To Reply or To Reply All

Abstract

“Reply” and “Reply All” buttons in email provide the convenience of a quick reply to those included in the email. Yet this very convenience can be troublesome to both the individual and the group involved if receivers intentionally or unintentionally hit one button instead of the other. In this paper we explore how replying decisions are made and what contributes to erroneous use of Reply All through an experimental study (N=109) and a survey study (N=112). Data from the experiment suggest that errors are not influenced by how the reply button suite is arranged but rather by the explicitness of the desired response action and how multiple recipients are displayed. Qualitative data from the survey suggest that while people are cognizant of Reply All misuse, lack of universally agreed upon criteria for appropriate Reply/Reply All choice leads to errors. We discuss the implications of these insights for email interface design.

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