unity-design team mailing list archive

[Martín Soto <donsoto@xxxxxxxxx>]

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

> 2010/5/4 Martín Soto <donsoto@xxxxxxxxx>
>
[...]

>
> * Mary often listens to music from the computer in her room, while
>>   she's chatting with friends and browsing the web. She needs
>>   a quick way to set the volume to adapt it to her mood and to the
>>   recording level of the current song.
>>
>
> This case is flawed. We can automate this. Mary shouldn't have to give two
> flips about the volume of her IM client sounds. Mary just wants to listen to
> music, and be alerted when her friend Jane sends her a new message. What the
> hell does volume of an IM client mean anyway? That idea in itself is
> confusing.
>

I think that by mentioning her side activities ("while she´s chatting with
friends and browsing the web") I introduced some confusion here. This case
was about the volume of music, not the volume of IM. Would it help if I
write "while she´s doing her homework" instead? (additional suggestions are
welcome, of course!)


> This use case should be adapted to target some changes to pulseaudio. Pulse
> should be able to identify transient streams, such as IM notification
> sounds, and adjust their volume to be audible above the other currently
> playing streams, without blowing out Mary's ears. Now Mary is just happy,
> and didn't have to do anything.
>

I´ve been also thinking along these lines: the volume of notification sounds
should adapt automatically to other playing streams so that notifications
remain audible. But this is part of the solution; let´s try to get the
problem definition nailed down first, at least in an initial, workable form.


[...]

> * Javier works at home and uses Internet chat intensively to
>   communicate with colleagues and clients. Since this is part of his
>   job, it is very important for him to hear the audible signals when
>   chat messages arrive. He's often worried about playing music from
>   the computer because he fears that the music may prevent him from
>   noticing an important message.
>

What's the difference between this case and Mary's case?
>

This should be clearer after my explanation above: this is the case about
the volume of background sounds, the other one is about controlling the
volume of media playback.


>
>> * Axel spends hours every evening talking with his girlfriend on the
>>   Internet phone. Sometimes, he wants to play music while he's
>>   talking, and would appreciate to have an easy way to set up the
>>   volume so that he can listen to the music without missing parts of
>>   the conversation.
>>
>
> I think Axel's girlfriend would prefer him paying full attention to her,
> but it's their relationship, not mine .. :P
> This is pretty much the same as Betty's.
>

Hehe, yeah, although speaking from personal experience, there are times when
you want to remain connected without really having an active conversation
(ahh, the luxuries of the Internet age...) You still want to here if the
other person talks, though.

Subtleties aside, the difference between this case and Betty´s is that here
mixing is necessary. Betty´s case is about plain volume control during VOIP
calls. We may of course merge the two, but I think Axel´ s case is a lot
more power-user-oriented and may have to be treated separately.


> * Karolina loves playing games from the Internet, but often finds
>>   their music abhorrent. She would like to be able to mute the music
>>   (and eventually listen to her own music) while still being able to
>>   play the game.
>>
>
> Yeah, I guess can get down with this. The issue here is that Karolina is
> almost definitely going to just adjust the volume present in the game on the
> internet, she probably won't think "oh I should turn down firefox".
>

As evidenced not only but your comment but by other answers in this thread
(thanks everyone, by the way!) there is a whole bunch of issues that are
specific to sound coming from Internet applications. This seems to be a good
reason to leave this case here, and to probably add more that cover this
area, because it's obviously an important area to many people.

[I´ll answer to your point about synchronous and asynchronous streams in a
separate message.]

Best wishes,

Martín