Status Writing this up

Last discussion on the list can be found here: http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-January/003827.html

Use cases that the event lozenge design needs to solve for, in order of frequency of use.

1. Managing and editing a calendar. Making it easy/clear to grab a lozenge to move it around on the canvas.
2. Figuring out when your next meeting/appointment is.
3. Figuring out what your next meeting/appointment is.
4. Scanning your own calendar to schedule an appt/meeting or figure out a realistic milestone/due date for a task. Which days are packed? Which days are relatively light?
5. Scheduling a meeting with other people (by overlaying your calendar with their free/busy or calendar)
6. Looking for a particular event on your calendar.

Final Proposal

What's new

• Lozenge outline is white*, which helps to break up consecutive events more effectively in 2 ways:
  1. Creates a higher contrast divider between event lozenges
  2. Breaks up the "event status strips", which currently run uninterruped if there are consecutive events

*The white outline was inspired by some studies Priscilla did: EventLozengeStudies

• Event Status Strip is subtler in several ways:
  • Default is nothing (for confirmed events)
  • Striped tentative strip is narrower
  • FYI strip is narrower as well

• Calendar Membership Colors are subtler and replace more and more of the Event Status Strip, up to a limit. As a result, you don't ever get a whole Event Status Strip + Calendar Membership Colors, thereby minimizing the visual noise without losing the meta-data.

• @Time and Anytime events are more distinct from events with duration
• @Time and Anytime events are distinct from events with duration in a semantically meaningful way (they are "less saturated" because they don't actually take up time)
• FYI events are also white, which is makes more sense because FYI events are really more like @Time and Anytime events. These 3 types of events do NOT show up on your free-busy or in the busy-bars.

• Selected calendar lozenges are more distinct from activated, but not selected calendars:
  • Lozenge fill color is more saturated
  • Text is white on lozenges belonging to the selected calendar

• Task items are called out with "/T" in front of the event title

• Timezone is expressed as a superscript for events that are in a timezone that is different from the calendar canvas's timezone. The timezone superscript appears at the end of the Event title for events that don't display a start time.

• Tangent: Priscilla did some preliminary visual mock-ups for Scooby where she had a thicker divider line at 12PM (noon). Which inspired me to wonder if we extended the line to the left of the "12"... it would help the user figure out Morning versus Afternoon a lot faster. (Mitch also mentioned being confused when the event lozenges get so narrow that the AM/PM label disappears. This might help to address that problem.)

We may also want to consider exploring some alternatives for making the Event title more prominent than the Start-time on the lozenge, as per Priscilla's mock-ups: EventLozengeStudies

• dotseven_lozenges_5.png:
  

5 Axes of Information that need to be communicated, in order of importance

The prioritization is based on how often these features are used by Dogfooders.

• Feedback about Selection
• Selected Event, which by definition must be a member of the Selected Collection
• Not-Selected Event, but is a member of the Selected Collection
• Not-Selected Event, and is not a member of the Selected Collection

• Basic metadata (All Events have this)
• Event title
• Start-time

• Specialized metadata (Events commonly have this)
• Feed that an Event is a Task (not depicted below) MimiYin Can we show this in a text only way? Add a "/T" in front of the Event title? We've had problems with this because we don't have the capability to embed icons in the event lozenges.
• Feedback that an Event is Recurring (not depicted below)
• Feedback about Collection membership
• Feedback that an Event is in a timezone that is different from the Calendar Canvas' timezone

• Feedback on Event status
• Confirmed
• Tentative
• FYI

• Feedback on whether an Event takes up time
• Event with duration
• Event without duration (@Time, Anytime)

I'm deliberately not explaining the designs offered below (there are 3). I'd like to see how confused people are by this mock-up.

• dotsever_lozenges_current.png:
  
• dotseven_lozenges_header.png:
  

This one shows how @time and anytime events could look different from normal events that take up time.

• dotseven_lozenges_sidebar.png:
  

All 3 approaches on 1 canvas

• Event lozenge take 42
  

• dotseven_event_lozenges4.png:
  

Priscilla took a crack at it: EventLozengeStudies