unity-design team mailing list archive

["Scott E. Armitage" <launchpad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

2010/5/4 Alex Launi <alex.launi@xxxxxxxxx>

> These were certainly helpful. I think you've nailed a lot of the sound
> related use cases.
> I think the take home message of this is that there are two distinct types
> of sound streams. I'm going to use the analogy we've been using in
> notifications- Synchronous and Asynchronous.
>
>    - Synchronous streams are those that are user initiated. Banshee,
>    Empathy Voice/Video chat, Youtube videos, etc. Streams that come from
>    explicitly user initiated actions.
>    - Asynchronous streams are those that are *not* user initiated, and are
>    triggered by environment events. Incoming IM sounds, alert noises.
>
> Asynchronous streams should be handled by the system, but we should design
> a means of allowing users to adjust the volume of synchronous streams.
>

Maybe this is outside the scope of the discussion, but with respect to
synchronous streams, I can think of many times where I am browsing websites
and opening new tabs as I'm e.g. reading an article when all of a sudden
something, somewhere, starts playing audio. I didn't try to initiate any
audio stream, but now there is, say, an embedded video playing on some tab
somewhere, and I can't find it. I'm not sure what my point is, but it seems
like there are two kinds of "synchronous" streams -- those the user expected
to happen, and those that the user didn't. The latter case almost blends in
the definition of asynchronous streams.

-Scott

-- 
Scott Armitage, B.A.Sc., M.A.Sc. candidate
Space Flight Laboratory
University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies
4925 Dufferin Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3H 5T6