Prototype P0 Design Rationale
Tasks in Email
Many of the knowledge workers we observed during our contextual inquiries relied so heavily on email, they already considered individual emails to be de facto tasks.
Since tasks arrive via email, a common reaction we found was to use the email itself to prompt later task action. Effectively, we observed that Inboxes were popular reminder systems. Users would occasionally send themselves email to remind them of particular tasks. Other users would perform maintenance functions on thier Inbox to make tasks more visible and prominent.
Others used more elaborate and formal task management systems, such as those found in Outlook or Lotus Notes, which allow for the creation of tasks and email from within the same application, but logically discriminate between the two with respect to both creation and display.
We looked to explore the value of bringing explicit task creation and display into the Inbox to see if users could conceptually marry tasks directly with email.
Time Left Indicator
Time Left indicator: 
The time left indicator functioned as a lightweight widget, providing users with the high-level information to help prioritize their tasks, without asking them for complex information to explicitly make decisions.
The initial indicator in this iteration was leveraged from Victoria Bellotti's Taskmaster. Our contextual observations confirmed Bellotti's work, finding that due date is the principal indicator of task priority.
The time left indicator displays the time left on a task in relation to when the task was received (the difference between current time and due date divided by the difference between the time created and time due). By providing sorting on the time left column, the user quickly see an organized list of outstanding tasks.
Project Space
The project space looked to solve the breakdown of the communication of responsibility illustrated in contextual inquiries. We witnessed firsthand how groups used shared workspaces during meetings and for document storage however none of them game visibility into responsibility and status of individual tasks the group was managing. The existence of a project space would allow the user to see all tasks associated with a project and who is responsible for every task for a particular project. In additon, the user could also see if the task has been completed or not, giving visibility into the progress of tasks owned by other people.
With visibility into other's teammembers working habits brings both positive and negative externalities. With visibilty into other workers status brings the unspoken social pressuers not to be a slacker. Social loafing is exposed and potentially abated.
