Availability bars for calendar scheduling

  • Authors:
  • Andrew Faulring;Brad A. Myers

  • Affiliations:
  • Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

  • Venue:
  • CHI '06 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Calendar scheduling is a difficult task for people who have overbooked calendars with many constraints. Currently, calendar applications do not allow users to specify scheduling constraints such as how preferable a free time is for scheduling a new meeting or to what extent an existing meeting can be rescheduled. This paper introduces the "availability bar," an interaction and visualization technique for complex calendar scheduling constraints. Availability bars, embedded in calendar applications, can help users who manually schedule meetings. Availability bars can also mediate communication with calendar scheduling agents that gather availability constraints, search for times that satisfy the constraints, and negotiate with invitees when no satisfactory time is found for the constraints.