BayCHI March 14, 2006, program: Chandler is trying our exposure to too much information and not enough time to process, make decisions from the information available. Despite being in the information age, most of our decisions are still based on gut instinct, high-level impressions, tunnel vision (knee-jerk reaction), or someone else�s summary. GTD or Getting Things Done is a task management system or methodology. It is a way of life. It is about putting things where they mean something to you. It is a trusted system. A trusted system is one that is complete and up-to-date. The relationship between Chandler and GTD is such that Chandler is like a Unitarian church in relation to GTD. Chandler deals with the "spirit of the law" as opposed to the "letter of the law". Chandler picked out high level concepts that are universal and implemented a system aligned with GTD.

1. PERSONAL INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE AND CHANDLER Too much information No time to understand it

3. WHAT IS GTD A task management methodology. { or } A way of life. Put things where they mean something to you Mind like water A Trusted System is one that is Complete and Up-to-date

4. OUR RELATIONSHIP TO GTD Spirit of the law. { v. } Letter of the law We’re sort of the Unitarian Church in relation to GTD Picked out high-level concepts that we feel are universal Paid less attention to the specifics of the methodology that we feel were developed to fit into the framework of how existing software tools behave

5. WHAT IS CHANDLER? An inter-“Personal” Information Manager and Platform Sharing and Collaboration "Personal" is in quotations because our definition of Personal is at the same time both different and broader than traditional notions of Personal. Extensible with the ability to define new kinds of data from a broad range of sources: Flickr, del.icio.us, Amazon, eBay, Blogs via RSS and Web Services

6. A COMMON GOAL To help people Get stuff done . Efficiently. Without losing focus on what’s important. In order to do that, we must help people answer the question on a moment by moment basis: What is the best use of my time right now?

7. WHO IS OUR TARGET USER? THE KNOWLEDGE WORKER. Not just someone who gets a lot of email or signs up for a lot of newsletters. The knowledge worker is someone who is regularly bombarded with ill-defined tasks, someone who doesn’t appear to be “doing” or “producing” much, except that the success or failure of an endeavor depends on their ability to define, drive and close on “virtual” work items. Increasingly, we are all becoming knowledge workers. (Customer Service Rep example.)

8. OVERVIEW: SYMPTOMS, PROBLEMS, SOLUTIONS I don't write everything down I keep stuff I’m working on, open on my Desktop I just keep everything in my Inbox I keep a to-do list in my Drafts folder I email tasks and documents to myself I miss important emails I don't bother assigning due dates anymore I'm always over-committing myself I make lots of lists, but I never go back to them My notebook is write-only I keep it all open on the desktop GTD takes 3 days to set up Just add items Where do I put this so I will come across it at the right place, at the right time? Technology-centric organization of data LINEAR and BINARY workflow structure Location-based organizational paradigm Centralized Collection Bin Stamping Organizing around User Semantics Managing FOCUS with Triage Making progress iteratively Multiple views of the same data Connect the dots between views I mark Read mail as Unread I just can’t deal Some emails sit in my Inbox for months Some tasks sit on my Task list for months Data Diaspora I keep getting interrupted and then lose track of where I was I’m too busy to have a system

11. SHALLOW RAMP: CHANDLER IS A SYSTEM OOTB Frame of reference: Types of Attributes, Kinds of items Who, What, When, Where, Status, Value Communications, To-dos, Events, Resources, Media, Directories

12. USER SEMANTIC NO. 1. STATUS: UNPROCESSED. USERS NEED A CENTRALIZED COLLECTION BIN (Something that will eat Any thing)

14. USER SEMANTIC NO. 2: FOCUS. TAKING THE LONG-VIEW ON WORKFLOW. AN ITERATIVE APPROACH TO TASK COMPLETION. T ake big things and break them down , take opaque things and clarify them meanwhile… .stages lifecycle their through items track you as move information in and out of F O C U S GTD: Traditional Time Management…Doesn’t work New information comes to light…all the time Tasks today are amorphous and evolve over time (aka get bigger)

15. IT’S A BINARY WORLD IN YOUR PIM Are you Done or Not Done? Is life ever that simple? To you find yourself re-processing the same information over and over again? Do you lose track of information you weren’t quite done with? Do you ever wish your PIM was better at helping you keep track of incremental progress you make on your tasks?

16. INFORMATION LIFECYCLES Stages Black box Research Stalled - Waiting for something or someone Can do Can do < 2 minutes Done - No (further) action required GTD: Most of what you think of as tasks are actually multi-step mini-projects

17. THE DASHBOARD: WHERE YOU FOCUS (Also Something that will eat Any thing) Tasks Meetings Documents Contacts Drafts Unlike GTD, we’re not going try and remove the Inbox I.V.

