Yuzuko Nakamura
Homework 3
Mail Visualization:
My mail visualization would focus on how much email the user sends to and receives from each
specific person in their mailbox, and what the emails say about the familiarity between the user and that
individual. The data is arranged as a pile graph, with the y-axis indicating the number of emails per
month and the x-axis indicating time.
This is a simplified view of an inbox where the user only gets email from four different people. A
real version would be more complex. At the bottom of the pile is the person with the highest average
number of emails sent/received and at the top is the person with the smallest average number of emails
sent/received. The areas under the lines are shaded based upon the familiarity between the user and the
other person: the darker the fill, the more familiar the two people are.
Familiarity would be determined by the percentage of emails you sent that the other person
replied to / the percentage of emails the other person sent that you replied to (the higher these
percentages, the more familiar), how many recipients the emails were sent to (more recipients -> less
familiar), and the average length of emails (shorter -> more familiar).
The entire piled graph provides a visualization of your entire email over time – what periods you
get more email in, whether you get more email now than you did before, etc. This visualization doesn't
give any information about the content of emails or how the emails are organized into threads. However,
it provides information on overall email quantities over time, who the user most frequently
emails/receives emails from, how the quantity of emails between individuals changes over time, and the
familiarity of emails between individuals.
