[Design] Re: Chandler UI Concept Ideas: (7) SideBar

[Mimi Yin]

I think I finally understand what you're getting at. You're proposing  
a Past, Present, Future filter on the collections themselves, not a  
filter on the items inside the collections.

So Past, Present and Future would be attributes you set on the  
collections (imagine that Collections have detail views, just like  
Items do).

So just for some context, the current thinking with the sidebar is  
that hopefully, with good search and the ability to describe items  
with Tags or user-defined Attributes, users will end up with many  
fewer Collections in the sidebar. So the only collections that people  
would bother to put there are collections they regularly click on  
(whether they're Presently Active Collections or Archived Projects  
that you refer to regularly for reference material).

I am the first to admit that this is a tenuous theory at best. But  
Chandler's organizational paradigm is so new that it's hard to tell  
what people are going to do with it. So I think we're taking an  
iterative approach, sort of a: Add complexity on an as-needed basis,  
rather than over-engineer it right off the bat.

So that's the long way of saying that something like this would  
probably not fit into the design in the near-term, but I can easily  
how people with more sophisticated organizational needs (as in people  
who still feel the need to have a lot of collections in their  
sidebar) would find such a thing very useful.

Perhaps it could be additional structure you could add to the  
Sidebar, in the same way we currently envision people adding the  
notion of Spheres (ie. Home or Work) to the sidebar if they feel the  
need to compartmentalize their data. (See below for more on Spheres.)

===

I'm totally with you on the Home and Work filters. I think I've had a  
slightly different design in mind, where you can create open and  
closeable trays called Spheres in the sidebar.

People may have more than just Home and Work. Esther, Mitch's  
assistant for example, may have a "Mitch" sphere where she keeps  
Mitch's calendar and can view "from his perspective" ie. with his  
event status and his timezone, etc...

But the idea is very similar I think.

I think the biggest different between presenting it as filter buttons  
versus trays is that with filter buttons, you don't get the  
repetition problem. (ie. I have a collection that is in both Work and  
Home, and if I have Work and Home Trays, then I see that collection  
twice.)

The theory however was that, that was unlikely to happen, or would  
happen rarely, as Spheres are by definition the way a person  
separates or compartmentalizes their life. It's certainly going to  
happen, but the area of overlap is going to be more like 2-10% and  
less like 70-80%.

Mimi

On Oct 3, 2005, at 2:07 PM, Daniel Vareika wrote:

> Mimi:
>
> The last for today.
> As I was reading over the weekend and deciding on the use (not  
> design) of Chandler, I started arriving to certain conclusions and  
> new implementations of certain ideas.
>
> This time is for the SideBar.
>
> Proposal
>
> <1.gif>
>
> We could have a button (far left) in the smaller bar that could  
> display and or collapse the sidebar.
> It could even change the display of the button giving us a hint of  
> the action of putting away.
>
>
> The other important notion is that the Past Present Future could be  
> tabbed giving us a quick way to change from one to the other side  
> bar(s).
>
> <2.gif>
>
> This way we would be multiplying by three the space and most  
> important, organizing the display of the information accordingly.
>
> <3.gif>
>
> What is important from this design is that there are certain MUST  
> NOT so as to make a clean productive interface.
> The above mentions should open somehow a different view or window  
> so as to make clear the notion that they are mostly operational.
>
> <4.gif>
>
> I would suggest a simple exercise.
> If you take your actual sidebar from your current e mail program,  
> and put all of your folders regarding whether they are reference  
> material/projects or Someday maybe items in different lists, you  
> will see, and experience, how drastically the view changes, how  
> more productive you could become from extreme simplification, and  
> without the need for Chandler or a Mock up program to be fully  
> functional, you could actually perceive the power of these three  
> concepts very easily
>
> It is mostly important to classify accordingly with the three  
> titles and understand the meaning.
> Although I have suggested Past, Present and Future I think for  
> myself is much more understandable the notion of Reference /  
> Projects / Someday Maybe
> Also it is most important not to include the MUST NOTS.
>
> Yours,
>
> Daniel Vareika
>
> If you even distinguish between Work or Home (private/public life)  
> you could see a multiplication by 600% of the useful space of the  
> sidebar instead of only a 300%.

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