DWRC's research suggests that email is going to have to take on the properties of letters before it becomes accepted into daily domestic use. We know that people readily use email in the office - it's quick and easy to use, and people are sitting by their screens, but for use in the home, it is difficult to see how email can replace paper mail. It is not simply a question of getting the right screen technologies which at the moment are still too cumbersome. The real issue is that email tools have been designed in a way that reflects how people behave in offices, they haven't been designed for how people behave in the home.
People use information differently in the home.
They manage what they have to do differently too. Some of the properties of paper mail are particularly important in supporting these differences. Screen-based information delivered via email cannot so easily support these needs. The report discusses how paper mail has other uses or properties and serves a number of functions in the household which email cannot imitate or compete with. The research sponsored by Royal Mail threw up some interesting observations on how people interact with paper mail.