Feedback requested on Fluid's Date-Time Picker

[Clay Fenlason]

There is much to admire here.

The date picker seems to me fairly sound, but the time picker
wireframes shown here - http://wiki.fluidproject.org/x/_4hI - I find
problematic.

The grid of numbers for option #1, increasing left-to- right and then
top-to-bottom, feels like an odd contrivance that I don't associate
with time in any other context, in software or otherwise.  It's not
immediately clear what the grid of numbers is supposed to represent,
and if I didn't come into these pages already thinking "time picker"
it might have taken a few more seconds to realize what I was looking
at.  Perhaps it matters how I *came* to the picker in the first place?
 How would that introductory wireframe look?

The rolling time picker I have no such difficulty of recognition.
It's like a combination lock or analog dials on old alarm clocks, and
I recognize immediately that the relevant numbers should line up.  The
visible sliding into place provides some satisfaction - I can almost
hear an audible "click."

But when you combine the two, option #2 drops away.  Is there no good
way to combine the rolling time picker with the date picker?

~Clay


On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 5:48 PM, Allison Bloodworth
<abloodworth at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Hello Sakai community!
> At the Fluid Project (http://wiki.fluidproject.org) one of our main
> activities is designing and developing usable and accessible user interface
> components for you to integrate into your applications.
> We hope that the Date-Time Picker we are currently working on could be used
> in many of your applications and would love any feedback you could give us
> on it. See the email below for more info, and free to contact Erin or me (or
> the fluid-work mailing list, in cc:) with any questions. The Date Picker
> Design Overview page
> (http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Date+Picker+Design+Overview)
> also has additional background on the component.
> Thanks very much, and happy holidays!
> Allison
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Allison Bloodworth <abloodworth at berkeley.edu>
> Date: December 18, 2008 8:39:36 PM PST
> To: Fluid Mailing List <fluid-work at fluidproject.org>
> Subject: Date-Time Picker Update
> Hi folks,
> Erin and I have been making progress on the Date-Time Picker, and have some
> new wireframes available for review
> at: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Date+Picker+Wireframes. We
> are still trying to determine whether to use a "tabbed" (see wireframes) or
>  "rolling" time picker (see wireframes
> and  http://ets-dev.berkeley.edu:8901/trunk/html/timepicker.html). If both
> seem like feasible options to the community, we plan to do user testing on
> both of them asap in January. Please let us know if you have feedback on how
> either of these two options would work in your context.
> One potential advantage of the tabbed time picker is that it can be more
> easily combined with the date picker in cases where date-time is a single
> field (e.g. Mneme & Modules in Sakai,
> see http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Date+Picker+Contexts+of+Use).
> We'd be very interested in hearing from the community about whether it would
> be a problem to split date & time into two fields in these (or other)
> situations. If so, we are thinking about other options for combining the
> 'rolling' time picker with the date picker, but are not sure these two
> pieces are well-suited to becoming a combined component.
> We've also been working on localization & internationalization guidelines
> for the Date-Time Picker
> (http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Date+Picker+Functional+Specification),
> and would love to have any input from folks on things we may be missing.
> Finally, we are in the process of creating storycards for the Date Picker
> portion of the component only (since the Time Picker is still in flux).
> Check them out
> at: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Date+Picker+Storycards --
> though they are still in draft form, we'd love to hear from developers as to
> whether the way we've started to organize them makes sense.
> Happy almost holidays, everyone!
> Allison & Erin
> Allison Bloodworth
> Senior User Interaction Designer
> Educational Technology Services
> University of California, Berkeley
> (415) 377-8243
> abloodworth at berkeley.edu
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________________
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>
> Allison Bloodworth
> Senior User Interaction Designer
> Educational Technology Services
> University of California, Berkeley
> (415) 377-8243
> abloodworth at berkeley.edu
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________________
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>
>



-- 
Clay Fenlason
Director, Educational Technology
Georgia Institute of Technology
(404) 385-6644