A Study of Contextual Factors Influencing Mobile Personal Email Use

Email use, productivity, overload, and management in a work setting has been studied and researched since the creation of electronic mail in the early 1970s. Much of the existing literature studies in depth the impact of work email on the person’s everyday tasks, behavior, and other factors in relation to business. The findings of recent studies suggest that the spread and impact of mobile devices are changing the way modern society interacts with email. A major driver of this change is the convenience of having the ability to respond and check email from anywhere and at any time of day. With email now integrated in our everyday portable devices, such as smartphones and smartwatches, we are transforming the ‘how’ and ‘what for’ of email use, not just for work but also for personal purposes. The continuous growth of messaging applications on mobile devices for personal communication has shifted the original functionality of a personal email, initially intended for personal communication, to a business to consumer relationship. With this recent data it has been pointed out that the functionality and design of personal email applications has not yet adapted to accommodate these changes. To further explore how we can improve the functionality of personal email applications to better serve the needs of mobile email users, this research will focus on studying and analyzing the contextual factors associated with the use of personal email on a mobile device

A Study of Contextual Factors Influencing Mobile Personal Email Use

Email use, productivity, overload, and management in a work setting has been studied and researched since the creation of electronic mail in the early 1970s. Much of the existing literature studies in depth the impact of work email on the person’s everyday tasks, behavior, and other factors in relation to business. The findings of recent studies suggest that the spread and impact of mobile devices are changing the way modern society interacts with email. A major driver of this change is the convenience of having the ability to respond and check email from anywhere and at any time of day. With email now integrated in our everyday portable devices, such as smartphones and smartwatches, we are transforming the ‘how’ and ‘what for’ of email use, not just for work but also for personal purposes. The continuous growth of messaging applications on mobile devices for personal communication has shifted the original functionality of a personal email, initially intended for personal communication, to a business to consumer relationship. With this recent data it has been pointed out that the functionality and design of personal email applications has not yet adapted to accommodate these changes. To further explore how we can improve the functionality of personal email applications to better serve the needs of mobile email users, this research will focus on studying and analyzing the contextual factors associated with the use of personal email on a mobile device