Representation of time in digital calendars: An argument for a unified, continuous and multi-granular calendar view

Digital calendars have been heavily influenced by the design of the physical calendar and have invariably adopted their grid representation of days in the month. We argue that the alternative of a continuous list representation of successive days would offer several advantages such as faster calendar search, a more natural linear view of time, a scrollable and zoomable interface and better scalability for devices of different size. This alternative, linear calendar appears to be well suited to modern touch-centric platforms with their refined support for scrolling and zooming. We tested search performance and navigation with digital calendars in a comparison of grid and list representations by employing a remote, web-based method. On their personal computers, participants performed a series of search tasks in a fictitious calendar. The results show that calendar search is faster in list view when searching for dates, between month breaks and in the next month (with and without navigation). Searching for days is faster in grid view, however, highlighting days in list view eliminates this difference. The results indicate substantial promise for the list view digital calendar and we describe a high fidelity rendering of the user interface for a digital calendar with a list view.