AMY E MARTIN // Thesis

My final thesis topic is this--more or less. I will use explorative design and prototyping to generate speculative future perspectives on email overload. By this I mean I'm not redesigning an email client. There are more than enough people working on that. Rather, I am considering what email might look like further down the road. Or how we might view email differently. I haven't decided I need to be right, just different and interesting, which is hard enough in and of itself.

So, to that end, I am undertaking a series of experiments. For example, starting this week I am not checking my email at all. This is not because I think the solution to email overload is stop using it. But because I want to see how I, personally, deal with not having email. My last check was Monday night at 10:30 or so and I am already feeling anxious. I just remembered I was trying to schedule a few interviews about my thesis topic with people over email. Oops. Hopefully I can figure it out next week. In the meantime I am recording how I feel and how I do things, starting now.

12.01.2009
8:30 AM - Stumbled out of bed to look up white noise makers on Amazon because my neighbors have been banging around for the last hour. I can buy but I won't know when things are shipped. I suppose that's okay. I'm sure I'll forget about it and it will be a surprise.
8:45 AM - Checking library record. I've got some overdue books. The library usually sends out an email with this information but maybe it's sitting in my inbox right now.
9:00 AM - Feeling slightly anxious but I can't tell if that's just normal anxiety. Otherwise, feeling mostly normal and finishing up my thesis prospectus.
10:00 AM - I have been messing around with a Chumby lately and I forgot that I had it set up to check my gmail. So I accidentally saw some of my emails. The only subject header I actually read (again, accidentally) was from Amazon, about my recent purchase. But now I'm wondering if I have anything else set to push my email like that.
11:49 AM - Habit noticed. I keep ritually flipping to my browser every half hour or so to look for parentheses in my Gmail tab. Of course I don't realize I'm doing it until I'm staring at the browser thinking "why did I flip here." Weird.

Labels: design explorations, random ideas