I find it confusing. You read it top to bottom, left to right, a column at a time. Each column is different. Different sizes. Different relationships. It feels jarring, and disconnecting. It feels like their should be a relationship between the element highlighted, and the items on the right.
I'll try to be specific.
The time is highlighted. This seems associated with the next column over, which is also highlighted (at least, compared to the rest of the column).
Next, the top and bottom of columns match up to the next column (or previous column) with the next or previous day/month. Can you scroll through these? What happens to that relationship then?
Where is April 16? 13? Is there an easy way to tell which column they are in without doing math? I can see it's 7 days ahead in the second column, but to find a date, I'm still having to scan both columns quickly to try and find the date. It's in order, but moving from the bottom to the top feels unnatural, and the sizing difference of the rows means I can't just easily/quickly scan.
Which column do I go to to find a date? Let's say I want to find an overview for the week of Aug. 8, the due date of my son. It seems like selecting a single date requires navigation in all columns, or maybe just a few. Once you start moving one column, does it affect all? That destroys relationships between columns, and then it feels like you are playing slots.
If you do keep the association, you suddenly create a problem where moving one column moves all columns. If you don't allow changing the columns (it's simply a view), then you can't use it to enter data and in turn reduces it's value. However, even with just the view, you dedicate 75% of the view to future events, 50% to events more than 7 days ahead.
I do like the progression from left to right. I also like the idea of present information getting a more detailed view while future data get's more concise. I don't think you present it in an efficient manner, but I like were you could be going with this.
I'd like that a little better if it had one or two past elements for each zoom level (eg., the first column is fine, the second column needs a "yesterday" and probably a "today" for grounding, the third column needs last week, and the last column needs to be 12 months starting 1 or 2 or 3 months ago)
From the third column: why pack in individual days? I can't imagine it being very easy to display multiple appointments there, you'd run out of room.
Do people really care about the exact day number that something is on? How about just displaying items in order under "second half of April"? Then you won't have space wasted if there's aren't any appointments for a few days, but the data is still there. And perhaps show the day number on hover or something.
I was thinking 1/2/5 days log ratios, but yours has the virtue of keeping the usual week/month/year. Let's see, with some arbitrary truncation/rounding:
Log10 of 2, 5, 10: 0.3, 0.7, 1.0
Log10 of 7, 30, 360: 0.8, 1.5, 2.5
Having seen this, it turns out it's just the old three-panel view as seen in mail progs, but put upside down. But great to see someone has transferred the ideas to calendars now.
I like it. Here are some suggestions for anyone expanding this idea:
- make each of the main boxes a little bit narrower so you can have a full week (1+6) in the top section, and a full second week (including full-sized weekend days) across the bottom
- make the "flow" obvious somehow. A thicker line separating the top boxes from the bottom would help. Slightly darker or lighter background colors as you get farther from "today" would help as well.
- squeeze in navigation controls: a big "today" button, and forward/backward day and week arrows (in the day and week areas).
- the very bottom right box could be replaced with "upcoming", and list off anything marked as a priority in the next few weeks after the end of this display.
http://i43.tinypic.com/zu2m2d.png