Their survay conflates "email is broken (email has systemic problems)" with "my email is broken (my email doesn't work)." That's the kind of shitty results you get when you analyze any tweet with the words "email" and "broken" in them.
These reasons have nothing to do with email itself, but just the people that use it. In this order of ideas, we could perfectly say that oral communication is broken, people just don't talk to me enough, or they talk to me all the time! Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling. However, email can be a pain in the buttcrack when it doesn't go down well, which happens strangely often sometimes, so it is kinda broken.
Twitter encourages one kind of use. Facebook encourages a different kind of use. People say different things in a different way on LinkedIn. These are properties of the software. Joel Spolsky was some excellent rants no this.
I love email. It works well between people who know how to write email. The main problem is it takes a lot of experience to be good at it. Many people also don't recognize it as something you have to learn.
That being said good filtering, threading, and end-to-end encryption in one reader is still illusive for most of us.
We're in a two story office and we often have colleagues coming down and the first thing they says is: "I just sent you an email".... Okay, so why did you come down?
Email doesn't fit the way a large number of people think, but I don't think it's broken. Neither Excel nor Windows is inherently broken just because I have issues using it, I just need the proper training.
Some people have 10GB of email in their inbox, because then: "they know where it is". Some mix work and private emails, because then they don't need two email account, which is just awesome when they chance jobs. Then there's the people who just have plain bad communication skills and can't formulate a clear and readable email. Neither of these things point to email being broken and I have yet to see a half decent alternative.
I love email too, but way to many people aren't correctly educated in using it.
> We're in a two story office and we often have colleagues coming down and the first thing they says is: "I just sent you an email".... Okay, so why did you come down?
I don't really see what is the problem with that sort of pattern?
It can certainly be justified, but in most cases it can be solved via email at a time convenient for the recipient.
I think it extremely disrespectful to send a email and two minutes later be standing at my desk ask: "Did you see my email?" No, of cause I didn't see your email, I'm working.
As anyone who's done any level of enterprise support knows is that people hate email, but absolutely freak out when there is the smallest problem with it. For awhile I had my staff attempt to work in a lesson on email during tech orientation for new employees, the problem is that everyone thinks they know how email works, so they'd just tune out. Try explaining the concept that successfully "sending" an email only means that the local server has agreed to accept it, it doesn't mean that the recipient received it and see how far you get. Trying to fix email is a lot more complicated than some fancy pants Framework-Of-The-Moment application purporting to declutter your inbox, it actually is going to involve somehow getting people to understand, at a basic level, how their email gets delivered.
I think the lowest hanging fruit is simply making it easier for the hoi polloi to connect to their accounts easily. NO ONE does a good job with this, not Apple, not Google, not Thunderbird, not Outlook, NO ONE. I've done more freelance work (at absurd rates) simply fixing email client setups than anything else and just making sure that all my client's devices are setup the same. This should be trivial, but it's not.
And don't get me started on all the fantastically crappy email providers out there. I'm looking at you Godaddy, your craptastic email service has wasted more of my time in the past month than I care to think about.
Email's best attribute is that its universal. But that's also a problem: spam, semi-spam, corporate mail to the entire company etc.
I find the existing UIs still manage quoting and threads very poorly. I'd like see improvements in this area. I think a thread markup language might be the answer. Take the exact display of threads away from the client and only mail intent.
That's not really what the article says. The point they're making is that if you expect to receive a lot and then you don't then you think your email account isn't working correctly.
“I haven’t gotten an email in seven minutes, making me immediately suspicious my email is broken.”
That's actually a complaint that the user is getting too much email (or possibly the right amount); it's just phrased in a way that makes it look like it's the opposite.
That's maybe the most interesting finding. Receive too much e-mail? Business as usual. Not so many? The world is coming to an end. If this is not a sign of withdrawal, I don't know what is :D
