[Design] Don't we not need Sort?

[Mimi Yin]

Absolutely, I'm not disputing the importance of any of the scenarios  
Ashkan and Dennis have brought up:

The questions at hand are:

1. Do users need to sort on the generic attribute types: 'Who' and  
'Date' in the summary table view, columns which will display a  
different attribute depending on context. For more background, see:
+ http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-June/004797.html
+ http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-May/004778.html

That's the thing that's hard to do that probably doesn't have very  
much meaning to the user.

2. Even if we did decide that sorting on 'Who' and 'Date' was  
important, is it more important than:
+ Performance
+ Getting the default 'Sort order' of the Dashboard view right
+ Getting the Communications status, Who and Date columns to display  
the right context sensitive attributes, so people know what they're  
looking at in the first place
+ Finding information via Search/Filtering

Not supporting sort on 'Who' and 'Date' isn't mutually exclusive with  
sorting on a specific attribute.
Examples of sorting by specific attributes we could support:
+ From: , Sent by:, Created by:, Edited by:, Updated by:
+ To:, CC:, BCC:
+ Date received (a la mini-calendar interaction described in my first  
email)
+ Start date

However, I wonder if for the use cases described below, intelligently  
sectioning a list of items would be a better affordance than sort for  
scanning lists of items.

e.g.
+ Sectioning by time: Today, Yesterday, This week, Last week, Past  
month, etc
+ Sectioning by email recipients, which would allow a single item to  
show up in multiple sections.
For example:
-- 1 section is defined as: To: Bill B
-- Another section is defined as: To: Jill J
-- An email that was sent to both Bill B and Jill J would show up in  
both sections.

Most importantly, can we all agree that what's hard for us to support  
and maybe not so useful to the user anyhow is sorting by columns  
defined around generic attribute types, e.g.:
+ Sort by 'WHO' which could be any of the following: From: , Sent  
by:, Created by:, Edited by:, Updated by:, To:, CC:, BCC:
+ Sort by 'DATE' which could be any of the following: Date sent, Date  
received, Start date, Tickler date

Mimi

On Jun 2, 2006, at 12:47 PM, Dennis Lynch wrote:

> I think Chandler absolutely DOES NEED SORT.
> I know of hundreds of places where I will use it:
> 1. I don't want to have to create a new filter
> 2. I don't want to have to look for that filter I already created
> (among the 200 filters I have
> 3. The spam filter is imperfect, plus, I am conservative and don't
> want to have false positives, so I sort my email by subject, and that
> helps me quickly see a bunch of spams that passed through the spam
> filter.  I also sort by sender sometimes to do the same.
> 4. When I am reviewing my list of tasks, I want to look at them in
> some meaningful sequence- high priority, medium, low, on-hold,
> completed, cancelled... OR, due today, due tomorrow, due in 2 days,
> etc... OR project 1, project 2, project 3
> 5. I want to see all the emails from Bill-B, then all emails from
> Edgar-E, then all emails from Judy-J, and I don't want to have to keep
> unfiltering and re-filtering.
> 6. I want to see all the tasks I finished last month, sorted by week
> 7. I want to look at all the tasks I have coming up, sorted by
> estimated time requirement, OR sorted by additional resources needed..
> OR sorted by person requesting. OR sometimes by 2 or 3 attributes at
> once.
> 8. I hope I don't have to go on...
>
> I surely hope that the need for sorting.. along many attributes, and
> within many parts of Chandler are quite clear.  "Click on the Column
> heading" ("click again to reverse the sort order") would seem to be a
> "standard" way to do this in the UI.
>
> Thanks
> -- 
> Dennis Lynch
> dmlynch [at] alum.mit [dot] edu
> dmlynch1 [at] gmail [dot] com
>> Make email more useful by using Labels in your subject line:
> IMPT- important message
> INFO - general information
> JOKE- self-explanatory
> QRY- an unsolicited query/question
> REPL- reply to your message
> URGT- urgent message requiring immediate attention
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
>
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