To make our todo manager stand out, our group has taken dramatic efforts designing new features and refining our existing features. Although we have made great progress since the start of this project and it seems that we are in the right direction to the success, there are still some problems left to be solved. Among the problems, one of the most rigid problems is about the alarm system.
The idea of the alarm system was first introduced with the intension to provide users with a convenient way to remind them of the tasks. Actually, this idea is proved to be fantastic and beyond reproach, but the method of how to create this feature is not that straightforward. Overall, the biggest concern is how users can set the alarm for their tasks.
As what our group has described before, the biggest feature of our todo manager is the multi-purpose command bar. After the user types a simple sentence, which does not need to follow any specific format, the system will automatically distinguish the key words and react according to different commands. However, it is not a doable way to set the alarm using the command bar. The reason why it is not doable is that it is impossible to estimate what the user will type for the alarm information, which will result in quite a number of key words. Therefore, it is extremely hard for us to set some criteria for the system to analyze the alarm information. Here is an example for a better understanding of this problem: the user types “have supper with Jim at 10 pm today reminding me every 20 minutes after 9 pm”. We can see that the information for the alarm is much longer than that of the deadline. Therefore, we abandon this way to set the alarm.
Although it is almost impossible to implement it using the command bar, one possible solution is to set the alarm after a new task has just been added. To facilitate this, every new task will be automatically shown at the top of the list of the task. Beside the task, there is a symbol of a clock representing the alarm. If the user clicks it or presses the shortcut key “ctrl+A”, there will be a pop-up window with the details for setting the alarm. Since the task is shown at the top, it saves a lot of efforts for users to find the task they want to set the alarm for. Actually, this suggestion has its own limitation, because many clicks are needed rather than just type some words.
Except this problem, there are some other technical problems about the alarm system, such as how to synchronize the time in the todo manager with the time in the user’s computer and how to remind the user even if the todo manager is shut down. The solution is to search the Internet first for some APIs (application programming interfaces), which contain some functions to make the feature work.
The contents above are the problem of the alarm system and some possible solutions. In the near future, we will discuss this problem more in the meeting, especially after the release of version 0.1, because we intend to implement this feature in version 0.2. We hope that we can add this beneficial feature to our todo manager and make users’s life much easier.
