We’ve heard from many corners that starting up Chandler is an intimidating experience, the app feels heavy, over-bloated with features. It’s taken me a long time to ‘get’ what that means. Here’s one explanation: (As usual, it has to do with context and history.)
When Chandler began, it was going to be the alpha and the omega of information management. It was going to swallow traditional PIM functionality wholesale (Email, Notes, Tasks, Calendar, Contacts) and extend to manage non-PIM data as well: Documents, Media, URLs, etc.
The theory was: The reason why information management sucks is due to a lack of integration. Integration in terms of data types and integrations in terms of workflow.
In the meantime, the world around us changed. Instead of a trend towards more ‘integrated’ solutions, people are adopting a wider range of tools and workflows are knit together via a wide variety of interoperation techniques.
What does this mean for Chandler? Do we still have a place in this new world?
I think so. I think we’ve actually been evolving with the rest of the world. We have not been working in a vacuum for the last 2 years. Instead, we’ve dramatically re-framed the way in which Chandler integrates. Chandler is no longer about replacing your email client, enterprise email, calendaring and content management systems, wiki, project manager, IM, news reader…
Instead, Chandler is meant to live in the middle of all these tools as a way to pull all the disparate bits and pieces of information we receive out-of-context, into a contextualized, personal and shared ’source of truth’.
That being said, the user interface we have today is misleading. It contains vestiges of the ‘old’ way of thinking about integration which has the potential to scare new users away, both because there is provokes a gut-level sense that the app is big and complicated and that you can’t get started without moving your entire world into Chandler.
For example, there is an out-sized emphasis on email functionality, left over from the days when we were adamant about being a complete PIM solution. In reality, email in Chandler today plays an important, but supporting role. We talk about it as a means of:
1. Outreach: A way to get information out of the ‘Chandler’ eco-system into other people’s Inboxes; and as a
2. Bridge: A way for Chandler users to get information from their email clients into Chandler.
So, how do we proceed to lighten-up the app so that it’s a more accurate reflection of what Chandler is meant to do? Here are some ideas:
Remove the Reply, Reply All, Forward buttons from the Toolbar; and
Add a Reply/Forward menu item to the Item menu
Remove the the ‘New’ button from the Toolbar and really focus on the quick item entry bar as the way to create new items in Chandler.
Rename the Mail application area Messages so that it’s more of a ‘Message Center’, a place where you can see the messages you sent/received from Chandler (not un-like Inboxes for social networking sites like Facebook or Linked In), and less of a “Mail Application”.
I will be thinking about this in the coming weeks and am interested in other perspectives. See discussion on the list: http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2007-December/008035.html
