mailVis: Visualizing emailbox for re-finding emails

We present the design and implementation of mailVis, an interactive visual interface for email boxes that facilitates re-finding of emails. Email re-finding tasks can be challenging, involving scanning of many emails and modifying the query as the search progresses. We designed mailVis for such tasks in which the user would benefit from having memory clues and multiple options to direct the search. During the design process, we devised a novel interaction technique, filter swipe, that combines filtering and selection into one action for rapidly skimming individual items in a data set.