If I had the resources I would totally redo the way e-mail is done. E-mail is one of the most used yet abused forms of communication today. I constantly see people using if for things it was never meant to be used. This is not a long term fix but I propose you experiment with customizing your e-mail programs toolbar in an effort to at least make you think before you use e-mail in a way you probably shouldn’t.

1.  Remove the forward button - The biggest thing that angers me is the practice of forwarding e-mails. In the past year I don’t think I have received a single e-mail that was forwarded to me other than items I needed to forward to my wife and co-worker for business reasons. A lot of people I receive forwarded e-mail from never send me a personal message yet they will forward or blind carbon copy a mass e-mail concerning a political candidate, religious cause and more often than not these are spam, hoaxes or lame jokes. Take a little time to compose your own message, add your own thoughts and make people happy by not sending an e-mail with “Fw:” in the subject header or all those forward characters in the body of the forwarded message. If you forward a lot of stuff you may be annoying more people than you think.
2. Remove the attachment button - This is a hard one I know.  It’s a lot easier to send a photo and group of photos or other large files to people you know.   By removing the button I’m not saying it will prevent you from sending attachments but it will make it a little less conveinet and make you think and consider other methods of sending or sharing files.
3. Remove the send button -  No, I’m not asking you to give up sending e-mail but by taking the button off the tool bar gives one a few extra seconds to think before sending via the program menu bar. This is one I’m even guilty of. Too often I will send an e-mail too quickly without proofreading or putting my emotions in check.

Yes, I am asking you to make your e-mail program harder to use.  I am, more often than not,  a big advocate of making technology easier to use but if you had to go back to the old ways of sending mail by putting on a stamp, sealing the letter in an envelope and considering the need for extra postage because of the weight of extra items would your mail habits change? Would you make photo copies of political campaign flyers or cute picture of puppies and send them to all your friends?  The removal of “buttons” from the more graphical toolbar does not keep you from using those features.  You can still find them in the menu.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Innovation, Internet, Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.