorting. The concept has been around for a while; in fact, Microsoft Research\u2019s Eric Horvitz worked on a similar project called Priorities a few years back. But what\u2019s new about this implementation is its simplicity. The tool, which has been deployed within Microsoft for a field study, simply counts e-mails, sorts them by sender, and draws conclusions about their relative importance from the intensity of the correspondence relationship.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust by using e-mail,\u201d Brush says, \u201cwe build up a huge amount of implicit information about whom our friends and colleagues are\u2014who I send e-mail to and receive e-mail from\u2014and SNARF can take advantage of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SNARF\"When launched for the first time, SNARF indexes your e-mail. When indexing is complete, a window with three panes is displayed. The top pane includes a list of people who have sent recent, unread e-mail addressed or cc\u2019d to you. The middle pane includes people who have sent recent, unread e-mail addressed to anyone. And the bottom pane includes all people mentioned in any e-mail you have received in the past week.<\/p>\n

A configuration panel enables you to change the types of messages displayed and to sort them in different ways. Once you have the tool configured as you prefer, you can double-click on a contact\u2019s name within one of the panes, then view a list of all recent e-mail from that person. It works with mailing lists, too, and you can organize mail by threads and read the entire thread in chronological order, top to bottom.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe coolest thing to me,\u2019 Brush says, \u201cis the power of collecting and presenting \u2018simple information.\u2019 I was surprised and pleased by how much power you can get from simply counting the e-mails you send to people and using that information to organize e-mail for users. Social information is very powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, who would benefit from using SNARF?<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone!\u201d exclaims Danyel Fisher<\/a>, another Community Technologies Group researcher. \u201cWell, everyone who can answer \u2018yes\u2019 to questions like \u2018Do you get too much e-mail?\u2019 or \u2018Do you find e-mail frustrating?\u2019 or \u2018Do you sometimes find it hard to keep up with your e-mail?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, just about all of us.<\/p>\n

\u201cSNARF was developed for people who have trouble keeping up with their e-mail,\u201d Brush says, \u201cbut we have found that people who travel often or spend lots of time in meetings may find SNARF particularly helpful. Our studies seem to suggest that SNARF can be useful to help people stay aware of new e-mail.\u201d<\/p>\n

The real proof of concept comes from the usage patterns of the people who know SNARF best: its originators.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have had some great SNARF moments,\u201d says Marc Smith, a researcher on the project team, \u201cin which a person is displayed high in the interface but was buried in my Inbox, pointing me to a high-value e-mail that was just what I wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fisher says he uses SNARF for three distinct purposes:<\/p>\n