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I have an event website that I'm working on and noticed that my client wants all 4 US Continental timezones to be accounted for the time of the event.

For example:

Sunday, January 1st | 1:00 PM EST / 12:00 PM CST / 11:00 AM MST / 10:00 AM PST

3 Questions:

  1. Should the Day & Date be on a separate line from the Times?

  2. Should the Times be listed in such an order or reversed to match a map (West to East instead of East to West)?

  3. Should I remove just use ET, CT, MT, PT instead of worrying about Standard vs Daylight-Savings Time?

Update Possible 4th Question - Should I also include Alaskan and Hawaiian time zones if I'm listing the above 4 already?

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3 Answers

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I would display 1 primary timezone (by geolocation as mentioned above, or by any other parameter), and provide easy access to the rest.

Sunday, January 1st | 1:00 PM EST (more timezones)

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The link I agree with, but the default time should be in the time zone of the location of the event. – Marjan Venema Mar 24 '12 at 10:49
Sure, but some events don't necessarily have time zones (e.g. webinars). – Vitaly Mijiritsky Mar 24 '12 at 12:20
1  
Even webinars have a default time zone: that of the organiser's location – Marjan Venema Mar 24 '12 at 14:26
up vote 2 down vote

The question is why bother ? Why dont you use geolocation or ip tracking to determine where the person is located (in what time zone) and then just display the time zone for that area

Should the Day & Date be on a separate line from the times displayed ? - Yes ,just for easier readability, I would recommend posting the date first and then the time since that would provide a high level view and then a granular view

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Geolocation is a clever idea. – Andrew Bacon Mar 23 '12 at 20:54
1  
@AndrewBacon: except it may be turned off... or I may be in a different time zone from where I will be for the event... – Marjan Venema Mar 24 '12 at 10:48
@MarjanVenema I was thinking it could be combined with my post below to auto-detect the "primary" timezone. – Andrew Bacon Mar 26 '12 at 13:45
up vote 2 down vote

Is there one timezone where the event is taking place? Can you do something like...

mockup

download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups

If you're listing this many, it may be better to spell out "Eastern" and "Central" as otherwise, it gets kind of acronym heavy.

P.S. If you want to get really into it, you'd use EDST, since not everyone adheres to daylight savings time.

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+1 An event usually has a primary location. Even a webinar will have a primary location: the location where the studio is, or the location of the organisers. – Marjan Venema Mar 24 '12 at 10:51

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