PDAs as Time Management Tools: Experiences with Mobile Digital Calendars

This paper reports on a trial where a group of university students were given the opportunity to use high-end PDAs for their time management needs during two months. The purpose of the study was to gain insight through the fresh eyes of mostly novice users of electronic calendars; insight that could be used to propose improvements to current mobile digital calendar standard interface functionality and layout. Even though the students recognised useful and important features of mobile digital calendars, such as reminders, they were critical of the fact that the mobile digital calendars did not offer as much functionality as they had hoped for. The general sentiment was that the calendar experience did not offer enough clear benefits compared to their usual experience of using a paper-based calendar to warrant using them. Also, the participants identified shortcomings of the tool which further lessened their sense of benefit from using the PDA calendar.