Status In progress and completely incomprehensible

Question How does Chandler the PIM elegantly transition into Chandler the GIM (General Information Manager)?

In BrowserDesign, we unabashedly praised the benefits of a faceted classification system for organizing information. Since then, we think we've pinpointed the 6 basic dimensions or facets with which most information can be managed.

1. Kind (different from format). The 7 kinds of information we've identified thus far are: Communications, Calendar, Tasks, Reference (persistent things you keep around for reference), Media (photos, songs, movies), Records (financial, tax, etc) Directory (ie contacts, airlines, hospitals, restaurants, schools)
2. Sphere of life. Personal, Work, Public. Different people will have different spheres. Some individuals will be so important that they will constitute a sphere of their own (ie. Spouse). Some extracurricular activities will be so important that they constitute a sphere of their own (ie. Sphere). We've identified sphere of life to be an important way in which people divide up their information, often to the point of using separate email clients or allotting different times of the day for dealing with information in different spheres.
3. Topic. Subject matter, projects, etc.
4. People. Many people organize all of their email folders by people, institution or client. Certainly who an email is from or to is probably the most common way people sort or search for information in emails.
5. Timeframe. This can be something as specific as a particular hour on a particular day. More likely, people will want to see "recent" things (ie. Last two weeks).
6. Status. Actionable (Now), Deferred (Later), Archived (Done)

Given that screens are only 2 dimensional, how do we express these 6 dimensions in a comprehensible way?

1. Hierarchy? Feels wrong. Anathema to the way faceted classifications work. What does it mean to organized orthogonal groupings into a hierarchical tree?
2. Faceted browser a la iTunes and iPod?

I had high hopes for option #2. But in many ways, it's too heavyweight and too abstract. The problem with faceted browsers is that they don't distinguish between explicitly created groupings and automatically generated attribute-value based groupings. All groupings are presented as equal. There's nothing actually different about these 2 types of groupings, other than that the user would like to distinguish between them. Users don't want to wade through columns and columns of attribute values every time they want to view a set of items. We could certainly force them to do that and then give them option of saving certain settings to a favorites bar. But a favorites bar can only go so far, can only contain so many items.

So in order of importance, the dimensions are organized in a layout hierarchy:

1. Kinds
2. Sphere
3. Explicitly designated attribute-based grouping (ie. Projects, Topics, All items related to a particular person, All items of a certain status, All items of a certain time-frame, etc)

This is taking our orthogonal sidebar design (see SidebarSpec2) to another level by adding a 3rd dimension: Sphere.

Within each explicitly designated attribute-based grouping, items are organized by status. Associated with each explicitly designated attribute-based grouping are a list of the people involved in that grouping, either because they have been explicitly associated with the grouping (via DnD) or because they are mentioned in an attribute (ie. From, To, CC, BCC) of an item in the grouping.

This means, we are proposing a "primary" way to organize things, however, we've built in a few things that will help users transcend the layout hierarchy, to see into the tree inspite of it being a tree:

• Favorites bar where users can store "wormholes" to exactly where they want to go within the hierarchy (even down to the specific item)
• The existence of an "All kinds" mode means that users don't have to delve into a particular Kind to see Spheres and Groupings nested in that Kind. Instead, there is an All mode where users can see All Spheres and All Groupings regardless of Kind.
• Users can have a set of cross-sphere collections where they manage information independent of what sphere it's in. Trash would be the most non-controversial example of this, but some people want to have their Dashboard be sphere-independent as well.
• Users can turn off spheres altogether and view their groupings in a single unified pane.

This generally reminds of the Honeycomb tree maps Rashmi showed me at the FLOSS usability conference where information is organized in a traditional hierarchy, but presented in such a way so that nothing is every hidden, no branch is ever closed, providing users with the easy access of a "flat" list of items without losing groupings. The visualization also gives direct feedback as to how "full" branches are relative to each other. Branches with more children take up more space.

We're not a strict hierarchy, but in order to conserve space in the UI, we need to take on certain aspects of a tree.

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