In this project, we investigate how appointments in digital family calendars should be supported. We look at appointments in three ways: Which appointments are written down in a calendar, how calendars should support and interact with appointments, and how appointments are used and understood.
The literature describes appointments in family calendars as being for more than one family member or a personal appointment that other family members need to know about. The information in appointments varies, and they can include anything from plain text to drawings and icons. Appointments are information for family members, so they can remember what appointments the family have and to help coordinate future appointments.
The project is based on a study with experimental tendencies, which was done by testing prototypes of digital family calendars. We created two prototypes, where the main difference was in how the prototype handled appointments. One prototype was created to be as simple as possible, where the other one included all the functionality we could find in the literature. Before we could test these prototypes on families, we had to make sure that the prototypes work as flawlessly as possible. To do so we did some usability evaluations and made some minor changes. We tested the prototypes with ten families in total. Five with the simple and five with the advanced. First part of the testing consisted of assignments to get the families to know the calendar. After that, interviews were conducted to get a greater understanding about how they felt about the prototype and how they handled appointments in general. Lastly we showed them the other prototype, to learn about what they felt about that one.
Data from the tests, was then analyzed through a coding process. Here we consider the different results by making codes about them. An example would be “missing time” where we note how many times in the 10 interviews, that “missing time” is spoken about. At the end of the analysis a big framework consisting of all the codes and incidents are made, to get a greater understanding about families appointments in digital family calendars. We also did two smaller analyzes, where we looked at how the families understood appointments and how they handled appointments.
The results from out study indicates how a digital family calendar should support appointments. As we see it, many factors have to be in place, before a digital family calendar is realizable. First, the calendar has to be flexible and not command the user to write specific things in the appointment. Appointments in families are very different from family to family. This is why the calendar cannot require what the user is inputting to the appointment. It has to be up to the user itself, and if that means not putting a time in the appointment, so be it. Next, there has to be a certain functionality, to make the calendar function as a family calendar. Design is also important, as you have to make the design as smooth and user-friendly as possible. A digital family calendar is a very complex thing which requires great knowledge about families and their appointment patterns. Even thou all families in this study wanted to buy the advanced prototype, it does not mean that the calendar is a finished product. This is just a study on appointments in family calendars, and we feel that it is necessary to explore other aspects of such a calendar as well.