The goal of this experiment is to observe the way people address email
messages, and if we can improve it. We developed an extension to Mozilla
Thunderbird, called Cut Once
(http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~vitor/cutonce/cutOnce.html ), that provides two
services:
1) suggests recipients that you might have forgotten to address (people
that are related to the messages that you compose.)
2) detect if any of your recipients is a leak (i.e., you accidentally
used an undesirable email address as recipient. )
These suggestions are based on previous messages in your "sent"
directory, i.e., similar words, similar subject, etc. After you compose
a message, when you hit the "send" button, a dialog window containing
these two suggestions will be displayed for 10 seconds. With a single
click, you can add a new recipient, or delete an undesirable one.
Privacy concerns:
There are minimum or no privacy risks involved. Your messages will not
be logged. Your emails will not be shared with the researchers. No one
will read your messages. The only information collected are counters and
timers related to your usage of the Thunderbird extension (i.e., number
of seconds to accept a recommendation, or the ranking of the
recommendation, etc.)
Requirements:
Must be a Mozilla Thunderbird user, sending unique messages in English
on a daily basis.
Must be 18 years-old or older.
Compensation: of up to $25 dollars
In order to determine qualification for the study, you will be asked to
use a Mozilla Thunderbird extension for a week. After that time,
qualified users will requested to attend a quick information seminar to
discuss participation and be compensated $5. Qualification for the
invitation to participate is based on how long you've been using
Thunderbird, the languages that most messages are written, how
frequently you use Thunderbird and patterns of email use.
Participants will be compensated an additional $20 dollars after 3 weeks
using the tool and completing a final questionnaire.
If you are interested in being recruited for this study, please visit
the website below, download the Thunderbird extension, install it (if you have any problems and email
email.research.cmu@gmail.com confirming that you are interested in this
study. After a week using the tool, you will be contacted if you qualify
for the study.
