Hi Robin,
I really appreciate you taking the time to download the release
candidate, try it out, and write up your thoughts.
Comments and questions about some of your points inline. Mimi, our
interaction designer, is on vacation this week; she may have more to say
when she gets back.
Robin Cottiss wrote:
Hello,
I just wanted to start giving some feedback on Chandler before I got too far
into the system. I downloaded a checkpoint build about 10 days ago as I
could not wait for RC1 but I just downloaded RC1 and re-imported my
Collections and Settings.
I'm glad to hear this process worked for you.
I have a Product Management background so I am looking at this from a user
perspective and as a fellow PM.
Here are some quick reactions from my initial look at RC1 (about 10 minutes
- I also have not viewed any documentation screencasts)
1. The dashboard view seems to use the reminder date/time for an event. I
was confused by this as I am expecting to see the actual date/time of the
event. I am not really interested in when I am going to be reminded about an
event.
Noted. The dashboard will use the event date if there is no alarm, but
does favor the alarm date if there is one. Our guess was that the alarm
date would be more useful in this view.
2. The time legend on the Week View calendar is most unhelpful. I cannot
tell easily (at a glance) if the time is AM or PM (this is when viewing a
blank page). There seems to be plenty of space. Is there some reasoning
behind NOT helping the user figure out AM/PM
Noted. I'm guessing that Mimi is trying to keep the design clean and not
repeat information.
3. I finally figured out what the little tick marks are on the monthly
calendars. I see that they tell you how much of your day is filled with
appointments/events. Using just the lines next to the dates makes the
calendar look a little messy. I also thought the ticks might reflect the
collections but it looks like they aggregate all collections. This might
reduce the value of the ticks. I created a collection of web conferences. I
have no intention of going to all these events but they show up as full bars
on the dates of the conference. It would be nice if the bars reflected the
collections were currently viewing. Also, because the bars are to the side
it is not obvious which day they are attached to.
fwiw, you can go to the "Collection" menu, and choose "Keep out of
Dashboard". This will mean that the collection is not rolled up in the
"Dashboard" collection at the top of the sidebar, and will not show up
in the mini calendar "busy bars" or the summary of today's events just
above the mini calendar.
4. I was looking for tooltips over icons to explain what they meant. I tried
clicking on one the icons on the alarm (I guess) column and it changes the
date. I could not undo the change so I have no idea what the original time
was.
What platform are you on? Did the tooltips not work for you? We do have
some problems with tooltips on Linux.
Clicking on the "alarm" column in the triage table will add (or remove)
a custom alarm. The date change you are seeing is the date of the event
or the date of the alarm. If you toggle the alarm off, you should see
the date of the event again. The date of the event should not have
changed, just the display in that column.
5. The ed and cr annotations kept distracting me. Unfortunately my son's
name is Ed and I create entries that refer to Edward but I kept seeing ed
and thinking about Edward! Is this meant to be an icon?
ed --> edited
cr --> created
These annotations are perhaps most useful for shared collections/calendars.
6. The clock/alarm icon has some other weirdness. Apart from not being able
to undo clicks I can click on a done item to create an alarm for tomorrow.
What does that mean? An I changing the status from done to not done? Of
course the done status is not changed so it seems like an inconsistent
state.
Yes, you could click on a "Done" item to create an alarm for tomorrow.
When the alarm triggered, the item would come into the "Now" section
(and get marked as "Now").
7. What is the difference between triage status done and tick status ticked.
The check mark indicates that the item is a task, not its "triage
status". You can filter the collections by task by choosing "Tasks" in
the upper left hand corner. Also, someday we could add fields associated
with tasks in the detail view.
8. When I started Chandler I am sure I saw a now triage status item in the
done section. But now I see that the triage button is a duplicate of the
sort by triage column heading.
Yes, there are a few conditions where "Later" or "Done" items might show
up in the "Now" section (and similarly for the other sections). If you
hit the "Triage" button, it will "resort" everything. One such case --
if you change something in that section from "Now" to "Done", it will
not sort right away (as that would feel distracting to have it jump
sections on you). Another scenario: items that have been edited by other
people pop into your "Now" section, but retain their triage status.
These are very early impressions and I have not noted the things I do like,
and I apologize for that, but I wondering if other users are seeing the same
issues?
This release is our first opportunity to try out the triage table (or
"dashboard") features. We're experimenting with some of the behaviors.
I'm sure we've gotten some of the details wrong, and some of the
features might be new or different at first blush but might grow on you
once you understand how they work. We're really interested in seeing how
people feel after they have been using it for a while, so definitely
report back if you continue using it!
We're also interested in what features work well for you of course.
I would really like to see Chandler succeed. I really want to find a program
that can manage time and tasks (and hopefully email)
Much appreciated.
Cheers,
Katie
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