TAKEAWAY:

Where users sit should not be defined around any of the following:

• Mine versus Not-Mine;
• New versus NOW;
• Home versus Work; because...

None of these map to what users want to see at any given time.

Instead, FOCUS is a fluid concept that spans all of these areas.

• FOCUS:
  

BACKGROUND

Assumptions:

• The Dashboard will replace your Inbox
• As a result, you will want to sit in your Dashboard all of the time

Point of Contention

• You want ALL of your Items in there, regardless of whether they're Mine versus Not-mine

Over time, our understanding of user usage patterns around processing information, managing focus and search have matured and this is what we have learned:

• The Email Inbox is an unfortunate conflation of where you sit all day long and where you process new Information; however

• The important distinction to draw is NOT between NEW and NOW; instead
• The important distinction to draw is between IN-FOCUS and OUT-OF-FOCUS; furthermore

• The important distinction to draw is NOT between MINE and NOT-MINE; instead
• The important distinction to draw is between IN-FOCUS and OUT-OF-FOCUS

Why do we believe this?

• In the research we've read and the user interviews we've conducted, users universally complain about 1 of the following:
  • If they didn't use filters to automatically file certain emails out of their Inbox, they were getting too much email, it was distracting them and it was making it hard for them concentrate on what they needed to get done.
  • If they did use filters, they complained that they often forgot to check-in on folders

• • Users often keep their work email and home email separate
  • Users often separated out mailing lists from personal email, however non-personal email occupied a wide spectrum from peripheral, bordering on irrelevant to oftentimes more important than personal email.
  • Users often overlay different sets of calendars, depending on what they're FOCUSING ON at the moment.

This led us to conclude that:

At any given time, if you're FOCUSED ON an area of responsibility (Personal, Work, Family) you want to see NEW Items as they come in. Because that is what you're focusing on.

However, if you're NOT FOCUSED ON an area of responsibility, you DON'T want to see NEW Items as they come in. That's simply distracting.

How do we allow users to control which area of responsibility they're focusing on at any given moment?

• A while back, we introduced the notion of Spheres, which roughly corresponds to FOCUS areas.
• However, I'd like to tease out the Spheres concept before we conflate the two:

Before building in UI that maps to Spheres (e.g. If a Collection in the sidebar corresponds roughly to an area of responsibility, then a Sphere would be a 'tray' of Collections or a group of Collections).

We can learn a lot about Spheres by watching how users use overlays in the sidebar. Overlays can be Chandler's primary affordance for managing FOCUS.

FOCUS largely corresponds to Spheres, however, occasionally FOCUS will straddle multiple Spheres. (e.g. When planning a family vacation, a user may want to keep their Work calendar overlaid, in order to take work-related milestone dates into consideration when picking vacation dates.)

As a result, there is value in first trying out Overlays before we implement Spheres. Spheres as we originally conceived of them (as a single layer of hierarchy in the sidebar) may not be the right affordance for managing FOCUS.

The ultimate takeaway however, is that FOCUS is fluid and impossible for users to define up-front with rules about what goes into the Dashboard and what doesn't go into the Dashboard.

PROPOSAL

Reposition the Dashboard and return it to it's original state as the true 'ALL' collection. The Dashboard is where everything goes, no matter what.

• Perhaps the Dashboard is not where users sit all the time?
• Instead, it's simply where users go once or twice a day or once or twice a week to make sure they haven't missed something

It's where users go to check up on (aka PULL) new information.

So then, where do users sit all the time?

In various configurations of overlays of their user-defined collections.

• The Collections an user has overlaid at any given time = FOCUS.
• FOCUS = Where users want to have new information PUSHED to them.
• With overlays, FOCUS shifts fluidly, one area of responsibility, one collection at a time;
• This allows users to shift FOCUS without feeling like they are switching context.

CAVEAT

We recognize that some users simply won't want to bother with user-defined collections at all. Instead they will simply have a single Dashboard collection where everything goes no matter what and they will sit in it happily all the time. This proposal does not preclude this usage style.

RELATED PROBLEM THAT SUPPORTS REPOSITIONING THE DASHBOARD TO BE THE 'ALL' COLLECTION ONCE AGAIN

In iPhoto and iTunes, when you import pictures or music you have the following options wrt organization:

• Do nothing. Add new pictures and music to the Library.
• Add new pictures and music to 1 or more Albums or Playlists
• Tag new pictures and music

In Chandler however, if you don't want to include an import or subscription in your Dashboard, you have to add it to the sidebar, either as a new collection or into an existing collection.

When we have Tags and Labels, we will want to allow users to Label Items on import/subscribe as well.

If we redefine the Dashboard to be the 'All' collection again, then we will once again provide users with an easy way to get data into Chandler, without having to make decisions about where that information should go.

FALLOUT

• This not change current notions of mine versus not-mine. It will require that we change our language a bit. Instead of 'Keep items out of the Dashboard', users can designate events in certain collections to be 'included in my free-busy report'.

• The Preview Pane displays events that have been 'included in my free-busy report.'

• Current rules about mine-ness overriding not-mine-ness on individual Items would still apply.

-- MimiYin - 15 Jun 2006