[IxDA Discuss] Thumbnail calendars and philosophical waxing

[Christine Boese]

Hi y'all!

Please forgive me if this topic has come up in the past, but I'm wondering
if the group has any ideas about the persistence of thumbnail calendars
(often appearing in interstitial rollovers, with dates as potential live
links) as a reappearing trope in interface design.

I'm trying to discuss this interface feature with a client at the
requirements stage, and I'm encountering resistance to the very idea,
particularly on the development side.

This strikes me as odd, especially since I've used the relatively simple
code myself on personal projects (we've seen this all over on blog
templates, generally used badly, but actually serving a real purpose on some
sites).

And I know my bank bill paying interface uses it, and I've never given it a
second thought. It's just how I set the date I want the bill to be paid on.
It's compact, invokes wall calendars, and is an efficient way to select a
date.

What I'm saying is that it's an interface feature I've pretty much seen as
having a low threshold of difficulty, and something I've taken for granted
as easy to use from a usability standpoint, for things with a date/time
orientation. Databases usually date stamp everything anyway, so the field
already exists for archive display and advance scheduling.

What I'm wondering to myself is if the thumbnail calendar isn't becoming an
interface trope that can be quickly invoked without a lot of requirements
fanfare, just like interface expectations for mousing, trash can/recycle
bins, pulldown menus, and so on. Set pieces that are so entrenched that they
become as much a part of an interface module as the side menu, something you
either choose to have or choose not to have, but something you don't
necessarily have to spec out to the nth degree, re-inventing the wheel every
time it is used, writing the code from scratch.

I guess my larger topic here relates to re-inventing the wheel (took me a
while to spit it out). It has to do with the evolution of interface design,
and the presence of established tropes that are culturally ingrained to the
point that we really don't have to usability test mousing, or opening and
closing windows (although I've run classes with students where I did
actually have to teach them how to open and close windows).

If that list of usability-cleared modules or features or tropes exists, what
is on it, and what isn't yet?

What things are becoming so ingrained that we really don't have to re-invent
them on each and every design?

The larger question too, relates to how template-driven our work has become
(this relates more to web design than software design, I expect, although I
could be wrong).

Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

Chris