Sidebar Spec 2

Status Putting together a verbal summary of ideal sidebar behavior for Kibble (not .5)

This probably ultimately belongs in the Chrome spec, but I thought this might help some of the engineers pin down what the desired behavior is.

Goals

• Navigation is core to Chandler is an information management tool. It is both the primary navigation and organizational affordance in Chandler and our best opportunity for clearly communicating our unique data model. However, we are also aware of existing paradigms and

• In end-user terms
• Feels like an existing PIM
• Reduce complexity of current sidebars
• One-click access to most common views: "Inbox", My calendar, My tasks
• Easy way to review my schedule, review my tasks, review my schedule, review my mailing lists, review my projects
• Easy way to overlay multiple calendars
• Ability to view a collection across all kinds
• Not have to understand rules to do any of this

• In terms of features
• Global name change
• Bi-directionality
• Discrete sharing units

Structure

In order to discuss structure, let's return to some of the end-user goals discussed above:

• Reduce complexity of current sidebars. Current sidebars contain:
  • Kind based views
  • Topic / collection / category based views
  • Status based views
  • sample_sidebar.gif:
    

• Reduce unecessary repetition in the sidebar
  • If we put all navigation into the sidebar like Outlook, even without any hierarchy, you end up with a mess.
  • That's a lot of items in the sidebar 18! when the user only really has 7 collections: All, In, Out, devlist, Home, OSAF, Work
  • long_sidebar.gif:
    

• It gets worse! How are these collections inter-related?
• Right now, if you create a Home folder in Apple mail and then you create a Home calendar in iCal, the two have nothing to do with each other and there is no way for you to see a centralized Home collection that contains both mail and event items.
• In Chandler, we want to do better than that. We want users to be able to create mixed collections (ie. Home). But they also need to be able to view these mixed collections by kind: ie. Home calendar, Home mail.
• As a result, all of these collections will have rule-relationships:
  • Green = All
  • Blue = Kind
  • Orange = Collection
• Others don't: Red (I don't show all of the collections that don't have relationships to each other, there wasn't enough room.)
• And remember, the rules have to be bi-directional.
• That's a lot of rules to set up to get some very basic functionality!
• Even if we did it for the user, the sidebar is a visual misrepresentation of the relationships between the collections.
• sidebar_rules.gif:
  

• Sample rules
• Home.root
• Home.mail
• Home.events
• Home.tasks

• Rules for Home.root
• If user changes name of Home.mail, Home.events, Home.tasks, change my name.
• If user adds, removes, edits any item in Home.mail, Home.events, Home.tasks, do the same to me.

• Rules for Home.mail
• If user changes name of Home.root, Home.events, Home.tasks, change my name.
• If user adds, removes, edits a mail item in Home.root, Home.events, Home.tasks, do the same to me.

• Rules for Home.events
• If user changes name of Home.root, Home.mail, Home.tasks, change my name.
• If user adds, removes, edits an event item in Home.root, Home.mail, Home.tasks, do the same to me.

• Rules for Home.tasks
• If user changes name of Home.root, Home.mail, Home.events, change my name.
• If user adds, removes, edits a task item in Home.root, Home.mail, Home.events, do the same to me.

• How do we express these relationships in a better way?
• As a grid where the:
  • x-axis is the Application selector
  • y-axis is the Sidebar
  • and the cells display an intersection of the two
• Advantages
  • No unecessary repetition: Home, Home mail, Home events, Home tasks
  • Clearer display of rule relationship between collections (ie. Home and Home mail)
• grid_sidebar.gif:
  

• A real-life example
• grid_family.gif:
  

Workflow

Rather than presenting users with 1001 options right off the bat, which of these 1001 folders do you want to click on? We stage the question, allowing users to pick from a limited set of options before offering them a wider selection of choices.

1. What do you want to do?
   • Manage information: Select All
   • Read / review my mail: Select Mail
   • Schedule my life: Select Events
   • Manage / review my tasks: Select Tasks
2. Do you want to be more specific?
   • Home-related
   • Work-related
   • OSAF-related
   • Chrome-related
   • Detail view-related
   • Soccer-related
   • Milestone release-related
   • Apps-related

• Clothing store analogy
• Stores organize their clothing wrt Activity mode: What occasion are you shopping for?
  • Going to the gym
  • Going to work
  • Going backpacking
  • Holiday party
• Only the thrift organizes their clothing wrt category of clothing or color
  • Pants
  • Blouses
  • Skirts
  • Dresses
  • Turtlenecks
  • Crew necks
  • Capris
  • Shorts
  • T-shirts

Sidebar elements

• OOTB collection icons - Only the "All collection" changes with the selection in the App bar
• Collection name - Only the "All collection" changes with the selection in the App bar. OOTB collection names are not changeable. All name changes to user-defined collections should apply across all 4 application areas.
• Sharing status icon - Changes per App bar selection
• Greyed out (I have no items in me) status - Changes per App bar selection
• # of unread / unseen items - Changes per App bar selection
• # of search results - Changes per App bar selection
• Sidebar ordering of collections - Fixed: OOTB and then in Alphabetical order
• Sidebar selection - Changes per App bar selection
• Turn on sidebar collection (Apple iCal calendar overlay feature) - Changes per App bar selection (replaces shift-click)

