ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Randall Ross  wrote on 10/03/16 19:21:
> ...
> 
> "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.
> 
> ...

Designing and implementing a configuration system like that would be
one third of the work.

The second part would be designing and implementing an inviting way for
people to configure it. It’s pointless having the world’s most
sophisticated system for fine-tuning notifications if no-one uses it.

This is partly an investment problem: it’s hard to get people to spend
time now for the sake of saving time/annoyance later. And it’s partly
that it’s a really obscure thing to think about out of context.

One possibility would would be an unobtrusive menubutton on every
notification (maybe a grey thumbs-down icon), opening a menu with
options for one-off muting and for training the configuration.
Something like:

    👎▾
    Do Not Disturb…
    …for 1 hour
    …until tomorrow
    …until I leave {current location}
    ————————————————————————————————————————————————————
    …whenever I’m at {current location}
    …whenever I’m using {focused app name}
    No more notifications from {app name / contact name}

That would provide context: This particular notification was annoying
because … It would make training the model nearly as easy as just
dismissing an individual notification. And it would mean that every
change you make benefits you immediately.

The third part would be making suppressions understandable and
reversible. You don’t want people staring at a message from their boss
from six hours ago, wondering “why wasn’t I notified about that?”, and
not being able to find the answer.

This is analogous to junk mail filtering. When you’re reading e-mail,
you have a “Junk” button, which is just as easy to tap as the “Delete”
button is. But with e-mail, you have a single “Junk” folder that you
can scan and choose “Not Junk” if necessary. What would be the
equivalent for notifications? To put it another way, that thumbs-down
menu would need a corresponding thumbs-up menu somewhere. Where?

- -- 
mpt
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAlbmwmMACgkQ6PUxNfU6ecrRpgCff8ID6snhhEshqW/c0ksk19hX
UNgAnRKE5o9HFia1Z5l59DSDrKgAG/VS
=Kmzf
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----