Preference-Based Group Scheduling

Traditional group scheduling applications often treat users' availability as binary: free or busy. This is an unrealistic representation because not all times are equally free or busy. The inflexibility makes it difficult to find times with which everyone is truly satisfied. We present an online group scheduling approach by which users indicate four-tier preferences for meeting times on a calendar, which dynamically adjusts to provide instant feedback and suggests optimal meeting times for all participants. Our prototype is geared toward college students and the scheduling is done through a democratic and open negotiation process where everyone's preference is heard. Students who evaluated the prototype thought that the scheduling process was more efficient than the widely-used e-mail scheduling among college students, which is largely based on binary availability.