[Design] Hierarchies good, straightjackets bad.

[jerry-osafoundation at theashergroup.com]

A PIM I used for quite awhile was Info Select.  It's weakspot was that it 
was completely free form.  You started a "note", and you defined all meta 
data that you wanted inside that note along with the content of that note.  
It's strong spot was that it was completely free form.

 [FName] Jerry
 [LName] Asher
 [Employer] The Asher Group 

This was bad as it was free form and until they came out with templates it 
was hard to keep the meta data constant from one form to the other.  It was 
great as it made it trivial to add any number of relationships between any 
pieces of data.  It was great as notes could contain anything, from 
contact/addr/calendar/todo information to formulas/passwords/reference 
material/shopping lists -- absolutely anything.  And it was all 
instantaneously findable through their search mechanism (described below). 

They had a few well defined pieces of meta-data, to define alarms for 
instance. 

It was great in that the same "note" could contain: 

 Contact Information
 Address
 Calendar/Meeting Information
 Calendar/Birthday Information
 Todo Information 

All the stuff that today's PIMs force you to separate, and then force you to 
view and edit through a bazillion unnecessary keyclicks. 

And the best part was that they had a instantaneous search function.   No, 
click to open a dialog, no clicks to define the search, no click to start 
the search, no click on each search result, all you did was type "g" (for 
"get"?).  And then it showed you a pixel map of ALL of your notes, and as 
you typed each character after that "g", it showed you pixel map of the 
notes that contained your incrementally built search string. 

Wonderful and instantaneous feedback.  You knew immediately if you had any 
results or if you needed to narrow results down. 

At any point in time, you had the opportunity to stop the search and see all 
fitting notes popped us as Info Select windows. 

Conclusion: Info Select was designed around the user.  It was not designed 
around a window system, and it was not designed around some hierarchy. It 
was designed to be used and to be useful. 

I would love to see similar features built into Chandler. 

"There’s very little to tell. I’m thirty-three years old, went to college 
once and can still speak English if there’s any demand for it. There isn’t 
much in my trade." 


Jerry