Analyzing Electronic Mail using Temporal, Spatial, and Content-based Visualization Techniques

Abstract

Email is one of the most widely-used means of communication. While mailing volumes have shown high growth rates since the introduction of email as an Internet service and considerable work has been done in improving the efficiency of email management, there is a need for improving the functionality (effectiveness) of email management. Typically, users are given little means to intelligently explore the wealth of cumulated information in their email archives. We address these shortcomings by designing Information Visualization tools for email data. We introduce the Mail Explorer System which aims at enabling the user to explore large quantities of email data, reflecting the rich meta data and content stored in email collections. The system allows a user to visually analyze temporal and spatial distribution properties, as well as content-based characteristics in email archives.