Use Cases

• Eli the Executive Assistant is tasked with pulling together all of the printed materials for the next board meeting. This seemingly simple task actually requires Eli to initiate conversations with several different people and coordinate several rounds of discussion before a final list of documents and an itinerary can be collected and finalized. Eli needs to keep track of all of these various 'sub-tasks', phone conversations and documents as he makes progress through this task/project.
• Bart the Busy Body/Coordinator is trying to pull together a line-up of local speakers to give brown-bag talks at his company. In trying to finalize dates and topics, Bart finds he would really like to see an entire conversation thread in a continuous list so that he can keep track of changes and decisions.
• Helen the Hub is preparing for a meeting to has out persistent open issues regarding new hires. She would like to pull together all of the discussions and notes for previous meetings into a single place so that she can easily access them during the meeting.

Usage Patterns

• Spawning sub-tasks
• Tracking conversation threads
• Centralizing relevant material

Structure and Information Architecture

• Relationship_Types.pdf: Relationship_Types.pdf
• Relationship_Types.ppt: Relationship_Types.ppt

• AdhocCollectionsWorkflow
• Any Kind including Notes, Messages, Tasks, Events and Contacts
• A single item can belong to multiple Clusters
• Clusters automatically inherit the Title of the 1st item in the Cluster
• Clusters have explicit ordering
• Clusters contain both sequential relationsips (A is after B) as well as hierarchical relationships (A is inside of B)
  • Items embedded in the Notes field of the item show up in all Clusters associated with that item
  • QuickItemEntry Creating/Embedding items in-line in the Notes of field of another item --> generates a cluster

Viewing Clusters

• Right-click on an item to view clusters associated with that item
• Click on special widget in the detail view to open up a specific cluster in the summary pane
• Special widget to explicitly close the cluster

Interaction Gestures for Creating Clusters

• SummaryTableViewSpec#ClustersStoryboard
• Drag and Drop 1 item onto another
• Open up a Cluster and drag items inside of the cluster to reorder them
• Drag items outside of the cluster into the cluster to place them in a particular order in the cluster
• Drag and hover over an item to temporarily open the cluster in the summary pane

-- MimiYin - 29 Aug 2006