Social: Social Cognition and Teamwork - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 227

8.2.3.1 Breakout Box: Ways Email Has Gone Awry
How can we apply attribution theory to system design? Email is an example where
most people are using the same type of system, but other people appear to behave
differently from us and differently from how we would like them to.
Ritter has personally seen the following ways that email has been lost, misfiled,
misdirected, or lost. Are these errors? In some ways they are. Are they the fault of
the user or of the system or the system designer? It seems to vary. In all cases, the
sender might want a response.
This list (selected from more) can also be explained with reference to attri-
bution. Do the reasons you do not reply to email vary from why you think others
do not reply (starting with whether they got the email!)? Many users assume that
email is perfect, that the receiver received it, and that lack of response is due to the
receiver not being willing to respond. This list illustrates that this is not always the
case. Further discussion is available in the chapter on errors.
1. Date is off on the sending computer (by up to 5 years), so does not appear with
today's email (mail to Ritter).
2. Simple typo in ''To'' address (mail to Saor-bugs, not Soar-bugs).
3. Extra letter(s) typed as an answer to another application, e.g., mail to ''yesyen''
instead of to ''yen'' (Ritter).
4. Complex typo, e.g., in ''To'' address, mail sent to research group's name, not to
research group's email alias (Ritter).
5. ''From'' country (!) was on spam list (so not read by recipient) and not read by
cc person (Ritter was cc).
6. Typo in domain (Ritter).
7. Local (university, government, hotel) mail server ate it and left no residue
(Ritter, Spink).
8. No known reason, found months later where it should be (Ritter).
9. Reader meant to respond, but never got back to it or was waiting for 'the right
time to send a really good and clear reply' (Ritter, too many times).
10. Admin assistant reading manager's email deleted it accidentally (multi-read-
ers of account, anonymous).
11. Admin assistant reading manager's email deleted it, perhaps on purpose
(multi-readers of account, anonymous).
12. Email came in batch of 500 messages after a break (Ritter, others).
13. Reader or mailer accidentally deleted incoming mailbox (anonymous!).
14. Filter misfiled it (Schooler, Ritter).
15. Email sent to Ritter (and from Ritter, more recently) where sender's machine
filled in remainder as @\localhost[. Ritter replied with ritter@\localhost[.
Both bounced.
16. RAID disk failure takes out department for 3 days (anonymous in UK).
17. ''When I can't give someone the answer I want to give them, I don't give them
an answer'' (a publisher).