Summary table view settings (Ideal configuration, not for .5)

• Columns displayed - 1 setting per Application bar selection
• Column ordering - 1 setting per Application bar selection
• Column width - 1 setting per Application bar selection
• Column sort - 1 setting per Collection per Application bar selection
• Summary view width - 1 setting per Application bar selection
• Item selected and scrollbar positioning - 1 setting per instance of a collection per Application bar selection (ie. The same collection is loaded into 2 different tabs. Each instance of the collection maintains it's own selection.) Since this is hard to do, fallback might be, 1 setting per Collection per Application bar selection.

Summary calendar view settings

• Day view v. Week view - 1 setting per Application bar selection
• Date range - 1 setting per Application bar selection
• Calendar color - 1 setting per Application bar selection
• Item selected - 1 setting per Collection per Application bar selection
• Which calendar is on top (Apple iCal overlay feature) - 1 setting per Application bar selection

• In, Out, Junk, Trash collections in the Events application area would ideally be in Summary Table view.

Sidebar Behaviors

• All application area
• All collections are black
• All collection displays icon and collection name that is specific to the All application area
• Hawaii is partially shared OUT
• Holidays is shared but there's an error
• Home is partially shared IN
• OSAF is entirely shared OUT
• Work is entirely shared IN
• Tab name displays All my items
• Summary pane displays All summary table view
• Summary table view displays all user content items in the repository except for items that have been Junked or Trashed
• All.gif:
  

• Mail application area
• Holidays collection is greyed out because it contains no mail items
• All collection displays icon and collection name that is specific to the Mail application area
• Hawaii mail is not shared
• Holidays is entirely shared but there's an error
• Home mail is not shared
• OSAF is entirely shared OUT
• Work is entirely shared IN
• Tab name displays All my events
• Summary pane displays Mail summary table view
• Summary table view displays all user mail items in the repository except for mail items that have been Junked or Trashed
• Mail.gif:
  

• Events application area
• designlist and devlist collections are greyed out because it contains no events items
• All collection displays icon and collection name that is specific to the Events application area
• Holidays calendar, which has been assigned the color pink, is persistently turned on. (Not reflected in the calendar summary view.)
• User mouses over a collection to reveal the checkmark affordance (as shown next to the Home calendar). User must click in the checkmark area to persistently turn on the Home collection. Clicking on the Home collection row in general will simply select it temporarily.
• Hawaii events are shared OUT
• Holidays is entirely shared but there's an error
• Home events are shared IN
• OSAF is entirely shared OUT
• Work is entirely shared IN
• Tab name displays All my mail
• Summary pane displays Events calendar summary view for all Events collections except for In, Out, Junk and Trash
• Summary pane displays Events summary table view for In, Out, Junk and Trash
• Summary table view displays all user event items in the repository except for event items that have been Junked or Trashed
• Events.gif:
  

• Tasks application area
• Out, Trash, designlist, devlist, Holidays, OSAF are greyed out because it contains no task items
• All collection displays icon and collection name that is specific to the Tasks application area
• Hawaii tasks are shared OUT
• Holidays is entirely shared but there's an error
• Home tasks are not shared
• OSAF is entirely shared OUT
• Work is entirely shared IN
• Tab name displays All my tasks
• Summary pane displays Tasks summary table view
• Summary table view displays all user task items in the repository except for task items that have been Junked or Trashed
• Tasks.gif:
  

• Greyed out collections
• In Mail, Events, Task application areas, collections grey out if they do not contain any items of the selected kind.
• Summary pane displays an explanatory message.
• Greyed_out.gif:
  

• Unread and unseen items
• Collections containing unread items are bold.
• # of unread items are displayed in parentheses next to collection, also in bold.
• Note: Unread items include not only unread mail but items that have been edited or newly added to shared collections.
• Unread_unseen.gif:
  

• Search results
• User types in "Re:" into the search field
• Chandler searches entire respository
• Summary pane displays search results for selected collection
• Sidebar displays # of search results in parentheses next to each collection name
• If a collection contains no search results, it does not display anything next to the collection name
• No bolding
• Search_results.gif:
  

• Download the Photoshop Demo
• If you have photoshop, download this file and you can click the layers on and off for a more realistic experience of the sidebar.
• SidebarBehaviors.psd:

Open issues

• Loading collections into the summary view that don't live in the sidebar
• Trays in the sidebar

-- MimiYin - 05 Nov 2004

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How about getting rid of the Microsoft "innovation" of "personalizing" things by the constant use of "My" (My Computer, etc.). In a personal information manager, may we not assume the information is "mine" unless I create another category--and name it correspondingly? DavidNeeley^? 20 Dec 2004