MyCal
searchable tagged calendar

Our assignment in this project was to design a calendar for Interaction Design Institute Ivrea to replace the model we had been using. Different groups of people, rooms in the building and equipment have their own calendars The current calendar contained all the information related to these various groups and it's rather tricky for one to filter out the information that only concerns him but noone else. Another problem is the data entry to the system is done by one person only, who is working at the administrative office and everyone sends their calendar items that concern others to this person, and she needs to organize the information and publish it on the calendar. This causes delays and even mistakes in some cases, if she has too much information to handle.
MyCal is a searchable calendar which has tagged entries that are easy to filter. Upon login to the calendar system, it displays content that's related to the person who logs in, then he can narrow or expand his view by adding or subtracting more tags. Data entry to the system is also distributed. For example, if Prof. Churcher wants to call a meeting for his interface design class, he can simply login to his calendar account and fill in an "Add event" form. When he chooses the participants, time and the place for this meeting, related calendars will be informed and updated with this new event. Prof. Churcher will not need Miss Judge from the administrative office to update the calendar for him.
MyCal solves the problems of the IDII calendar by bringing metadata into the calendar. It's searchable and filterable, one can find the information he needs by simply looking for keywords. Since calendar users of IDII is a small community of people (<100) that live and work closely together, we don't expect much of a tag abuse/misuse. However if this system is to be applied to larger organizations, a standardisation and control over tagging needs to be developed in order for the system to function properly.

a) Current IDII calendar b) MyCal

Faculty
Neil Churcher
with Re Dubthaigh from Radarstation