[Dev] Re: [Design] Chandler in a Nutshell

[Mimi Yin]

Hi Selva,

I think there may be a basic misunderstanding about Stamping that may  
clear up some of the concerns you site later on as well.

Stamping is more than just annotating, it's the process of changing  
one Kind of item into another.

So for example, if you receive an email like: Hey, want to have lunch  
next Tuesday at 2PM?, you've really received an unstructured event  
invitation.

So the user can add structure to the item post-hoc by Stamping the  
Email with the "Put on Calendar" stamp, thereby turning it into an  
Email + Event = Invitation item.

So the way you would distinguish between Emails, Events and Tasks is  
with icons in the Summary Table view. There is a separate column for  
each Kind.

We specifically didn't want to separate out the different Kinds of  
information into different panes for a few reasons:

1. Makes the UI too complex: The UI already has 4 panes + 2 toolbars.  
A separate pane for each Kind would mean 8 panes + 2 toolbars.

2. Items can be of multiple Kinds, so you would get a lot of item  
duplication. Email+Event items would show up twice. Scheduled tasks  
that had been Emailed would show up three times.

3. We feel it's natural for email to drown out the other Kinds. Most  
people only ever use the email client portion of their PIMs, keeping  
track of tasks and calendar events in their email. When they need to  
write a memo to themselves, they send themselves an email, or keep  
them in a drafts folder.

4. As a result, we felt it was important not to divvy up the  
information into too many different silos. Instead, everything in the  
NOW section of your Dashboard view represents some mini-task to you,  
regardless of whether or not you consider it to be a capital-T task  
that you want to show up on your Task list. (ie. Emails to read, Next  
meeting in 15 minutes, Draft of a reply you need to send out, etc.)  
And it's all queued up and prioritized relative to one another in a  
single list.

You can find more on stamping here:
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Projects/StampingWorkflow

The other issue you raise of separating out "New, Unread" items from  
the "Now" section is an interesting one. It's more in line with David  
Allen's Getting Things Done methodology, but we're afraid  that it  
goes against the grain of human nature.

People feel a need to "sit in the place where they get New  
email" (aka their Inbox). And if we provide them with an Inbox that  
is separate from the NOW section, they will just mean that they won't  
actually use the "Now" section. Instead, they'll just stay in the  
Inbox area and triage items into Later and Done.

But it's a problem we're aware of. We may offer a way for users to  
set preferences as to whether they want a separate Inbox that is not  
the same as their Now section. But out of the box, the design will  
probably be the simpler: 3 section view.

I'm also about to post some clarifications on the Chandler Virtuality  
slide. It follows from the Chandler Virtuality Presentation slides I  
posted a few weeks ago.

Mimi


On Sep 18, 2005, at 11:53 AM, selva r wrote:

> Hi Mimi,
>
> Nice job with the summary.  Not being a developer,
> there were a couple of things I couldn’t understand.
>
> What is the difference b/w stamping and annotating?
> Is annotating basically editing?
>
> I was unable to clearly understand what the virtuosity
> screen was about.  Could you explain this screen in
> more detail?
>
> Regarding the Dashboard view, there are a couple of
> modifications I would suggest.
>
> One problem is that the unclassified items are
> interspersed with scattered Now Box items, and Later
> items.
>
> It may be better to allow the Dashboard view to
> automatically sort all untriaged items on top of the
> list, then followed by the Now Box items, then Later
> items, then Done items.  Hence, when a new email
> arrives in the mail box, the user could then triage it
> into, say, the Later Box, and the email would then
> automatically get moved to the Later Box section of
> the list (which would be below the Now Box section).
>
> Another problem I see here is that email, which tends
> to be a high volume application, is drowning out the
> other sub-app items making them hard to visualize in
> context of priority.
>
>
> One solution for this may be to have a separate frame
> for listing Memos & ToDo files, and, in the future,
> another separate frame for listing OpenOffice files
> (Writer, Calc, and Impress) that have been tagged and
> assigned to the Chandler repository.  Hence, the email
> list frame could be expanded to the right with two
> smaller frames to the right side as sketched below:
>
> _________________________________________________
> I    frame 1                I        I
> I                I        I
> I                I    2    I
> I                I        I
> I                I        I
> I                I        I
> I                I_______________I
> I                I        I
> I                I    3    I
> I                I        I
> I                I        I
> I                I        I
> I_______________________________I_______________I
>
>
> In the sketch, Frame 1 would be the email list view.
> Frame 2 could list all Memo and ToDo items according
> to the triage colors.  Frame 3 could list all OOo
> files triaged and classified into the Chandler
> repository.
>
> Items in each list would of course be automatically
> sorted so that unclassified items are on top, Now Box
> items are next up, Later Box items after that, and
> Done Box items at the bottom of the lists.
>
> Finally, since these lists may eventually get kind of
> large for some users, I would suggest to provide five
> tabs along the right hand margin to the Dashboard
> window:
>
> 1) the default tab for viewing all items in each
> frame,
> 2) one tab for viewing just the unclassified items in
> each frame,
> 3) one tab for just the Now Box items in each frame,
> 4) one tab for viewing just Later Box items in each
> frame,
> 5) one tab for viewing just the Done Box items in each
> frame,
>
> There is of course one other important shortcoming I
> have not yet discussed, and that is to include a view
> of today’s appointments in the Datebook application.
>
> However, this could be done easily by the user should
> they wish to do so by opening up the Day view of the
> Datebook subapp and positioning it where ever they
> want it to be, for example, to the left of the
> Dashboard view, and then selecting Preferences ->
> View-> Name current view -> Set current view as
> default when Chandler is launched.
>
> Finally, some (like myself) may find it useful to have
> the option for Chandler to display the weather
> forecast for today and the coming week along the
> bottom of the Dashboard screen by automatically
> retrieving it from the web as soon as the computer
> goes on line.
>
> This might be done by selecting Preferences ->
> Dashboard -> show latest weather forecast along bottom
> of Dashboard.
>
> Regards,
> Selva
>
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