[Design] Negotiation and Scheduling

[Mimi Yin]

Motivation
What are some "new world" approaches to Scheduling in Chandler that  
take free-busy and invitations out of their traditionally corporate  
environments and turn them into features customized for calendar  
usage by individuals and small groups?



FRAMING THE ISSUE

It's tempting to imagine a world where we could schedule things  
without the need for any human interaction (ie. emails flying back  
and forth).

"Ideal scenario:" I want to schedule a meeting. I know right from the  
start who needs to come to that meeting. I have access to everyone's  
free-busy info and it is clean and accurate. The client software  
automatically picks the next available time-slot, I click Send and it  
drops auto-magically onto everyone else's calendars...and another  
angel gets his wings ;o)

But the truth is that negotiation is a given part of the scheduling  
process. Whether that negotiation is a result of

a. Not having access to perfect free-busy information OR
b. Because you find out you forgot  to add someone to the invite list OR
c. Because one of your invitees points out that there are  
dependencies you haven't considered that would make the meeting much  
more productive if it happened next week

...negotiation and back and forth are inevitable and necessary. And  
for some organizations, it's a part of the culture. (As in, auto- 
selecting times and auto-dropping events onto people's calendars  
comes off as rude and presumptuous.)

So perhaps negotiation itself is not the problem. Rather, it's the  
way in which it happens...as lots and lots of emails, disconnected to  
the event itself and spread out all over your Inbox.

A second problem with scheduling software which ends up generating a  
lot of superfluous negotiation email is that they force users to make  
decisions that are either

1. unnecessary (ie. I could meet anytime tomorrow, but Outlook forces  
me to pick a specific time. And then I find out that the specific  
time I chose doesn't work.) OR

2. that they're not ready to make. (ie. I don't know when we should  
have this meeting, I want feedback from the other meeting  
participants. But I know we need to have a meeting soon.)

Below is just one proposal for how we might improve the negotiation  
process for scheduling. Cutting down noise in negotiation, while  
providing a flexible framework for important discussion that's easy  
to keep track of.



WORKFLOW PROPOSAL

1a. Select a specific time OR

1b. Select a fuzzy time-frame for a meeting (this would appear as the  
Date/Time info for the meeting).
This week
The first two weeks of next month
Tomorrow
Next month

2. Specify the duration if you know. Otherwise, Chandler assumes some  
default duration.

3. Chandler spits back a list of available times.
2-4PM Tomorrow
10-2PM next Monday
More times...

4. Select which times you'd prefer. Maybe even rank order them. The  
rest are hidden behind the "more..." link.

5. Write a note to your invitees.

- All negotiations are done in a "conversation" attached to the event.
- No separate emails are generated.
- Everyone can see everyone else's comments.
- The organizer of the meeting is not unduly laden with the  
responsibility of coordinating everybody's personal scheduling  
quirks: ie. Tom can make it next Tuesday but not Wednesday, but Joyce  
said anytime on Wednesday was good for her, but didn't explicitly  
Tuesday wasn't an option.



USAGE SCENARIOS

What are some scenarios where this kind of flexibility would be helpful?
1. Picking a good weekend for company events such as the holiday  
party and the company picnic.
2. Coordinating who brings what to a potluck.
3. Scheduling a lunch with a friend, non-critical, but you'd like to  
see them soon.

Mimi