unity-design team mailing list archive

[Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 1:49 AM, Chow Loong Jin <hyperair@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 02/12/2011 19:46, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>> True. But it could appear only when someone starts a conversation,
>> rather than every time they say something.
>
> That only makes it slightly better. It's still just as disruptive at the
> beginning of a conversation. In contrast, a notification allows me to glance or
> ignore the message and reach a safe point for context-switching before actually
> attending to the message.
>
> I think what's needed is a better way of linking the notifications to the
> messaging indicator.

I agree. Here's the problem as I see it:

Currently when an event occurs (for example, someone says something in
a minimized empathy chat), a notification pops up and the messaging
indicator turns blue. They happen at the same time, but the events
don't appear related. Technically they are two components of the same
event, but they appear on two different, not visibly related UI
elements as two separate events. This is made even worse if the
notification is delayed because it is queued behind other
notifications. In that case the indicator turns blue well before the
notification appears, so the user has no idea which notification the
blue indicator is associated with.

Additionally, the change of colour in the indicator is not
particularly noticeable. Anecdotally I have found that people either
don't notice it at all, or ignore it because they don't know what it
means (was there a usability study on this? I remember one, but
couldn't find it any more...)

That's the problem. There are a couple of possible solutions, but
here's one that makes the most sense to me:

- Link notifications to indicators via a speech-bubble-like tail.
Volume change notifications get linked to the sound indicator, empathy
notifications get linked to the messaging indicator, etc.

I believe that just this change on its own will help significantly.
Notifications are transient, so people can't interact with them, but
with this change the notifications are at least *pointing* to
something interactive. They still don't require interaction (which was
one of the original design goals I agree with) but they make it
obvious how. This should reduce the frustration felt by users who are
used to interacting with notifications directly on other operating
systems.

It also fits with the metaphor that the user expects. When an empathy
chat causes a notification, the fact that the notification isn't
associated with *anything* is odd. It's like a voice with no source.
With the speech-bubble tail, it provides a natural source (and
additional context) for the notification.

I've done a quick mock-up of the change [1]. The positioning of the
notification needs to be adjusted of course, but hopefully it provides
a general idea.

I personally think the above change would be sufficient, but we have
other options as well:

- Add a glow effect and a *very* gentle pulse to active (blue)
indicators. This will make them slightly more obvious and
interactive-looking than currently. We'll have to be careful not to
make them too distracting, though.
- Change the notification animation to be a magic-lamp like expand and
collapse into the appropriate indicator. Could be used instead of or
in addition to the speech-bubble-tail. I expect this would end up
being too active/busy, but you never know.

Just my two cents,
Evan

[1] http://dl.dropbox.com/u/171647/notifications_as_speech_bubbles.png