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11/12/2009

Working with Microsoft Research
Here in Office Labs we love to partner with whomever we can in order to do our work.  One of our favorite organizations to partner with is Microsoft Research.
 
In case you’ve never worked with an organization like Microsoft Research, it’s like having a whole building full of world class experts who are happy to meet with you and advise you on your projects.  No matter what topic you’re working on, you can usually find someone who’s worked on that topic for several years, and sometimes you find people who have worked on your topic for their entire career!
 
The benefits of our partnership with Microsoft Research come in many forms.  Sometimes you can point to a project and show a clear link to the work of someone in Microsoft Research.  For example, our Email Prioritizer prototype is directly based on work from Eric Horvitz.
 
And sometimes when you watch one of our envisioning videos you’ll see a concept that came from an idea in Microsoft Research.  For example, check out the two images below.
 
Envisioning Video Screenshot
 
Research paper screenshot
 
The image on the top is from the 1:06 mark of the Productivity Future Vision video, and it shows a woman interacting with a device the size of a business card by touching the back of it—a great way to use your finger to manipulate a small screen without your finger getting in the way of you seeing what you’re manipulating.  Cool idea, right?  The image on the bottom is Figure 4 from the Microsoft Research paper Back-of-Device Interaction Allows Creating Very Small Touch Devices.
 
In addition to getting great ideas from Microsoft Research, we also get a lot of value in meetings with researchers where we can quickly get up to speed in a brand new area that we’re working on.  For example, we have a few projects that try to help people find the right information, and when we work on those projects, it’s been incredibly helpful to meet with researchers like Susan Dumais, who’s considered a world class expert in the field of information retrieval.
 
We have several projects underway right now where we’re working with Microsoft Research, and we hope we’ll be able to share those projects with you in the near future!
Posted at 3:01 PM by JJ (Office Labs) | Category: Email Prioritizer; Productivity Future Vision; Office Labs | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

8/19/2008

Try Email Prioritizer from Office Labs

We understand that email overload is a challenge: today, many people get too much email and have a hard time keeping up with it. Not only do people receive a high volume of mail, the mail may arrive at inconvenient times. There are a lot of good ideas about how to help people with email overload and we’re testing a few of those ideas in Office Labs.

Our latest prototype, Email Prioritizer, includes these features:

  • A "Do Not Disturb" button that stops incoming mail delivery so you can work without interruptions.

  • Email priorities are assigned to incoming mail so you can focus on the most important mail first. With a “0-3 stars” ranking system, you can focus on email messages that are most important to you. These priorities are based on algorithms from Microsoft Research.

The prototype is an Outlook 2007 add-in and it’s available for immediate download. Try it and let us know what you think! Your feedback can help us determine if this is an effective method for improving your productivity.

Posted at 9:07 AM by Steve (Office Labs) | Category: Email Prioritizer | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (20)
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