96 lines
3.7 KiB
Markdown
96 lines
3.7 KiB
Markdown
# Gemma
|
|
|
|
Gemma is a simple application to track *recurring* tasks, named after Gemma
|
|
Hartley who [wrote an article][] about task distribution issues in households.
|
|
|
|
## Background
|
|
|
|
(Skip this if you just want the technical bits)
|
|
|
|
Gemma's article launched a discussion in my friend circle about what causes an
|
|
uneven distribution of household workload. I theorised that this is not so much
|
|
a gender issue, but mostly a discoverability issue.
|
|
|
|
Usually one person in a household is aware of what needs to be done, but in many
|
|
cases the "overhead" of delegating the tasks would actually take more time than
|
|
simply doing the task.
|
|
|
|
I theorise further that the person (or people) who do a smaller share of the
|
|
household work would often do the work if they had a convenient way to become
|
|
aware of what needs to be done. Many times the "household manager" has the
|
|
function of tracking non-obvious tasks like when bedsheets were last changed -
|
|
shouldn't it be possible to actually distribute this information somehow?
|
|
|
|
## The Project
|
|
|
|
This project is an initial attempt at sketching out a little application that
|
|
aids with reminding users of recurring tasks. Some basic ideas:
|
|
|
|
* The system should be blame-free.
|
|
* There should be as little usage overhead as possible so that people actually
|
|
do use it.
|
|
* It should work mostly passively without much user interaction.
|
|
|
|
I believe that the basic (*very* simple) idea behind Gemma solves these issues.
|
|
Unfortunately my living situation changed before I actually got to test this out
|
|
in a real-life situation involving multiple people, but feedback from other
|
|
potential test subjects would be welcome! :)
|
|
|
|
## Overview
|
|
|
|
Gemma is a Common Lisp application in which a list of recurring tasks is
|
|
declared, together with the *maximum interval* at which they should be completed
|
|
(in days). Example:
|
|
|
|
```lisp
|
|
;; Bathroom tasks
|
|
(deftask bathroom/wipe-mirror 7)
|
|
(deftask bathroom/wipe-counter 7)
|
|
|
|
;; Bedroom tasks
|
|
(deftask bedroom/change-sheets 7)
|
|
(deftask bedroom/vacuum 10)
|
|
|
|
;; Kitchen tasks
|
|
(deftask kitchen/trash 3)
|
|
(deftask kitchen/wipe-counters 3)
|
|
(deftask kitchen/vacuum 5 "Kitchen has more crumbs and such!")
|
|
|
|
;; Entire place
|
|
(deftask clean-windows 60)
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
These tasks are marked with their last completion time and tracked by Gemma. A
|
|
simple Elm-based frontend application displays the tasks sorted by their
|
|
"urgency" and features a button to mark a task as completed:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Marking a task as completed resets its counter and moves it to the bottom of the
|
|
task list.
|
|
|
|
In theory this *should be it*, the frontend is made available to household
|
|
members in some easily accessible place (e.g. an old phone glued to the fridge!)
|
|
and people should attempt to develop a habit of checking what needs to be done
|
|
occasionally.
|
|
|
|
The "household manager" still exists as a role of the household because someone
|
|
is entering the tasks into the application, but if my theory about people not
|
|
actually being actively *unwilling* to do tasks is correct this could help a
|
|
lot.
|
|
|
|
## Usage
|
|
|
|
(*Note*: Gemma is alpha software so the below is clearly not the final goal)
|
|
|
|
Right now using this is non-trivial, but I'll eventually make a better
|
|
distribution. Basically you need to know Common Lisp (in which case you'll know
|
|
how to get the backend running) and have `elm-reactor` installed to run the
|
|
development version of the frontend application.
|
|
|
|
Gemma is configured via a configuration file that should be located either at
|
|
`/etc/gemma/config.lisp` or at a custom location specified via the environment
|
|
variable `GEMMA_CONFIG`. Have a look at the `config.lisp` file in the repository
|
|
root for an example.
|
|
|
|
[wrote an article]: http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a12063822/emotional-labor-gender-equality/
|