Help find the fastest and easiest-to-grasp approach to let a user go through a complex schedule

Question

I want to let users view schedules on a mobile phone.

• Its a generic schedule of events
• Events can be spread across multiple days

• Events can be spread across multiple venues

• An event has a time slot and a title.

  ** Maybe this mockup would help

What I have tried so far:

• A simple list with events grouped by time slot. This does not help the users get the overlap between events.
• Tried the common calendar approach [similar to google maps], where each event is a box that extends over the time duration, thus showing the overlap visibly. The problem here is that the user now has to scroll in 2 directions. This gets disorienting.

Bottomline: Did I miss an approach? Is two directional scrolling on mobile devices a bad UX decision? Any examples?

Answer 1

One approach you could try is not to shove every day and venue on one screen. I think on a mobile a user is more interested in knowing what is happening now and a little in the future as oppose to performing a detailed research on the whole conference.

So I think, you could display the time on a vertical axis and show one venue at a time. However, swiping left or right would change the venue (not like a scrollbar but the whole list).

I think it would be great to be able to mark events a user would like to attend and then create a personal timeline for the day. Maybe even with alerts :)

We just need to remember advantages and disadvantages of a mobile phone to maximise the usefulness of a device to deliver great user experience.

^{download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups}

Answer 2

Here is how i will approach it: 1. There are four parameter - Events, Date, Venue, Time 2. Three is the maximum parameter a user can comprehend in a single view. 3. Given the above, the users will have to be taken thru a 2 step approach

Step 1- First they will have to select a parameter of interest to them (Say Event)

Step 2 - Show the view that comprises of the rest of the parameters

In this view, make possible combination of 2 parameters (Say Venue, Day) and display them in the first 2 columns.

Next display the Time Line on the top and highlight the slots for each combination of Venue and Day

Answer 3

If it's a mobile device, one way could be to switch from day to day, by just swiping down and increment one screen at a time. Once you're on a new screen for a new day, you cannot scroll down. This approach is assuming you can get a nice font and layout that can accommodate a good number of venues in a day, and that the number of venues in a day would be limited to a # that fits on screen.

Now from there, you can freeze the left side of the screen to keep the venue list visible, and allow the user to slide/scroll to view the events in a day.

That should eliminate the need for 2 directions of scrolling, which is probably a bad UX decision.