Design Program

The Design Program focuses on figuring out what the major features should look like. As such, it is strongly related to the UIDesignArchives and the FeaturePrioritizationProject^?.

ProjectOverviewTable2005 has a table that organizes all the aspects of all the different pieces of the Chandler project. (This page and that page will soon be reorganized somehow. See FilingDesignArtifacts20031218)

Active contributors:

• MitchKapor, MimiYin, BrianDouglasSkinner, ChaoLam, AndyHertzfeld, DuckySherwood

Design Issues

• DesignSummary (as of 11/14/03)

We plan to tackle the design issues in this order:

1. Generic information management
2. Users and groups
3. Sharing
4. Cross-parcel functionality

Each of these areas is described in a bit more detail below, with the numbers referring to the implementation order.

Design Space

Sharing			Data Feed		Users and groups
Generic information management
IM	Mail	Tasks	Calendar	Notes?
search		filters/auto-categorization		recognizers
end-user scripting/agents		security/privacy		CPIA

See DesignIssues

At the center are five buckets labeled IM, E, C, T, and N. Those buckets represent the basic building blocks of Chandler -- the "capplets" for Instant Messages, Email, Calendar Events, Tasks, and Notes, respectively. Note that while there are interesting scenarios for actions that take place within one E/T/C/N/IM bucket, developing those scenarios is not our top priority right now. We are more interested in developing (or hearing about) scenarios in each logical block in the diagram.

Above and spanning the buckets, labeled with a circled "1", is generic information management -- all the things that we want to be able to do with any arbitrary set of E, T, C, N, and IM items. This includes:

• clustering
• linking (as shown by the arrows between the E/T/C/N/IM buckets)
• viewing in the generic viewer
• putting items into "projects" and "virtual folders"
• adding, creating, and changing ad hoc attributes

Chandler Sharing, labeled as #3, depends upon generic information management, and also applies to all E/T/C/N/IM item types.

Chandler sharing is one way of connecting to various types of information from the Rest Of the World, but there are other Data Feeds: web, bookmarks, URLs, etc. Data Feed is thus placed next to Sharing in the diagram.

Crossing the boundaries of the buckets, generic information management, and sharing is Users and Groups, labeled #2. This includes issues like whether there is a difference between "People" and "Contacts", how to handle "me", creating groups of people with different access controls, etc.

At the bottom are circles labeled #4, which represent various pieces of cross-application functionality: search, filters/categorization, recognizers, end-user scripting/agents, security/privacy, and CPIA.

Meeting Notes

• ViewsMeeting20031030 - Views
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031103 - projects, Views, ClusteredView
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031104 - taxonomy of clusters, Tasks
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031106 - target user, usage scenarios, virtual folders, NotesDetailedFeatureList^?
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031110 - Jungle.SchemaNov2003Questions
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031111 - Jungle.SchemaQuestions20031111
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031113 - Relationships
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031117 - ubiquitous text entry box, clusters, polymorphism
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031118 - SharingDesignIssues
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031120 - SharingDesignIssues
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031124 - SharingDesignIssues
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031125 - inventory of design elements, filters vs. views
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031201 - David Allen work modes, ShouldUsersPrimarilyBeInViewModeOrFilterMode
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031204 - Caterpillar UI
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031208 - ItemCollection
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031209 - one PIM capplet, what do we know, DaveAllenUsagePatterns
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031211 - Caterpillar UI, ZaoBao UI, and Canoga UI
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031215 - 0.3 deliverables, Design Map revision, ZaoBao UI, usage patterns
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031216 - Processing vs. filing, Universal Inbox (PPF)
• DesignIssuesMeeting20031218 - 0.3 UI (with Apps), design artifacts, notes design
• DesignIssuesMeeting20040105 - security and sharing
• DesignIssuesMeeting20040126 - StampingWorkflow and Collections, Stamped Detail View, Sharing

-- DuckySherwood - 04 Nov 2003

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Someone asked why Contacts weren't on the above list. We feel that Chandler is all about helping users "get stuff done", and Contacts are support players in "getting stuff done". Furthermore, Contacts are long-lasting elements -- more like "reference information" -- while E/T/C/IM are (in a perfect world) only germane for a short period before you finish them.

-- DuckySherwood - 12 Nov 2003