ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Randall Ross  <randall@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I was having a conversation with my Ubuntu buddies recently that spawned
some interesting ideas. I thought that the list would be a good place to
discuss too...

One thing I've observed on other competitor device platforms (phones,
tablets) is that they don't respect the owner's finite attention.
Interruptions (also politely called "notifications") are sent by too
many apps for too many conditions at times that don't match the owner's
availability of ability to deal with them. I've seen people get
repeatedly interrupted by their device for the most mundane or
irrelevant reasons, usually when they're with someone and don't want to
be interrupted or are in a place (or in an activity) where notifications
are awkward.

What if we were to adopt, as a central tenet of our notification
strategy, this idea:

"Notify the owner only in the way s/he wishes to be notified. Default to
being respectful."

Some examples:

  * Never notify me
  * Notify me when I have the time to read and respond
  * Notify me once per hour
  * Notify me if someone tags a message as emergency
  * Notify me if I'm looking at Telegram
  * Notify me only if I am alone
  * Notify me immediately if it's my wife/husband
  * Notify me if I'm at work
  * ... and

Can you think of others? I imagine we could quickly generate a very long
(and personal) list of conditions.

Speaking personally, "Smart Interruptions" would be a true *smart*
device feature, and a differentiator if Ubuntu were to take this on
(foundationally, rather than as an add-on). I'd like to hear your
opinions. Is there prior work in this area that we could leverage? Could
the system learn what annoys us, and then not repeat an annoying
interruption?

Cheers,
Randall.

P.S. If people who participate in or follow the ubuntu-push-devs list
can chime in, that would be great too :)