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Chris Butler
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Visualizing Email

April 2, 2009 at 8:00 am by Chris

Below is a graph showing one work week's worth of email received. I'm not sure why, but Wednesday was a big day for email. I'll have to see if this is a recurring trend.



Below is a graph showing one day's worth of email. Again, the spike is in the middle. But with this graph, I wasn't surprised to see when the spikes were. I've always noticed that I tend to get a rush of emails right before lunch and right before the end of the day. Have you noticed any similar trends? Also, I think this is the prettier graph... just sayin'.



Update (04/03/2009): After seeing Alex's comment (below), I thought I'd share some of the original sketches that I had in my notebook that eventually became the graphs like those below. Alex asked if I run some kind of script to collect and visualize this data. Sadly, my approach is much more old-fashioned and less sophisticated. I manually collect the data I'm looking for, sketch it out on paper, then create a graph using Photoshop. I wouldn't mind a more automated process, but I also find this one kind of fun. (Note: the graphs sketched below also led to those visualizations on my post about newsletter tracking stats and my post about call to action response stats.


Tagsinformation-synthesis measurement design newfangled

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Comments


 Alex April 3, 2009 10:16 AM
Chris, how did you create these graphs? Do you input your data into a particular program or write some kind of script to run through your email account?
 Chris Butler April 3, 2009 11:07 AM
Alex,

Good question! Sadly, my approach is much more old-fashioned and less sophisticated. I manually collect the data I'm looking for, sketch it out on paper, then create a graph using Photoshop. I wouldn't mind a more automated process, but I also find this one kind of fun. I've added an image above that I put together from several scans of those original sketches.

Thanks for commenting,

Chris
 Brian April 3, 2009 11:59 AM
Chris,

The capitalized "WHY THERE" worries me a little bit. Rest assured, you are not the only one interested in graphing their e-mail traffic.

Chris's alias on Google Labs is lampmaker?

I never thought of looking at trends within my e-mail traffic, but it would definitely allow you to become more efficient if you can work around the hi's and lo's of your inbox.

Brian

 Chris Butler April 3, 2009 12:11 PM
Brian,

That text in full is "Why there is no time for sleeping." Don't worry, though. I do sleep enough. That Google Groups question wasn't from me, but it is a good idea.

Chris
 Richard April 6, 2009 11:01 PM
Visualization is totally hot right now.
 Chris Butler April 8, 2009 11:50 AM
Richard,

You're right. Have you seen the Information Aesthetics blog?

Chris