Assignment: Midterm project presentation

Collaborators:

Assignment: Midterm project presentation
Collaborators: mcozzi

It is our pleasure to introduce to you our new concept. It's called Dayspace, and it's a way to help you visualize your tasks and manage your day.

Dayspace has three primary elements: the Taskblocks, the Sandbox, and the Dayspace display. In brief, taskblocks are tangible representations of your tasks. The sandbox and Dayspace represent your day, and moving Taskblocks to the Sandbox results in a visualization on the display.

Let's back up for a second. Why Dayspace?

In short, we need Dayspace because task management is hard. Whether you’re managing the affairs of state or trying to stay on top of your classes, tasks are difficult to manage. The first difficulty is basic manipulation. For example, to-do lists are particularly bad at this, because line items are fully static and appear uniform in the list.

Traditionally, people attempt to address these issues in a couple of ways: by digitizing the list, items can be rearranged at will. Or you can break the physical list into discrete units, like these index cards and post-it notes.

But neither of these approaches addresses the issue of time magnitude. When task representations are fixed in size, it’s impossible to visualize the time commitment for each. What we need...

...is a sandbox for our time, where tasks can be rearranged at will without losing sight of bigger time constraints.

That's where Dayspace comes in.

The first component is the TaskBlock. Like the items on your task list, TaskBlocks represent individual goals to be worked on during the day. And like the items on your task list, they show the name of the task, but are otherwise uniform in shape and size.

When Dayspace is initialized, it retrieves task names from your computer's calendar or to-do program, and assigns one item to each TaskBlock. The task names are then displayed on the top-mounted OLED display.

Each TaskBlock is equipped with a microprocessor, battery, RFID chip, and Bluetooth.

In addition, each TaskBlock functions as a button. Pushing down causes the task to cycle through possible durations, from 30 minutes to 4 hours. This affordance of touch becomes a tangible way to manipulate the task metadata.

Placing TaskBlocks into the sandbox allows the user to visualize different combinations of tasks and how well they fit into their Dayspace.

While the TaskBlocks represent to-do list items, the Sandbox is more like a sheet of paper.

It has no specific properties of space or time, although we usually use it to represent a really long "day".

But like a sandbox, it provides the affordances of space and touch as the user manipulates objects within the space. Putting a TaskBlock in the Sandbox is like adding an item to your day's itinerary—but the weight and physicality of the TaskBlock reminds you of its size. The walls and of the Sandbox remind you that your time, too, is limited, though you may not always think realistically about these limits.

To start off, the user places TaskBlocks into the sandbox.

The critical function of visualization occurs when TaskBlock is placed into the Sandbox. Every block in the sandbox represented in the Dayspace display.

Each task appears as a bubble on the display. The size of the bubble is directly correlated to the size of the task—longer duration means bigger bubble. This can be changed on-the-fly by pressing down on the TaskBlock; as the task size increments, its representative bubble grows accordingly.

N.B. there is no direct correlation between TaskBlock location in the sandbox and bubble location in Dayspace.

As you would imaginge, removing the Taskblock from the sandbox causes the bubble to disappear from the display.

The shaded background represents the available time in your day. It's rectangular because there are typically clear boundaries on your time: appointments, meetings, meals, and sleep are items that restrict our time daily. By default, the Dayspace assumes you have 10 hours to work, although you can adjust this using the dial on the sandbox.

The task bubbles, by contrast, are circular. This is for a couple reasons. First, it's important to distinguish them conceptually from the square shape of the TaskBlocks. While TaskBlocks are static in size, Task bubbles grow and shrink according to their time duration.

More importantly, circles don't fit well together—and that's an apt descriptor of productivity. Context switching takes time. Every time we shift focus from one task to another, we lose time, and it's unrealistic to think we can be as productive as snugly-fitting blocks would suggest.

And finally, the task bubbles drift slowly on screen. This is a subtle reminder that we don't have complete control over our time... The bubbles just don't quite stay put.

With its built-in “Cover Flow” feature, Dayspace allows the user to visualize tasking across multiple days. Striking the sides of the sandbox allows you to navigate across multiple days.

Finally, when the user is satisfied with the tasking selection for a given day, pushing both sides together commits the selected items to the day's activities and exports them to his or her computer.

All modern electronic calendars are extensible, and Dayspace is designed to integrate with your existing calendar workflow.

Communication and display technology abounds—RFID, Bluetooth, compact displays. In fact, all these technologys already exist together. You've seen it...

They're called Siftables.

If we pursue this project further, we plan to explore more aspects of the sandbox itself—for instance, the tactility and responsiveness of sand itself, the use of sunlight and shadow as ambient indicators.

We'd like to explore more aspects of the taskblock itself: for instance, shaking it could cycle through items in longer task lists.

Of course there are always obstacles that arise in life and on the playground—this could be explored through obstacles or changing conditions in the Dayspace sandbox.

Finally, we'd like to explore more visualization techniques within the Dayspace display.