Survey Takeaways

[lukesmurray]

• Documentation

  • people will refer to documentation a lot so it should be easily accessible and searchable.
  • each method should clearly document the data types of its inputs and outputs
  • some users may be completely unfamiliar with python data types so explanations in the documentation could be useful. (One user was confused by how we check if a contact is in a list)
    • An alternative would be to write messier rules that may be easier to understand. For example convert a list comprehension into a bunch of if statements.
  • people are unclear if message.content also contains input from past emails

• Debugging

  • simulating on n-latest emails is not always useful. Sometimes these emails won't trigger the rule in which case there is no debugging feedback.
  • it would be useful to see exactly which emails are being affected by a rule across the entire inbox or the selected folders.
  • the difference between simulating and production is not obvious to people and leads them to being scared to implement rules.
  • make setting flags obvious. In general changes should be displayed obviously and things that don't change should be hidden. Think how useful git Diff is.

• Class Structure

  • getting all emails from a list of contacts would be useful (unclear if the user wanted an AND or an OR across the list)
  • get all emails of a certain priority would be useful.
  • filter emails based on the mailing list they are sent to
  • reply_all is confusing
  • people want aggregate methods so number of emails from a specific contact for example
  • people mostly use message arrival

• Modes

  • people are not using modes. This is probably a UI or length of survey issue since there is not much incentive to use modes for simple examples
  • people do not find much use for a trigger to switch modes

• Future Work

  • people have an initial inclination to start treating the robot like a system that understands structured data. They want to be able to put in subjects and have the robot perform tasks.