Re: Designing "Finding and Reminding"

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Thanks for starting this Federico! I'm going to be rather selective in
what I respond to...

Federico Mena Quintero wrote:

<snip>
> 1. We add a time-based view of the user's work - a "journal", or
> "history", or whatever you want to call it.  In it we present files
> that you have used, conversations you have had, web pages you have
> visited, etc.  
> 
> By now everyone is familiar with my old GUADEC presentation - 
> http://people.gnome.org/~federico/docs/2008-GUADEC/html/index.html ,
> the Zeitgeist and gnome-activity-journal efforts, and similar.
</snip>

I'm not convinced that a journal view is beneficial. Why do I need to
know which day or week I touched something? Most of the time, I just
want to see what I handled recently (trip and slip) and what I've marked
to come back to (the grip).

I also don't see how a journal is useful for non-recent items. The
further ago it is that I used something, the less likely I am to
remember when I used it. :)

A segmented time based view could also not work well with high or low
levels of activity.

<snip>
> We can start to have "trip" by presenting items from your to-do list
> right in the journal, as those items have due dates, anyway.  Also, we
> can let you mark files so that you'll be reminded about them later (in
> Getting Things Done's parlance, this means having a "tickler file"
> right in the journal).  Think of right-clicking on a PDF, and being
> able to say, "remind me to read this PDF in two weeks, because my
> homework about it is due in three weeks".
</snip>

<snip>
> * The "reminding" part.  Seth Nickell called it a task pooper -
> http://blogs.gnome.org/seth/2010/02/26/let-the-wild-rumpus-begin/ .
> The "Getting Things Done" people call a similar concept a "tickler
> file".  The idea is that you put stuff in time buckets in the future
> (today, next week, next month) and you get reminded when the time
> comes.  We'll have to fine-tune the interactions; this has to be as
> simple as dragging a file and dropping it in a pooper-like bucket (and
> probably writing a description of *what* to do with the file).
</snip>

Both the task pooper and the tickler idea sound a bit annoying. I don't
want things jumping up at me when I'm in the middle of something. The
design ethos of GNOME 3 is that people shouldn't be interrupted.

Right now, my preferred solution to the reminding element would be a
bookmarking (or 'starring') facility.

<snip>
> * Present related files to the ones that you selected (Zeitgeist
> already has the data-mining smarts to do this).
<snip>

How is this useful? What kinds of relatedness have you got in mind?

> Feedback is welcome!

I'd be interested in hearing how you think your design proposal compares
to the one that Jon set out a little over a year ago. I presume you
think that yours is better. ;) Why?

Allan

[1]
http://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/2010/04/07/the-grip-the-trip-and-the-slip/
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