Electronic calendars in the office: an assessment of user needs and current technology

Reviewer: Clarence A. Ellis

This paper presents some results of a survey of office workers to assess their attitudes toward and usage of electronic calendars. The conclusions presented are drawn from the 30 respondents, who were each interviewed and each a daily user of an office system containing an electronic calendar system. These conclusions are quite similar to previous ones [1]. They infer that current electronic calendar systems are mostly not used, and that most users prefer paper calendars. An exception to this is the use of the electronic system to schedule and reserve conference rooms and other shared resources. Many have stated that until the electronic calendar is as portable as the paper-based calendar book, it will simply not serve the majority of people. This critical point is totally missing from the authors' list (Section 5) of Recommendations for Electronic Calendaring Systems. The paper does present and explain many conferencing system functions and features. One potential problem with an assessment of this type is that it may measure users' perceived needs rather than actual needs. Finally, it appears that part of this assessment (Group One) suffers from the “threshold effect” in which the system's user interface is so bad that it is below the threshold of comfortable usage by anyone except a computer jock. This has occurred before with office systems, and it explains why Group One respondents were all negative. This can have the effect of totally overshadowing all other factors; perhaps the authors should repeat this experiment some time later when electronic calendars are in common use in integrated systems with high resolution displays, fast interaction, voice activation, and portability. Then it will be possible to measure calendar functionality rather than user interface interference level.: