The e-Pot: Exposing Email Data Via an Augmented Teapot

Submitted by mcdowell on Mon, 09/21/2009 - 18:54

Assignment: Midterm Project 1: Group project proposal

Collaborators:

Collaborator: Alison Meier (alisonm)

The e-Pot

Background:

Demands of the modern work environment increasingly push office tasks and digital information into our personal lives. A recent New York Times article[1] detailed the challenges modern families face on keeping their personal and digital lives separate, particularly at the breakfast table. Kids want to text-message and check for Facebook updates, while adults want to get a jump on the day by checking their work email. The result is a loss of personal routine and the family breakfast. We think that part of the problem is in properly defining boundaries between personal life and work. Adults worry about what may lay ahead, and the temptation to check email can become irresistible. Our goal is to give users subtle cues about their digital information in a way that fits in with the morning routine without distracting from it. By giving the users information about the contents of their email, users can make informed decisions about lingering over a family breakfast or starting work first thing in the morning. We chose to focus on the business user, though this system could be customized for other users as well.

Our Project:

We centered our project around a common component of the morning routine: consumption of hot caffeinated drinks. Specifically, we thought of how we might enhance a teapot and teacup to facilitate a gradual transition from personal to work space. This is achieved through three components of the e-Pot: the pitch of the teapot whistle, the color of the brewing teapot, and "tea leaves" in an teacup.

Part 1: Whistle Pitch Indicates Quantity

In our system, a user adds tea leaves and water to an augmented teapot, just like any other teapot. Water is brought to a boil, at which point the pot begins to whistle. The augmented teapot accesses the user's business email account over wifi to learn about the types and volume of email that have accumulated overnight. If there are a lot of important messages, the whistle takes on a higher pitch; if there are fewer to worry about, the whistle takes a more soothing, lower-pitched tone.
Part 2: Teapot Color Indicates Content

Once the water is boiled, the tea leaves begin steeping. As the tea brews, the outside of the teapot begins to take on color. The specific color of the teapot's exterior is dependent on facets of the user's new emails. The teapot color tracks three different features:
1) Urgent emails--Red. These are either emails that have been explicitly marked urgent or that contain reference to an event happening in the near future. The presence of a relatively large number of urgent emails will cause the pot to take on a dominantly red color.
2) Supervisor emails--Yellow. These are emails sent from the user's boss (or boss's boss, etc.). The relative presence of supervisor emails affects the yellowness of the teapot.
3) Total email volume--Blue. The higher the total volume of email, the closer to blue the teapot will be.

The actual richness of colors is not dependent on volume; the final result will always be a rich, vibrant color. Instead, the different categories "pull" the resulting color of the teapot toward its area of the color wheel.  So a purple teapot is one where a user contains both a large number of urgent emails and a high general email volume (but relatively few supervisor emails). A pure yellow teapot shows that email volume overall was low, and there are no urgent emails, but a high percentage of messages are from one's boss. 

Once the tea is done brewing (five minutes for black tea, two minutes for green tea), the teapot will have reached its full, rich color. The user now has a general awareness of what to expect from their email inbox today, without the burden of actually having to read and process emails. The user also knows that the tea is ready to drink.

Part 3: "Tea Leaves" Cycle through Important Email Subjects
The next step is for the user to pour a cup of tea into an enhanced teacup. During the actual process of tea drinking, no new data is presented. The user is able to savor the tea with leisure (or drink it in a hurry), comfortably informed by the previous behavior of the teapot. Once the user finishes the drink, he or she can look down at the now empty bottom of the cup. Once the last liquid is drained, a digital display at the bottom of the mug activates, spelling out the subject line of the system-identified most important email. In a sense, the user is now "reading the tea leaves" to learn more about what to expect from the day. By gently swirling the cup, the user can effectively "rearrange" the tea leaves to see the subject of the next most important email.

The result is a system where users do not need to bring laptops or blackberry's to the breakfast table. They get important information up front (how bad their email inbox is), and they gradually learn more details about the contents. This allows users to stay focused on the activity at the breakfast table instead of worrying about what might be waiting in an inbox. Importantly, the new system can blend seamlessly into an already existing routine.

Reference:
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/technology/10morning.html