First, when I talk about relative times (or would dates be more accurate?), I mean these 4 minutes ago, 1 hour ago, etc.
When should they be used? With what degree of precision? Shouldn't it be the user's choice?
I personally do care about knowing about the exact time say, a blog post has been published. But what if others don't and don't mind 2 weeks ago, 2 months ago or even 2 years ago?
Answer
In my opinion, relative dates are incredibly helpful (when used correctly). A relative date, such as yesterday, two days ago, last week provides you with more information than 8/9/2011, 8/8/2011, or 8/2/2011. It not only gives you when something happened, but it tells you when something happened in my current context of now.
I have done some design work with this and here is the biggest caveat: some users still want to know the exact date/time. So I like to follow Alan Coopers thought process of "Design for the probable, provide for the possible." That is to say give the user the most commonly needed or useful information, and then provide for them to get into more detailed information that not everyone may want to see. To accomplish this I use a relative date that has a tool tip with the exact date/time on hover. This works very well in a web application environment. You probably could even just swap the text "2 days ago" with 8/8/2011 on hover.
The second thing to consider is that as a relative date moves further and further away it becomes less and less obvious or useful. Is "One Year Ago" 1/12/2010 or 12/12/2010? So the conclusion I would take from this is that you have to be smart about displaying relative dates so that they are helpful. Just like it is easier to determine what 5/12/2010 means as opposed to "One Year Ago," it is also easier to determine what "Two Days Ago" means as opposed to 8/8/2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment