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On Jun 28, 2006, at 12:06 PM, Heikki Toivonen wrote:
Mimi Yin wrote:
1. Why would someone want to enter date/time information in the
first place?
Because events usually happen on certain date and time ;)
Or maybe you need to clarify what you mean by 'enter'.
2. What are the other ways in which users can assign date/time
information?
+ e.g. Why would someone edit date/time information in the detail
view
as opposed to manipulating the event lozenge in the calendar canvas
directly?
I find that I typically create an event by double clicking in the
calendar. I typically move the lozenge by mouse to start at the right
time if my click was inaccurate originally. If the event is short
(a few
hours max) I often drag the bottom of the lozenge to the right spot.
The problem with manipulating the lozenge directly is that to see what
the actual end time is I have to look in the detail view, away from
the
place where I am actually doing the drag.
I find the whole click and drag workflow to be not quite usable right
now. It seems to be too easy to click in the wrong place. I
normally have 3-4 calendars overlaid (I keep it this way because
overlaying is kind of slow), and often the click is on the wrong
calendar. So I click the calendar and the date, create a new event
in a clear space and then use the detail view to edit the begin and
end times.
Editing the text of the start and end times is currently human
unfriendly, because you have to get the spacing and so forth exactly
right.
When I am creating an event that lasts longer than a day, I switch to
the detail view to type the end date and time. But I find I am really
slow to type the date for a couple of reasons: 1) I have to find out
from somewhere else (maybe minicalendar) the actual date I need to
enter, and 2) I still have to mentally adjust to entering in format
mm/dd (as opposed to dd/mm that my muscles are trained to do). I have
found that the easiest (and probably fastest although I haven't
measured) way for me to enter a date is to click a date on a calendar
that pops up next to the date field. The one I like the best is where
simply moving the focus to the text field pops up the calendar next
to it.
Also, I believe that the fastest way to enter an event would be with a
keyboard (as opposed to double clicking the calendar).
That might not be true for all people, but it would be true that the
keyboard would be the fastest way for me.
3. What are the different kinds of date/time information people will
want to enter? e.g.
- Date + Time range
- Date + Time
- Date range
- Certain amount of time from Today
- Certain amount of time before a certain date
- Certain amount of time before/after an event
- Month
- Week
- Day
- Soon, Whenever, Unknown
*Does anyone have real examples of these different kinds of dates?
Especially the kinds that aren't generally supported by traditional
calendar clients? Examples from paper calendars? back of the envelope
task lists? etc.*
Right now I'd be more than happy if I could just enter the time
without such tight restrictions on the text format of the date. If
we did that, then that would leave room later for other fancier time
or date specs.
I've used (in some other calendars than Chandler) Date + Time, Date
range, Certain amount of time before/after an event.
I would like to be able to enter half open events to mark deadlines
and
the like. I can also sort of see the need for fuzzy times, but I am
not
sure if it would be better to set arbitrary time when that thing would
'tickle' you to do something about it.
4. What are the different contexts people might be in when entering
date/time information? e.g.
+ Calendar canvas looking at the week that they want to add an
event to
+ Calendar canvas looking at a week that is far, far away from the
week
they want to add an event to
+ Looking at an event on the calendar canvas that needs to be
moved to
10 weeks from this week
+ Looking at an event on the calendar canvas that needs to be
moved to a
different day in the same week
I've done all of the above.
Yep.
5. What are some other date/time related widgets that might be
useful to
have in the detail view? e.g. a button that will "Show you this
event on
the calendar".
Yup.
I sort of got the impression from some talks we had a while ago
that you
should be able to link items somehow. If we had that, it would be
natural to say: show me all information related to this event.
Or have a scrolling pane that has the related info in it.
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