Domain Model: Conversations

I spend many hours each week tracking conversations. Not the conversations like "hi how are you ....I am fine....", I am talking about conversations that call for actions. They can be actions on my part or actions that i am requesting of others. ..... Most of those conversations have the same pattern centered around making a request, or making a promise and tracking its completion. 

Ideally I would like to track the state of these conversations and many of these conversations occur in email and some occur in IM so any tool I write for managing conversations would reflect that common pattern.

For the academics out there the known model of interaction that encompasses my day to day conversations is based on something called "Speech Action" or "Language Action Perspective". A commercial tool (The Coordinator) has been built using it and seems to have a great deal to recommend it.  The basic ideas behind the Language/Action Perspective:

All human results are achieved through conversations (typically written and spoken)that invoke actions.  Most of us don't need to track conversations that don't lead to actions. Those conversations typically involve exchanges of information  .... 

 

Conversations that lead to actions usually require being tracked....and are effectively a dance...

Those conversations start with either a request for an action or an offer of an action. They can also start off with a "What If" type of conversation such as "Wouldn't it be cool if" and then result in requests or offers of action.

People can accept a request, decline a request, or make a counter offer).

Accepting a request typically involves making a promise. The promise can be completed or revoked.

At some point the conversation for action is complete.

So a tool for  tracking and managing  conversations would allow the following...

1. Opening a Conversation

1a.Generating a Request OR 
1b. Generating an Offer OR
1c. Starting a conversation for a Possibility.

2. Responding 

2a. Accept a request OR

2b. Decline a request OR

2c. Make a counteroffer to a request OR

2d. Comment on or annotate the conversation  OR

2e. Acknowledge someone

2f. Putting off a decision ( i.e. giving a promise by when you will respond)

2g. Make an interim report

2e. Report that the conversation and actions are complete

3. Track conversations (and their participants progress) by their status:

New conversations 

    Conversations missing my response

    Conversations missing other's response

My Promises 

My Requests

Commitments

This may seem incredibly structured , or even artificial, but if you look at the conversations that go into causing projects you will see that they all fall into this structure. Of course, most users would prefer not to use this format for all conversations (or even most of them).  So this should be something optional, where you can did note an e-mail thread as a conversation for action and then track the status of the conversation from that point forward.