What are the best interfaces you've seen for editing date-chained sequences?

Question

I want to improve the user experience for an interface used to edit what we call a date-chained sequence (perhaps there's other jargon I'm not familiar with)

For example, an online retailer might want to plan price changes in advance - maybe an item should be $200 from today until 24-NOV-2016, $150 from 25-NOV-2016 to 27-NOV-2016, and $180 from 28-NOV-2016 onwards. There should be no gaps between the date-ranges, as then the item wouldn't have a price.

Or a more complicated example: an airline wants to adjust prices based on two dates - the date of the flight and the date the customer books. Let's say the price for an economy seat for flight AB123 on a Thursday should be $100 for journeys departing 01-FEB-2016 to 14-FEB-2016 booked between 01-JAN-2016 and 14-JAN-2016; but $150 for those booked between 15-JAN-2016 and 31-JAN-2016; while flights departing 15-FEB-2016 to 29-FEB-2016 should cost $110 if booked between 01-JAN-2016 and 31-JAN-2016. Again, there should be no gaps.

Is there a name for this sort of data / user interface?

Where can I see really good user interfaces for working with this sort of data, especially interfaces users might already be familiar with? Or do you have any other suggestions for how I should address this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

This sounds like a timeline to me. There are controls available that look something like this:

or this:

Of course yours would have time on both x and y axis!

You could have flight timeline listed on the y axis, and then dates across the x axis, and schedule prices using the little bars.

In what I imagine, the bars would span more than one row, so I suppose it could be called a time grid rather than a time line.

Answer 2

Solution1: Graph Interface

A chart that plots price against time is a probable solution.

The graph here need to act as a visual form for the user.

Internally as the user interacts with the chart, an array of the price information can be built and sent to backend.

This solution is suitable for longer date ranges with frequent and granular price change.

Solution 2: Editable Table based interface

If you are thinking of a less fancy solution. It would be a table with columns representing date ranges and price.

This will be best suited if the date ranges are longer and the prices variation is variation minimal.