Feedback requested on Fluid's Date-Time Picker
Allison Bloodworth
abloodworth at berkeley.edu
Wed Dec 24 22:30:48 UTC 2008
Hi Clay,
Thanks much for your feedback! I've put my comments inline below.
Allison
On Dec 22, 2008, at 4:36 PM, Clay Fenlason wrote:
> 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.
I've added headers for "Hour" and "Minutes" in the tabbed Time Picker
(we'd already included them in the 24-hour version), which I hope will
help make this clearer. We were trying to keep the date and time
picker the same shape to preserve the "tab" metaphor, and we thought
this was the best way to arrange the numbers to accomplish that. We've
also talked about whether the numbers should ascend vertically or
horizontally (while staying in the same shape) and the horizontal
arrangement seemed to make the most sense for a number of reasons,
such as the fact that is the way the calendar arranges its numbers.
I've attached an old screenshot of what it looked like before with the
numbers going the other way--if this seems to work better for some
reason let us know.
> Perhaps it matters how I *came* to the picker in the first place?
> How would that introductory wireframe look?
Good point! This would be much easier to see in a storyboard. As I
needed to create one for user testing, I got a start on one today: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Date+Picker+Storyboard+-+Selecting+Opening+Date+and+Time+-+Tabbed+Timepicker
. Keep in mind that this storyboard is somewhat experimental at this
point and may be modified as I'm not positive the tabs should appear
when dealing with separate date & time fields. In the two separate
fields scenario it is also possible to use completely separate date
and time pickers (e.g. either the rolling time picker or the tabbed
time picker without the tabs--realizing we need a new name for that!)
of your choice as is done here: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Date+Picker+Storyboard+-+Selecting+Opening+Date+and+Time
.
I think tabbed Date-Time picker works best with a combined date-time
field (e.g. in Mneme, see http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Date+Picker+Contexts+of+Use)
. We think the tabbed version would "flow" better than two separate
and differently shaped pickers would when moving through date and time
in a single field (it wouldn't even move as the user moves through the
field--just the tabs would change), and will work on the combined date-
time field storyboard to illustrate this next.
Since Sakai is a context that seems to require a combined date-time
picker and we want to avoid multiple date-time pickers there, we are
thinking the tabbed version may be best there. It can be a date picker
only, a time picker only, or a combined date-time picker and still be
consistent.
>
>
> 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?
We have thought long and hard about this, but have not come up with a
good way to combine them to handle a single date-time field--
especially the small fields in Mneme. (Any ideas are welcome!) On
click we could consider expanding the date-time field from a single
into multiple fields in a Google calendar-like manner (see http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Date+Picker+Competitive+Analysis)
using some sort of overlay, but that might obscure important related
dates around it. We've also been told there may be some technical
issues with making sure the rolling time picker is placed right around
the text field which would probably further complicate the process of
combining them.
If the tabbed time picker does well in user testing, I'm guessing we
will move forward with that component (first). Though there were some
problems in our initial user test (on paper) of the rolling time
picker, we plan to pursue further testing of it using an interactive
prototype and to determine whether we want to move forward with that
as a (most likely) separate component (e.g. a time picker only).
>
>
> ~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
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________________
>> fluid-work mailing list - fluid-work at fluidproject.org
>> To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives,
>> see http://fluidproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fluid-work
>>
>> Allison Bloodworth
>> Senior User Interaction Designer
>> Educational Technology Services
>> University of California, Berkeley
>> (415) 377-8243
>> abloodworth at berkeley.edu
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________________
>> fluid-work mailing list - fluid-work at fluidproject.org
>> To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives,
>> see http://fluidproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fluid-work
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Clay Fenlason
> Director, Educational Technology
> Georgia Institute of Technology
> (404) 385-6644
> _______________________________________________________
> fluid-work mailing list - fluid-work at fluidproject.org
> To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives,
> see http://fluidproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fluid-work
Allison Bloodworth
Senior User Interaction Designer
Educational Technology Services
University of California, Berkeley
(415) 377-8243
abloodworth at berkeley.edu
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