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Seperate daily/temporary activities
Have permanent activities and "daily" or "temporary" activities that don't show up on every day.
Some days I have misc activities that take up a good part of my day and I'd like to keep them separate but not always on my activity list.
Some days I have misc activities that take up a good part of my day and I'd like to keep them separate but not always on my activity list.
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Inappropriate?I like this idea a lot... I'm a bit worried about compromising on simplicity however... Any ideas on implementation that preserve the current simplicity?
Thanks,
Sean
I’m perplexed
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Inappropriate?If I delete an activity does it delete it for all days or just the current one and in the future?
I just had an idea. There could be 2 "sections" of activities, above the line is carried forward to the next day, below the line is not. At the start of each day, it would "copy" yesterdays permanent activities to the current day.
I can't think of any other ideas that don't involve more check boxes, context menus, or configuration pages.
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Inappropriate?It deletes it for just the current one and into the future. The idea is that you don't want to change the history of what activities you spent your time on, just where you spend your time today and going forward. This applies to not just deletes, but also adds, renames, and goal changes as well.
Thanks,
Sean
I’m tangerine
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Inappropriate?I really like the above the line/below the line idea.
Seems like you'd still need some way to indicate to BubbleTimer which kind of activity it is. Could be a second link. Something like: 'Add Activity' and 'Add one time Activity'. Could be a checkbox when you add the link. Could be that the activity starts... say below the line when added and if you want it to be a permanent activity you drag it up over the line.
Thoughts everyone?
Thanks,
Sean
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This is one of the best points
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I would vote for a checkbox "This is a permanent activity." I also like the below the line/above the line idea. -
Inappropriate?I'll be thinking about this... between notes, categories and permanent/transient activities... I worry about losing the simplicity, which is the main overriding ethos of BubbleTimer.
I think we'll just have to be very, very careful about how these features are added so they don't add clutter and/or cognitive load to customers that don't need them.
Thanks,
Sean
I’m the walrus
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This is one of the best points
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I'm glad you're being careful to keep the lovely simplicity. Maybe the problem isn't that the requested feature is something missing, but that people want BubbleTimer to do too much. If we could make notes on days, and just use some kind of "Other" category to represent those unusual tasks that may take a lot of a day, we could explain to ourselves what the "Other" category represents for that day.
Maybe this would be an idea for in the meantime, at least. -
Inappropriate?Qrystal,
That's exactly why notes is my #2 priority at this point. I think notes is such a flexible feature that people will end up using them in all sorts of different ways that suite the way they want to use BubbleTimer. Notes could go a long way to keeping BubbleTimer simple.
Thanks,
Sean
I’m excited about notes
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This is one of the best points
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suite = suit
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Inappropriate?How bout this:
- Create a user-configurable setting called "# of days before activities become 'inactive'"
- Any activity with no bubbles recorded for that number of days become 'inactive' and 'hide' themselves.
- The only activities that show up by default are ones you've 'bubbled' time into within that number of days -- so 'everyday' activities always show.
- Next to 'Add an Activity' place a link called 'Show Inactive Activities'. Click it to reveal all 'hidden' activities and show them greyed out or something.
- The user can make one of those activities 'active' by simply 'bubbling one of the time slots'.
- That activity will now remain active (unhidden) until no time has been bubbled to it for the user-specified number of days.
This eliminates the need to have two different kinds of activities and makes it so any activity I've added time to can be easily be made visible on any day I need it.
Plus it automatically adapts the screen to just show activities that people are really using -- which should simplify the display by removing activities that people don't actively use.
The only downside is that some activities may exists that people want to spend more time on, but haven't gotten to (like 'go to the gym' or 'spend more time with kids') or whatever. It's nice to have these visible as reminders even if you haven't been able to spend time on them.
But these could be retained as 'visible' and active if the user sets 'daily goals' on them -- even if no time is actually allocated to them.
So 'inactive activities' could be either:
1. Activities with no time allocated to them within some user specificed number of days, or
2. Activities that have no time allocated and have no daily goal.
I'd recommend setting it to be #2 by default, but allowing users to customize and choose #1 if they want.
As you scroll back back to previous days, activities that were active on those days should 'unhide' so show time allocated to them.
I’m happy
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This is one of the best points
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I like this, especially option #2 with activities with goals not going inactive even if you didn't bubble them in a while. I still like the original idea as well though: adding activities either as temporary or permanent and then showing temporary activities under a line until you delete them. I guess this new idea is more 'organic' so to speak and evolves more fluently, while the original idea was more mechanical and needs more complex input from the user. I'm just a little concerned that users will find the expiration duration (the amount of time it takes for an activity becomes inactive) either too short or too long depending on which activity it concerns.
Regards, Tijl -
Inappropriate?Kevin, j0dan, Tijl, Qrystal,
I think Kevin is really onto something, the way to accomplish j0dan's idea for temporary vs. permanent activities is not through more complex user input but through automatic aging.
As you've probably noticed in BubbleTimer, I'm not big on user preferences. I can't stand them in fact. There is nothing worse than an application that presents you with pages and pages of options and preferences. It represents a real failure on the part of the application designer.
Today BubbleTimer has just one user preference AM/PM vs. 24 hour time and I really tried to eliminate that one and base it on the timezone but research showed that wasn't possible.
So... I think keying off Kevin and Tijl's input, only activities w/o goals would become inactive, any bubbling would make them active again, and... I suppose... what, 3 days, 4 days? would be a good time to make them inactive.
Normally, all that would happen is the active would become grey. That is unless the user toggled the hide/show inactive activities to hide. It'd be set to show by default and would be persistent (like the chime).
Let me know what you guys think.
Thanks,
Sean
I’m starting to think something like this may work.
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This is one of the best points
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I would think that the length of time to make them inactive would be the same length of time as is shown on the little graphs when hovering over the time info; so, 7 days. One week. Besides, society has us working in weekly cycles anyways, and any activity that actually happens weekly is not actually inactive.
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I vote for one week. Qrystal's argument makes sense to me.
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7 sounds good.
Sean -
Inappropriate?When I create an activity, I already know if it should be temporary or long term. I'd rather choose right away than wait for it to time out. I suppose I could always delete the task the next day anyway.1 Comment Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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Deleting it the next day is pretty reasonable (except for the extra click) since it doesn't delete it from the previous day when you did want the temporary activity.
-Sean
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