touch-packages team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quite often when a bug report has the word "should" in its summary, the
actual problem is left unstated, or at least underanalyzed. The problem,
as far as you've stated it, is that when you change the volume, "you
don't actually know if you are changing the volume for incoming calls,
notifications, music/games, alarms". That may be a real problem, and if
there's evidence that it is, there are several possible solutions. But
the particular solution of providing separate sliders for each would be
unlikely to help, for three reasons.

First, the design implies that you can meaningfully set volumes in
advance, but this is unlikely. Some media are much louder than others,
some games are much louder than others, and some callers are much louder
than others. The only one that you could set meaningfully in advance
would be alarm volume.

Second, because you usually can't meaningfully set volumes in advance,
when you are wanting to change the volume of something, quite often you
are in a time-sensitive situation. When an alarm goes off, you may have
time to click the hardware volume keys a few times before dismissing the
alarm, but you're much less likely to have time to navigate into an
indicator menu and find one of four sliders before people start staring
at you wondering why you haven't turned the alarm off yet. Similarly, if
you start playing an action game but realize it's too loud (or too quiet
to hear instructions), you're much more likely to be able to hit the
volume buttons without crashing/dying than you are to be able to use an
indicator menu without crashing/dying (if the game even lets you access
the indicators at all).

And third, even people who aren't in time-sensitive situations will
usually use the hardware volume buttons rather than the sliders inside a
menu, simply because the hardware buttons are much easier to get to.
Mainstream phones are unlikely ever to have more than one set of
hardware volume buttons, so we can't avoid the problem of having to
calculate what it is that people want to change the volume of.

If the problem you describe is a genuine problem for many people, we
could solve it in a much simpler way: by having volume notifications
label which role (e.g. "Alarm", "Call", "Media") has just had its volume
changed, instead of the current design of only showing which output
(e.g. "Speaker", "Headphones") has just had its volume changed.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Sound#notification>

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to indicator-sound in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1437598

Title:
  Sound-Indicator should provide more advanced options

Status in indicator-sound package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Device: BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition
  OS: Ubuntu 14.10 (r20)

  I really love the new experience with the scrollable indicators at the
  top panel. They give the possibility to have a lot more room for each
  category while being easily accesible. This is why each indicator
  should take advantage of this and put all the screen size into good
  use. Sound indicator is one of those. I'll explain:

  When you scroll down the sound indicator, it just gives you the option
  of "volume" level. But this is a bit confusing as you don't actually
  know if you are changing the volume for incoming calls, notifications,
  music/games, alarms... So I think this should be "expanded" and
  provide different controls for each category (as I show in the mockup
  pic I attach).

  If this was implemented, the user would be able to easily change the
  volume and vibrating for each type of alert: calls, notifications,
  media and alarms. Easy on the eye, accesible with one touch even from
  blocked device. Simple. No need for complex "Priority" or "At work" or
  any other modes as in other OS.

  Activating "Silence mode" button would just make the four categories
  mute and vibrating-less, and inactivating the button the controls
  would just revert to their last previous state. If from silence mode
  you activate one vibration or level up some volume, the button would
  automatically turn off as there is no silence mode any more.

  Hope you can implement something like this soon in future system
  updates, since it's really needed to make basic sound settings much
  more clear and easy for the eye. As Shuttleworth would say, "Sound
  settings at your fingertips" :)

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