unity-design team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Evan Huus wrote on 03/12/11 15:43:
> ...
> 
> 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...)


Yes. From
<https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2011-April/032988.html>:
"Only 2/6 noticed an XChat Gnome notification, despite (1) a
notification bubble appearing, (2) the Ubuntu button going blue, (3)
the messaging menu envelope going blue, and (4) an emblem appearing on
XChat Gnome's launcher."

(In 11.10, fewer things change: the Ubuntu button no longer goes blue.)

> 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.


Three problems there.

Most importantly, in the 11.04 test, people didn't see the bubble
either. Would a bubble with a tail be much more noticable than one
without a tail?

Second, giving Ubuntu notification bubbles tails would make them look
more like Windows notification balloons ... which are clickable. :-)

Third, what would happen when there were two or more bubbles on screen
at once? Would the tail of the second obscure the first?

> ...
> 
> 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.
> 
> ...


Perhaps when battery is critically low, the battery icon should blink
constantly even once you've dismissed the warning alert.

- -- 
mpt
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