世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted at the start of November by goo Research into the use of scheduling tools. 1,089 people from their monitor group, 43.2% male, successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 21.2% of the survey group was in their twenties, 44.4% in their thirties, 24.4% in their forties, and 10.0% in their fifties.

We have groupware at work which has quite a nice reminder feature, but the rest of the time perhaps 10% of my private schedule is recorded in my mobile phone, with the other 90% delegated to my wife! She uses both a tabletop calendar (this year is a free Hello Kitty one we got as a present from a print shop when we ordered death in the family postcards; a rather incongruous gift, I thought) and her mobile phone for that.

Q1: Currently, how many scheduling tools do you use? (Sample size=1,089)

One	44.2%
Two	32.7%
Three	10.0%
Four or more	1.0%
None	12.1%

Q2: What types of schedule management tools do you use? (Sample size=957, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Paper diary	613	64.1%
Mobile phone	396	41.4%
Wall or desk calendar	322	33.6%
PC-based tool	249	26.0%
PDA-based tool	32	3.3%
Other	1	0.1%

For the 249 PC tool users, the most common type was locally installed tools, with 132 users, or 53.0%, versus 94 people, or 37.8%, who used browser-based applications. What tools fall into the non-local non-web browser category is not noted, but perhaps it includes groupware like Lotus Notes? For the web tools, Yahoo! Calendar was overwhelmingly the most popular, but other tools mentioned were Google Calendar, mixi’s scheduling features, and check*pad, a tool I’d never heard of until today.

Q3: Why did you quit using your schedule management tool? (Sample size=unknown)

Forgot to use it and missed appointments	136
Too difficult to use	125
Didn’t have appointments that needed managing	74
Just got bored with it	69
Couldn’t get into the habit of using it	68
Just wanted to try out using a schedule	20
Lost it	1
Other	33

Q4: When choosing a schedule management tool, what features are important? (Sample size=unknown, perhaps 1,089, multiple answer)

Easy to input	785
Portable	633
Easy to read	477
Good to look at	234
Security features	56
Other	22