Just finished the wireframe for the app.  I built the design around a principle from the book that really struck a chord with.  David Allen talks about horizontal vs. vertical task management.  The Horizontal tasks are all of your projects and the Vertical tasks are all of the action items that you need to get through in order to complete that task.  So, I’ve got projects going across the top (horizontally) and the tasks are in a list below the projects.

Above the projects, there are a bunch of “states” that an action item can be in.  The bar along the top represents each of those states (Inbox, Next Actions, Tickler File, Someday, etc.). 

Everything that you select essentially acts as a filter.  So, if you choose Due Today and then Errands, it will show you all of the action items in the Errands project that need to be completed today.

When you add a new item, it will automatically pick up the characteristics of whatever area/project is selected.  If I were to click “Add New Task” in the above state, it would automatically be in the project “Clean the Study” and be a “Next Action.”

Woops.  Just noticed two errors.  First, all of the visible items should have the “Next Action” icon selected because we’ve got the “NEXT” area highlighted.  Also, I need to include an ALL option in the states bar.  That’s noted and I’ll include it in the next step (the visual design).  Normally, I’d update the wireframe but we only have a weekend for this!

Alright, well we’re cruising through this.  At this speed, there’s a good chance that we’re going to have to make some tweaks during visual design and then development this afternoon but that’s okay it’s a small project and the customer (me) is pretty forgiving.  Also, I’ve already found some small tweaks to our data model to support this.  (Going to need, for example, an “order” field for the tasks so that they can be reorderd…that’s what the gripper on the side is for).

Next step: visual design and our deliverable will be a comp.  Sweet!  This step will be fun.