874162 - Event Page Dates Confuse Users

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Webtools Graveyard :: Air Mozilla, defect, P2)

Description

[Richard A Milewski[:richard]]

We're getting reports from users that "the time of the event doesn't show on the event page".   Using the tooltip to see the date appears to be too subtle.  Can we swap what's in the tooltip with what's on the event page?

Comment 1

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

Hmm... I'm not entirely sure what it means. One thing I do feel is that when I look at a page like http://cl.ly/PFWU I want to know what time is going to happen so I can mark my calendar. 

However, looking at the sidebar, I quite like the short version. 

Perhaps we can do so that if the date is a future date, then we write, next to it, the day and the time and the "local" timezone. E.g.:

 a day from now - 28 May 12:00pm US/Pacific time

But that's not great either because then we show the hour in local-to-the-event time. Should be instead try to show it in local-to-the-user time to spare the user from having to do the timezone offset arithmetic. 

Now we can either say both the local time AND the equivalent user time. Or, we can just try to show it as::


 a day from now - 28 May 8:00pm in your timezone 

...or something like that. It doesn't feel great either. 

By the way, we should use the browser's own smart way of applying a locale formatting. British people use the 24 clock style. 

Let's discuss before we write code.

Comment 2

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

In conclusion:

1. show the local time ...
2. ...with a "nice" timezone representation (e.g. "US/Pacific" instead of "UTC-0700")
3. keep the "in 3 days from now" message next to the date time.

Comment 3

[Richard A Milewski[:richard]]

This problem is much worse when using an iPad (...and I suspect any tablet) where there is no such thing as "hover".

Comment 5

[Kumar McMillan [:kumar]]

aha! I didn't even know you could hover to get the actual time.

Comment 6

[Peter ONeill [:zero]]

Adding the service desk techs here. This has been a headache for us and would be good to get the updates.

Comment 7

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

Richard, 

I've been thinking about this. Considering that we don't want to bombard that area with the screen with too much information why don't we do this:

"about 14 hours from now - 9:30AM in San Francisco"

I.e. instead of saying the timezone we only display the local time and the location name. I think people find it easier to comprehend locations than they do with named timezones. Especially so because every year it adds to the confusion with the summer/winter time. 

Also, because this is noisy enough I think we should only do this when the start_time of the event is futuristic. 

What say you?

Comment 8

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

Attachment: Screen Shot 2013-09-11 at 4.15.14 PM.png

Here's an example of what this would look like. 

This event (it's a fake event sort of) is going to take place at 9AM on the wall clock time in Mountain View 10Fwd. 

If you hover over the "22 days from now" it says "Thu, Oct 3, 2013, 9:00am UTC-0700" which is accurate but that odd "UTC-0700" is confusing as hell to me. 

Richard, if you're OK with this, I'll land it.

Comment 9

[[github robot]]

Commit pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/airmozilla

https://github.com/mozilla/airmozilla/commit/4fb7f93e01a43d95b8ab87631a9de9111ef2ada0
fixes bug 874162 - Event Page Dates Confuse Users

Comment 10

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

What I've done is:

1. On the event view page, if the event is upcoming it now additionally says "11:30AM in San Francisco"
2. On the event manager it says the local time underneath the start time

Richard, 
Please re-open if you think it's not enough and that there are more places we need to fix it.

Comment 11

[Richard A Milewski[:richard]]

In the Event Manager I think we really need the date and time as now shown in the tooltip.  Look at the "Test of Null Template Event" currently upcoming on Dev.   It says "2 months from now, 12:00PM"  You still have to hover over it to get any useful information.

Comment 12

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

So instead of the "xx months/hours/days from now" you just want the date?
We could show the date on one line and the "location time" on the next line.

Comment 13

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

left an open question for you.

Comment 14

[Richard A Milewski[:richard]]

I think the suggestion in comment 12 is best.

Comment 15

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

What do you think of this? http://cl.ly/SKFV

Comment 16

[Richard A Milewski[:richard]]

Looks Great!   Big improvement.

Comment 17

[[github robot]]

Commit pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/airmozilla

https://github.com/mozilla/airmozilla/commit/dd142c211335a0036c0fc56d7682dd867222d3db
bug 874162 - full date in event manager