I am interested in studying the effects of information exchange on the
context
in which it is used: changes in the nature of the task itself
(human-machine interaction),
and changes in the relationship and the nature of the interaction among
the participants in the exchange
(human-human interaction in a technological context).
The case in point is email communication. It can be one-to-many or one-to-one,
or even many-to-one. The nature of the communication and the
perceived roles of the participants are different in each case. Also, changes
in the nature of the email-related tasks are afforded by the growth in frequency and volume of email
messages. Creating a tool for better management of large number of email
messages
was the main focus of my M.Sc. research. I intend to analyze the
secondary effects of email overload next. In particular, I would like to find out
whether and how work practices and the overall effectiveness are influenced by the increase in the
amount of email in a given social environment.