[Design] Re: Assigning 'soft-deadlines' to items as a way to prioritize LATER items

[Bryan Stearns]

(I'm still not clear on some of this, and we're both starting vacations 
today. I'll reply when I get back ...Bryan)

Mimi Yin wrote:
> Thanks for responding so quickly Bryan. See in-line:
> 
> On Oct 19, 2007, at 11:26 AM, Bryan Stearns wrote:
> 
>> Mimi,
>>
>> I'd need more information to be able to answer that question... I'm 
>> not sure what you're asking for, in a couple of dimensions:
>>
>> I don't understand how much dynamic behavior you're asking for... We 
>> have to have a way to order items by an unchanging hard date & time, 
>> and it's important that two items ordered "by date" don't change 
>> ordering with the passage of time.
>>
>> (If you want that, you'll need to specify exactly how you want the 
>> ordering to change over time, and I'll figure out how hard that would 
>> be. Two things that make this really hard: sharing items between users 
>> with different timezones; performance impact of dynamically resorting 
>> items continually. This also means: I don't know how to decide how to 
>> order "This Week", a hard date of Thursday, and "Next Week".)
> 
> I don't think items will re-sort continually. It's more that as time 
> passes, something that was tickled for Next Week, will eventually change 
> to be This Week (as it next week becomes this week). So what I'm asking 
> is, can we change the text in the Date column to say This Week.
> 
> But if we need to display the hard-date based on the soft-name that 
> would be a good first pass. We could eventually enhance the UI to add 
> subsections in the Later section, but I won't go into detail about that 
> right now, because I think that's whole other Pandora's Box.
> 
>>
>> Assuming we did calculate a hard date at the point when user chooses a 
>> soft name, adding the additional menu items to the alarm dropdown 
>> would not be that hard. You'd just need to tell me exactly how each 
>> choice would be turned into a hard date/time at which an alarm would 
>> fire:
>> - "End of week" would turn into 5:00 PM this coming Friday, but what 
>> if it's 5:05PM on a Friday?
> 
> I think it'd be okay to be dumb about this.
> 
>> - I'm not sure when the "This Month" alarm should fire... midnight on 
>> the last day of the month? 5:00PM on the last business day? What if 
>> it's after 5:00PM on the last day of the month?
> 
> 5:00PM on the last day. Again, I think it's okay if we're dumb about this.
> 
>> - Should "Next Month" fire at the beginning of the month, or the end?
> 
> Beginning. 8:00 AM of the 1st day if we're displaying a hard-date in the 
> Date column. Midnight if we're displaying soft-date.
> 
>> - I'm not sure of the "Business Days" definition; is it always M-F 
>> everywhere, and not user-customizable or localizable?
> 
> I actually think I'd like hold off on the " In ... ( Days / Business 
> Days / Weeks / Months)" option. There are lots of complicated issues to 
> resolve. For example, if I say in 4 days, do I want to see 'in 4 days'? 
> or do I want to see 'Next Tuesday' in the Date column?
> 
> So then the first batch of options would be:
>>> + End of Day
>>> + Tomorrow
>>> + End of Week
>>> + Next Week
>>> + This Month
>>> + Next Month
>>> + Custom
> 
> 
>> etc.
>>
>> As far as what to show in the Date column: I'm not sure exactly what 
>> you're asking for, or how it should change over time. We could store a 
>> flag that says "always show 'Next week' for this", but when should 
>> that change?
> 
> I think...
> Tomorrow would change to say Today at midnight.
> Next Week would change to say This Week at midnight next Monday.
> Next Month would change to say This Month at midnight on the 1st of the 
> Month.
> 
> Basically, the text would change when the hard-date tickler fires.
> 
> There's the problem of what happens when the stated time passes. Do we 
> say Last Week? 2 weeks ago? 3 weeks ago? 83 weeks ago?
> 
> We could probably get away with just displaying the hard-date (no time) 
> once the time passes.
> 
> How do we define the 'end-date/time' for these soft-dates?
> + End of Day: 5PM of Today
> + Tomorrow: Midnight day after tomorrow
> + This Week/Next Week: Midnight of Monday of the following week
> + This Month/Next Month: Midnight of the first day of the following month
> 
> Whew. Those were good questions...
> 
>