Suppose you get an email from your organization survey system (requesting your info related to company-organized party). How do we optimize the interaction with the app?

The very first thing: This poll calls for notification mechanism - typically by email. Hopefully that would have a URL in the email body that directly takes you to the right app and topic (assuming you are online). (A grave mistake if there is no URL - you are forced to navigate with multitude of clicks!)

But there are problems: I might not attend to it right now. May be I need some other info. May be I want to process it at specific time only - along with many other such emails in the same group. So either you end up bookmarking it, or marking the email for later processing. In essence, you now have to manage it i.e. create a personal workflow for yourself.

So it greatly adds to email overload.

What is the solution? Suppose this email integrates into the PIM application - as a task, with what I call as Active Bookmark, then it would be very easy to process all the tasks. The active bookmark will not only have URL, but it will primarily notify the state of the app - much like presense information in IM systems. Green = You still have time to respond, Yellow = You ought to interact very soon, and RED = Urgent. And some color for "Dead" - where you failed to provide the info in time and it is recorded by your boss :-(.

Now these active bookmarks are basicaly "Saved tabs" i.e. it would be very nice to have this as end-user functionality, so it doesn't depend on the application. Users can then manage how they want to process long-term information.

-Vinod

permalink 4:52 PM