[Design] Dashboard and overlays

[Mimi Yin]

Ahh, you make good points.

In the case you describe below we would need to 'shift focus'.

If an user has the Dashboard collection selected.
And then overlays an user-defined collection.
The selection switches from the OOTB area to the User-defined area.

It might be helpful to think of the OOTB are and the user-defined  
areas almost as if they're separate panes.

We could provide visual feedback that overlaying user-defined  
collections while selecting an OOTB collection will switch the  
selection. However, let's try it first without the visual feedback to  
see if people get confused and if they do, where they get confused so  
we can figure out the best kind of visual feedback to provide.



1. User has Dashboard selected:

Dashboard
In
Out
Trash
=====
[   ] Home
[   ] Work



2. User checks 'Home', switches selection to 'Home'

Dashboard
In
Out
Trash
=====
[x] Home
[   ] Work


Does this make sense? We can stage this proposal so that we don't  
turn off overlays for the OOTB collections in the near-term.

We can keep overlays and simply switch the view to correspond to the  
view of the selected collection. So, if I'm in the Calendar App and I  
have Dashboard selected and then I overlay Home, the summary pane  
displays in Table view. However, if I'm in the Calendar App and I  
have Home selected and then I overlay Trash, the summary pane  
displays in Calendar view.

The only downside of course is that it forces the user to do a lot of  
checking and un-checking as they're trying to switch modes between  
the OOTB collections and the user-defined overlays. But I think it's  
something we can live with for Beta. And if my suppositions are  
correct, someone will scratch their own itch and implement this  
special behavior themselves :o)

Mimi

On Jun 16, 2006, at 8:17 AM, Jeffrey Harris wrote:

> Hi Mimi,
>
> Generally speaking, I like the direction your describing with  
> overlays and helping users shift contexts in useful ways.
>
> With that said, I'm curious what you think about the difference in  
> behavior I perceive between overlays in the calendar and overlays  
> in the Dashboard.  This is my understanding of how overlays will  
> work in various areas:
>
> - If I'm viewing my Home collection in the calendar and overlay my  
> Work collection, that's an additive action, no events go away, I  
> might get some new ones
>
> - If I'm viewing my Dashboard (which always shows the summary  
> view), the first collection I overlay is *subtractive*, no new  
> items appear, many go away
> - The second time I overlay a collection, it's additive to the  
> first overlaid collection
>
> I agree with your explanation of why this is a good workflow, so I  
> think this is a reasonable path to follow.  But I worry people will  
> be confused by what "overlaying" is doing.
>
> Sincerely,
> Jeffrey
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>
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