Event Lozenge Studies

Based on Mimi's studies for event lozenge improvements for Chandler 0.7

Here are some things which I noticed as important concepts for busy people using calendars:

1. Whitespace is sometimes a better separator then lines (note the separation of days of the week and events). This is what the "lozenge" rounded edges do – they insert whitespace to separate the events. So for now, I just eliminated the lozenge shape.
2. Simplify for legibility: If you strip out most all of the eye candy you will have a more legible display. There is a UI concept called "progressive disclosure". You do not have to show everything, in fact, you may only need the name of the event and the user can figure out a lot about it. For details (first few lines of descriptions, tentitive, fyi stuff) you can use rollover. (and, or course selection).
3. Eliminate distractions – it may help to de-saturate background calendars that do not belong to the calendar being viewed – not just make them lighter, but also a less colorful, to keep them from distracting main calendar. Although the example I have only has one other calendar, I'm sure there is a way to make serveral calendars which are not the main calendar less saturated and still be able to distiguishable from each other.
4. When you try to show too much, you end up camouflaging the calendar in a lot of noise.
5. There is very little horizontal space for events right now – it makes it difficult to have legible descriptions – perhaps there have been talks to go for a a "four" or "five" day calendar or set a minimum width for lozenges, followed by scrollbars in the window??

• 1_Lozenge.gif:
  

This is the same sketch with a gradient from the bottom right and I added the mouse over note. I noticed there is a slight horizontal gradient in the existing 0.6 Chandler. I wasn't sure if gradients angled from the bottom right corner to the top left corner were possible.

• 2_Lozenge.png:
  

Some additional thoughts on lozenge

Display information about a shared event on multiple calendars:

1. What's the importance of show that particular event is showing on more then one calendar?
2. Does it make the even more important?
3. Does it help make sure you make the event on time?

A possible alternative solution:

Why not just color the event in the scheme of the current active/selected calendar on top? (as we talked about, perhaps I would need to think about it more.)

One other thing that came to mind, if the calendar canvas would show the 'next 4 days' opposed to 'week view', then your shared calendar information icon can be displayed without the user thinking it's just a spec on your screen to wipe off.

A thought I had about tentative events:

Tentative to me is like using a pencil vs. inking in my paper calendar. I feel an event should be somewhat in the bkg. either using gray or less saturated color, but should not appear so prominent as the confirmed. Makes for a cleaner calendar and will be less disruptive. I think I just felt the designs you did are still to saturated. I think in my mind grey (ie. the pencil) opposed to the color of the event (the ink in my pen). My sketch can definitely be tweaked to make it more 'background' like. But I think that was what I was trying to articulate on the earlier sketches, where the 'office calendar' is in the background.

FYI use case:

So I'm still trying to wrap my head around this since I don't use fyi personally. This is a use case I was thinking of: If enter an event for the Matthew Barney DR film showing at SFMOMA on the office calendar, 6/23/06-9/17/06. No set date has been confirmed for the group of people who have responded. I set the event to fyi so anyone in the office who may not have time to go with the group can also go on their own. I would end up creating another event for the group of people who are interested in going together to the event as tentative, for now until a set date that is confirmed.

This is still sort of a two person use case and I'm trying to think of when I would use it for just myself.