[Design][Sum] triage list view - sorting

[Mimi Yin]

Hi Pieter,

All in all, I think we need more time and real usage to figure out  
the right sorting for the Triage status column.

In the meantime, perhaps we should try and clarify the use cases  
we're optimizing for.

Currently, the use cases for the Dashboard as I understand it is to  
get a lay of the land:
+ Understand what I'm doing NOW
+ Understanding what's coming up on the horizon in LATER
+ Review things I've DONE lately.

That's what 'sorted by Triage status' means to me.

Much of what you describe really sounds to me like you want to review  
your Calendar by Event date to either see what's coming up in your  
schedule and/or find a particular event by date. I think these are  
scenarios are different from the use cases described above.

For such scenarios, I don't think it makes sense to start out sorted  
by Triage status. Really what you want is sorting by Event date.

See more below...

On May 4, 2007, at 3:41 PM, Pieter Hartsook wrote:
> On 5/4/07, Mimi Yin <mimi at osafoundation.org> wrote:
>> Let me see if I can summarize the options here:
>>
>> NOW
>> 1. The order in which items enter into NOW from 'Just NOW' to 'Old  
>> NOW'
>> 2. By event start date/time or custom alarm date/time from 'Recently
>> NOW' to 'Old NOW'. If an item has both, event start/date time always
>> wins.
>> 3. By event start date/time or custom alarm date/time from 'Recently
>> NOW to Old NOW'. If an item has both, the 'next, upcoming date' wins.
>
> I think you also have to consider the time/date an item was manually
> stamped NOW.
>
> I like #3 for the NOW section.

Will it be weird for items to jump to some mid-point in the NOW  
section when they arrive in NOW via a tickler, sharing, email,  
manually marked to be NOW or because they were just created?

We should also keep in mind that we've always wanted to be able to  
explicitly order items in the Dashboard, like you can in Omni- 
Outliner or when people jot down lists in text files or spreadsheets.

How would #3 work with explicit ordering?

>
>>
>> Open Issue for #2 and 3: How do we sub-sort items that are not events
>> and do not have alarms set?
>
> What are examples of these kinds?

My guess is that for many people, most note, message and task items  
will exist without alarms. It's an onerous process that nobody likes  
to do and on Helen the Hub's many 'amorphous tasks' alarm dates are  
hard to set. Items that have some external due date are easy to set  
alarms for (Take pills at xxx, RSVP by xxx, Pay IRS by xxx.) However,  
items for oneself are hard to set alarms for. (Look into xxx, Follow  
up on xxx)

For example, I have a task to 'Deal with Mother's Day'. When do I  
need to do it by? Depends on what I'm trying to do. If I order  
something like a book from Amazon, I could overnight it next Friday.  
If I want to buy something and ship it myself, I need to do that this  
weekend. If I just send a card, I would need to send it out by next  
Wednesday. But even if I had a due date, that wouldn't really help  
me, because really I should be thinking about it way before the due  
date. It won't help me to be reminded of the task Wednesday when I'm  
supposed to mail out my card if I haven't yet bought the card. Really  
I want the task to just stay in my NOW section so I don't lose track it.


>   * Tasks have alarms (due date) - if no alarm set and stamped NOW
> put at end of NOW section, all no alarm Tasks together in alphabetical
> order
>   * unstamped Email message has received date and alarms - if no
> alarm, group no alarm emails together, put in reverse chron order
> (newest arrived emails at the top) at the end of the NOW section.
>   * Notes have alarms - if no alarm, group no alarm Notes together in
> alphabetical order at the end of the NOW section.
>
> I don't like #1 because it is too hard to figure out why the list is
> in the order it is - it makes my head hurt, I spend cycles trying to
> figure it out instead of paying attention to the events, i.e. this
> ordering draws my attention to the tool rather than the work at hand.
>
>> For this reason, I recommend that we sub-sort the NOW section by #1.
>> It approximates how your Email Inbox works, it's sorted in the order
>> that the messages were sent/received.
>>
>>
>> LATER
>> 1. In the order in which items will roll into the NOW section. In
>> other words, By event start date/time or custom alarm date/time from
>> 'Imminently LATER' to 'Far in the Future LATER'. If an item has both,
>> the 'next, upcoming date' wins.
>> 2. By event start date/time or custom alarm date/time from
>> 'Imminently LATER' to 'Far in the Future LATER'. If an item has both,
>> event start/date time always wins.
>>
>> In both cases, I would assume that items that are not event and do no
>> have alarms would be sorted at the bottom as 'Someday Maybes'.
>
>>
>> Open Issue: How do we sub-sort the Someday Maybes?
>> + In the order they were triaged to LATER?
>> + By whatever Date appears in the Date column for each item? Date
>> created? Date last modified? Date sent/received?
>
>
> Group them by kind and sub-sort alphabetically as suggested in the NOW
> section comments above. Make the sort some obvious rule, i.e. sort on
> a field the user can see, not something like item
> creation/modification date.

I think now we're talking about having tertiary sub-sorting. How  
would we sort items that are of more than one kind?

>
>>
>> I recommend that we go with #1. If you're scanning your Later section
>> to get a sense of what's coming up, you want to see everything that
>> will happen in the next week. If you have an event planned for
>> September, but you have a custom alarm set on it to remind you to buy
>> tickets for it by the end of next week, you want to see that item on
>> the horizon. In a sense, that's why you put that custom alarm on that
>> event, precisely so you wouldn't forget it about it until September.
>
> I agree with #1.
>>
>> DONE
>> 1. The order in which items were triaged to DONE.
>> 2. By event start date/time or custom alarm date/time from
>> 'Imminently LATER' to 'Far in the Future LATER'. If an item has both,
>> event start/date time always wins.
>> 3. By event start date/time or custom alarm date/time from
>> 'Imminently LATER' to 'Far in the Future LATER'. If an item has both,
>> the 'most recent date' wins.
>
> I think you have a cut/paste errors here should #2 be:
>
>> 2. By event start date/time or custom alarm date/time from
>> 'recently DONE' to 'Far in the Past DONE'. If an item has both,
>> event start/date time always wins.

Yes :)

>
> If this is what you meant, I prefer this.
>
> and #3 be:
>
>> 3. By event start date/time or custom alarm date/time from
>> 'recently DONE' to 'Far in the Past DONE'. If an item has both,
>> the 'most recent date' wins.
>
>>
>> Open Issues for #2 and 3:
>> + How do we sub-sort items that are not events and do not have alarms
>> set? Do they go above or below the items with event date/times and
>> custom alarms?
> I think they should go below to be consistent with the NOW and  
> LATER sections
>
> Emails should sort by received date (if no alarm is set)
>
>> + How should those items be sub-sorted?
>> - In the order they were triaged to DONE
>
> No, but I still think it would be lovely to add text to the note field
> when any item is manually stamped DONE with the date of that
> transaction.
>
> ;  OR
>> - By whatever Date appears in the Date column for each item? Date
>> created? Date last modified? Date sent/received?
>
> Yes to whatever Date appears.
>>
>> I think Pieter has a point that people will remember past items by
>> their event date/time rather than by their custom alarm date/time. So
>> I would recommend #2 over #3. However, I still wonder about #1
>> (assuming we can make it so that when you import/subscribe to a
>> calendar, most of the items are sub-sorted in the DONE section by
>> event start-time) because it avoids having to answer the Open Issues.
>>
>> Mimi
>>
>>