[Design] Some feedback from a new user

[Mimi Yin]

On Aug 27, 2007, at 7:54 PM, Robin Cottiss wrote:

> 1. The dashboard view seems to use the reminder date/time for an  
> event. I
> was confused by this as I am expecting to see the actual date/time  
> of the
> event. I am not really interested in when I am going to be reminded  
> about an
> event.

Hi Robin,

The dashboard only displays the reminder date/time *IF* it's a custom  
date, not on regular *15 minutes before the meeting* alarms. Can you  
tell me a little more about the kinds events you might add custom  
alarms to?

Our best guess was that if you add a custom alarm date, that date is  
the *next important date* associated with that event. For example,  
I'm invited to a wedding on Sept 16th, but I need to RSVP by Aug 3rd.  
Aug 3rd is the next important date associated with this event. So as  
I'm reviewing my Dashboard to get a sense of all the things I need to  
take care of and when I need to take care of them, it's important to  
call out the Aug 3rd date.

However, I still agree with you that it's also important to be able  
to view events by event date and we've discussed various ways to  
manipulate / customize the columns in the table to show just event  
start dates.

> 3. I finally figured out what the little tick marks are on the monthly
> calendars. I see that they tell you how much of your day is filled  
> with
> appointments/events. Using just the lines next to the dates makes the
> calendar look a little messy. I also thought the ticks might  
> reflect the
> collections but it looks like they aggregate all collections. This  
> might
> reduce the value of the ticks. I created a collection of web  
> conferences. I
> have no intention of going to all these events but they show up as  
> full bars
> on the dates of the conference. It would be nice if the bars  
> reflected the
> collections were currently viewing. Also, because the bars are to  
> the side
> it is not obvious which day they are attached to.

There's actually a way to make the tick-marks only reflect the events  
you want to go to. But the feature is not very discoverable today.   
(We're still trying to work through how best to present this idea to  
users since it overlaps heavily with Event Status and Free/Busy.)

Turn on the Collection>>Keep out of Dashboard menu item and all the  
events in that collection will be excluded from the mini-calendar.


> 5. The ed and cr annotations kept distracting me. Unfortunately my  
> son's
> name is Ed and I create entries that refer to Edward but I kept  
> seeing ed
> and thinking about Edward! Is this meant to be an icon?

Are you sharing your collections with anybody else or sent/received  
email? The cr/ed notation should only appear when the user is trying  
to collaborate. They denote: Created by and Edited by. If you are not  
sharing any collections, then you may have found a bug!

Thanks again for writing up all this feedback!

Mimi

P.S. It is worth noting that it's just as important to call out what  
you *did* like and what you *did* figure out easily. We badly need  
both pluses and minuses in our detective work of  figuring out how to  
best present new concepts to users.