unity-design team mailing list archive

["frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx" <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx>]

hi mpt,

On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 23:38, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

>
> frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx wrote on 04/01/11 10:34:
> >...
> > On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 15:49, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >...
> >> frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx> wrote on
> >> 17/12/10 15:18:
> >...
> >>> i'd like to add another issue that contributes to the problem:
> >>> We have no "connected to the internet" indicator.
> >>> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/lucid-online-status
> >>
> >> That looks like a useful feature, but I don't understand how it's
> >> relevant to this discussion.
> >
> > Because having in indicator for whether or not i'm connected to the
> > internet already untangles the semantic confusion of having a button
> > called "Offline" in the Me Menu to a great extent.
>
> It's a fair point that using "Offline" as an IM status might be confused
> with Internet connectivity. However, it's been used that way in most IM
> clients for a long time. So any replacement would have to be *so* much
> less confusing (and/or quicker, and/or fun) that it would be worth the
> loss in familiarity.
>

how about
"turn off chat" | "turn on chat"
"disable chat" | "enable chat"
?



> >...
> >>> * always keep Presence controls active, regardless of IM¹
> >>
> >> What use would that be? How would you avoid wasting people's time, by
> >> wrongly implying that it's useful for them to toggle between "brb" and
> >> "In a meeting" (for example) when they're not even online?
> >
> > I'd say Notify OSD and e.g. power management or the screensaver service
> > would like to know if i'm busy doing something, even if that would mean
> > i'm only staring at the screen, or there's a standing picture being
> > displayed. Your point makes perfect sense, but i'm not talking about
> > the Presence controls in Online-only fashion, i see them as a status
> > relevant to the local system also.
>
> Hence the question. Are there any statuses relevant to the local system
> other than "Available" and "Busy"? If so, how are they relevant? And if
> not, how could we avoid people thinking they were?
>

yeah, that's my thinking too, it's a problem yet to be solved :D
so let me try:
Local Presence controls are totally inconsistent with the ones in Contact
List.
At some point it might have been convenient to give them a certain
similarity, but today after a few distrubutions old inconsistencies, it
surely is valid to consider presenting Presence differently in the Me Menu.
First of all, what the user needs is a way to tell others when he/she is
currently unavailable. Status text is inadequate for that purpose, fast
status switching is definitely wanted.
So, to accellerate interaction here, it might make sense to thin out the
states we currently afford to the user for quick Ix in the Me Menu..
Google, Facebook, Myspace, all of these offer a max of 2 states configurable
by the user. Skype is the only service i know of which still defends the
concept of having a lot of status presets.
Actually, all the protocol permits is "available" and "unavailable". Then,
there's "out of contact", i.e. offline. I never liked invisible, and it
doesn't work on e.g. facebook.
The optimum Presence system tells my contacts whether i am available for
conversation, if i am idle or afk or if i'm simply unavailable, this
automatically to the greater part.
Imagine you have set an appointment in your calendar, told the calendar to
show you as "busy" or "not available" for the time of the appointment, Me
Menu Presence should know of that and communicate it to the contacts in your
Places > People.

I would like to discuss idle vs away.
In Me Menu i would want to have Busy or Do Not Disturb as a 2 state button,
which can be on or off. Away would be an automatic state, timed in sync with
what the screensaver preferences page and the power management preferences
page both call "idle".

If somebody wanted to override the MeMenu / Ubuntu Presence state, that
person would, in such a configuration, have to open the IM Client and do it
there.
The override would remain in place, until another state change in the Me
Menu is commanded by the user.

This is quite simple thinking i know, but it's what i come up with after
months of thinking about this, and believe me, it had me sleepless many a
night..f :P

Here's what i propose:
keep Presence in the Me Menu simple enough to be applicable in both local
and public (e.g. IM) use cases.
States that should be reachable:
* available
* busy | do not disturb
* chat: off


> >>> * remove "Available", since it is identical with the regular Presence
> >>> state for IM and the Desktop Session
>

Available is the state that is active, if no special state (e.g. unavailable
or auto-afk) is active.


 >...
> > I wasn't sure whether stopping and starting services belonged into the
> > launcher and dash, rather than into the status indicators..
> > I also can't find the policy on that anymore.. perhaps someone can
> > help?
>
> I haven't written it up yet, but you could regard music playback and
> wireless connection as examples of services that are accessed from
> indicator menus.
>

Messaging is such a rich activity, it would be too much information to add
app launchers into Messaging-related Indicator Menus. imo.


> >> So, any global knob would be for "fewer interruptions", not "no
> >> interruptions". And this would make it impractical to communicate.
> >
> > True, i know this from audio workstations, they tried to communicate
> > that a certain mode would enable "zero latency", which is physically
> > unachievable. So the industry leader ( AVID ) called their
> > implementation "Low Latency". I think Low Interruption is not a good
> > name, but Do Not Disturb, Silent Mode or Notifications Off or any of
> > the like would be quite good approximations of what i am trying to
> > establish here..
>
> Yes -- even if you have a "Do Not Disturb" sign on your door, the hotel
> staff will still knock to evacuate you in a fire, so it is a decent
> parallel. There's much more cultural understanding of that sort of thing
> than of a menu item that no-one will have ever seen before.
>

Skype has Do Not Disturb.

Actually, i think it would be wise to make the names of state presets more
prose-like, e.g. "I'm busy" or "I'm not here right now".
This way we'd approximate a form of communication that can more easily be
regarded as "natural" or "human".
And it would be less of a leap to later embed custom status text into this.



> Regardless, you and I both are deeply familiar with Ubuntu as an OS. But
> people who barely understand what an OS is would need a very simple
> explanation of "fewer than what", of what "normal" means. If we can't do
> that, it doesn't deserve top-level system-level prominence.
>

I don't think people need to understand the what at all. They just need to
have a way of honestly saying that they are unavailable for whatever trivial
nuisance might pop up, and a system that honors such a wish.


> >> And why would people ever *not* choose fewer interruptions?
> >
> > There are states in which i want to be notified aggressively i.e.
> > interrupted, and there are states in which i can't afford being
> > interrupted. In such a state of course i would make sure my battery is
> > charged or i'm safely plugged into a wall socket.
> > To me, from a user point of view, "no interruptions" is equivalent to
> > "no interruptions, unless critically necessary ones", which
> > mathematically translates to your "fewer interruptions". To name the
> > ones i can think of by myself:
> >
> > * Update manager
> > * Notify OSD bubbles
> > * Session start sound (login sound)
> > * whatever notification is supposed to appear upon incoming voice and
> > video calls
> > * morphing windows, e.g. for filetransfer requests or contact
> > subscription requests
> >
> > all of these i would like to see, hear and not miss when i'm set to
> > "Available".
> >...
>
> So, how would you make it obvious that the menu item covers those
> elements and not others?
>

i wouldn't. I'd just design something simple that works just as it claims
to.
Do Not Disturb would apply to all of Ubuntu, as globally as possible.
I'm thinking of the major nuisances at first, e.g. incoming voice/video
calls or the bubbles entirely, or morphing windows for what have you or
update-manager pop-ups.
It is a user state, and as such it is the highest type of rule or law for
system behaviour i can think of.