18. TRIAGE: SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF MANAGING FOCUS Meeting reminder example. Again, we’re careful not to remove the Inbox I.V.

19. ADDING SEMANTICS EACH TIME YOU RE-FOCUS = PROGRESS SUPPORTING INTERATIVE PROGRESS ON TASKS User semantics OR metadata is the substance of information work. It’s how we make progress on our tasks. What’s my status on this task? What are the due dates and milestone dates? When do I need to start focusing on this task? (Reminders) Who do I need to discuss this with? In what context am I going to accomplish this task? What project is this for? What is kind of task is this? These are all Questions that will help you clarify and break down big, complex, opaque tasks into an obvious progression of executable next actions. You don’t need to answer them all at once, the goal for Chandler is to help you 1) answer these questions, iteratively over time; and 2) to keep track of your progress GTD: Put things where they mean something to you

21. RUNNING TASKS IN PARALLEL: FINDING EMPOWERMENT THROUGH INTERRUPTION GTD: Achieving Mind Like Water NOW LATER NOW LATER NOW NOW DONE LATER NOW LATER NOW LATER DONE NOW LATER NOW LATER NOW NOW LATER DONE NOW LATER NOW

23. PUTTING THINGS WHERE THEY MEAN SOMETHING TO YOU GTD Tickler files: Using the item itself to be the Reminder

24. STAMPING 101 Put on calendar Location Date/Time Attendance Put on task list Context Dependencies Estimated size Relative priority Relative importance Communicate To CC BCC Date sent/recd Overlapping Attributes Title Creator Date created Last modified Body Triage status Personal annotations Comments

25. USER SEMANTIC NO. 4: ALTITUDE ( straight out of GTD) 5,000 ft: @supermarket 10,000 ft: Project: Dinner party Runway: Today Runway: New stuff I just thought of 20,000 ft: Sphere: Home stuff

26. CONNECTING THE DOTS: CHANDLER AS A SYSTEM Beyond GTD

27. HOW TO ORGANIZE AROUND USER SEMANTICS. LABELING VERSUS COLLECTING, ITEMS AND COLLECTIONS Labels = Collections As a result, collections have semantics. Project collections, Agenda collections, Status collections, Timeframe collections, etc. All Collections are attributes on their member items All Attributes are in turn collections of items based on this attribute. This is bi-directional references at work This is what we mean by Organizing data around User Semantics Labels on items include: Tag Labels (without Semantics) e.g.. Brown Attribute Labels (with Semantics) e.g.. Hair color: Brown

28. WHY WE ORGANIZE TODAY Save for later Tags, Keywords, Topics, Descriptions Capture information Phone number, Location, Size, Status Attendees Monitoring FOCUS, Projects, Agendas, Shopping lists Label (Bottom-up) Collect (Top-down) Separate affordances for Label & Collect

29. USAGE PATTERNS Save for later Tags, Keywords, Topics, Descriptions Capture information Phone number, Location, Size, Status Attendees Monitoring FOCUS, Project, Agendas, Shopping lists # of items # of times you handle the items Label Targeted retrieval via Search Focus on Item Tree Collect Navigation Focus on Group Forest Different affordances for Retrieving and Viewing Labeled items v. Collections

30. THE ADAPTIVE SCHOOL OF DESIGN TOOLS SUBSUMED BY USER SEMANTICS Keep attribute-based collections easily accessible in the sidebar Or just search for them occasionally Add tags to items Assign attributes to your tags tags Movies, Billy, things to see But affordances flow naturally from Labels to Collections

31. OUR CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR ITERATIVE PROGRESS

33. INFORMATION Mimi Yin, Interaction Designer Open Source Applications Foundation [email_address] Slides available at: http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/BayCHITalk OSAF website: http://www.osafoundation.org 0.6 experimentally usable calendar: http://chandler.osafoundation.org Design Philosophy: http://chandler.osafoundation.org/philosophy.php More research on organizational paradigms: http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/ClassificationPaperOutline2

34. SETTING UP A STRUCTURE TO CONNECT THE DOTS all kinds communications tasks calendar resources media directories all collections who when where what status value All messages with who: Pete All restaurants within the price range: $20-40 per person All resources with the status: needs review All items in all collections aka CENTRAL COMMAND Different views of data defined around user semantics Runway view Each view can contain items of any type

35. ATTRIBUTES EMERGING FROM THE TAG SOUP City Location San Francisco sanfrancisco SF SanFran sf San Francisco Saint