unity-design team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Jim Rorie wrote on 16/03/10 13:16:
>...
> So let me ask this outright.  What provisions have UX team made for
> interactivity, outside the messaging applet?

The notification design guidelines.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotificationDesignGuidelines>

>                                               The last time I heard, it
> was up to the app designers.  Therefore each app will have it's own
> callback look and feel.  The consistency of the desktop that you have
> been trying so hard to enforce in the panel is destroyed by pushing
> interactive notifications on the app designer.
>...

I don't think it's a destruction, so much as a correction. Developers of
software that runs on Ubuntu are often keen to use an interface
mechanism just because it's there, regardless of whether it's not a good
idea. Tooltips, the notification area, and notification bubbles are all
examples of this. In these cases, consistency can be a bad thing. So
it's up to us to provide guidelines and suggestions about the variety of
techniques people can use instead, and then up to the designers of
individual applications to work out which bests suit their interaction.

Notification bubbles were heavily overused before Notify OSD.
<http://mairin.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/chatty-applications/> The
introduction of Notify OSD has nudged developers towards fixing this a
bit, but not completely. Network Manager is one obvious example that's
still too chatty.

Cheers
- -- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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