unity-design team mailing list archive

[tacone <tacone@xxxxxxxxx>]

I fully understand my idea came in a time where everything was
decided, but you have to let people express their vision, only
afterwards you can point out things out.

> We're very interested in morphing windows, so thank you for exploring the
> idea! In general, morphing windows should let us deliver "simpler, clearer"
> user experiences, because people are confronted with just the specific
> information they need at any given time, and don't get lots of popup windows
> as that changes through the course of a workflow.
>
> If we thought there was a compelling use case for actions on notifications,
> your suggestion would be a very useful one!

Summing up, my idea, rather than being interactive notifications vs
morphing windows, was simply related to the use of the screen edge as
it's an easier target respect a small button. As you already guessed,
it could applied to morphing windows as well.

I won't discuss the morphing windows, since the entire concept is not
entirely clear to me.
Still, there's one thing that strikes me: morphing windows behave much
differently than notifications. They expand on mouse hover, instead of
disappearing. Even if they look different, having them be
semi-transparent may trick the user into expecting the same behaviour
as notifications.
(I should also note that pretty much nobody likes popups nor popunders )

> The reasons that we think actions on notifications are a bad idea have been
> documented elsewhere, I'll just focus on one of them which is the poor
> interaction between the short-lived nature of a notification and the need to
> "reach it" to interact with it. Allowing actions on notifications means that
> people HAVE to rush to get to them before they expire. We view that as
> broken by design, so we won't have any actions on notifications, and that in
> turn means there's no need for this.

I fully understand that. But let me point another consequence which I
consider broken by design.
The hands follow the eyes. If you see a mail notification you expect
to be able to click on it and open the incoming mail. Thus, in some
way, the non-intrusiveness, breaks something else.

Currently the problem is solved by the Indicator applet. If you miss
something, you can find it there. That removes the urge to reach the
notification in time. Still the dissonance between seeing a mail
notification here and having to click there to get to the mailbox is
present.

My take is that having the indicator applet removes part of the
frustration of missing a notification/morphing window (and using an
easy target like the screen edge may make it so much easier not to
miss it !) as, if you miss it, you can always find it in your catch
all indicator applet.

<rumbling>
There is still some problem with the indicator applet...
- the icon is pretty small to click and the indicator applet is meant
to be an often accessed item. I would make it larger. An hotkey would
also be appreciated.
- also the context menu is just a normal menu. In my ideal world,
clicking on the indicator applet would fade out the screen and make
appear again all the missed notifications, in a dashboard-like
fashion.
...but i guess it's fine for now.
</rumbling>

Unrelated question: is a roadmap to be found anywhere ? What is the
work group working on, currently ?