[GUI] When do notifications make sense?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hi everyone,
a recent post in the VDG forums [1] made me think about notifications thrown 
by music players in general. 
The Human Interface Guideline about notifications [2] says this: "A 
notification is an information that is not directly relevant to the user's 
current task." So when we think about whether to throw a notification from a 
music player, we have to think about what the user's current task is.
Another consideration is: Would the information shown in the notification be 
redundant to that shown in a more prominent place?
When Amarok is minimized (to taskbar or tray) or hidden on a different desktop 
or behind another window and e.g. a new track starts playing, it makes sense 
to show that information in the OSD or a system notification, regardless of 
whether the track change was automatic or triggered via a global shortcut.
However, when the track changes when the Amarok window has focus, the user 
sees what track is playing now anyway, right? Also, when the user is 
interacting with Amarok's main window, I'd consider this to be their current 
task (even if that task takes only a few seconds), so this would speak against 
giving feedback in a notification as well.
The same goes for the media control appled in Plasma Next's system tray [3]. 
When I change the track from there, I see the new track right there, no need 
to throw a notification right in my face (or distract me by showing an OSD 
elsewhere). The referenced image shows a notification about paused play, which 
thankfully Amarok does not throw, but a notification about a track change 
would be just as annoying in that case.
KDE Telepathy's default behavior makes sense: It throws a notification if a 
new messages comes in, unless it's in a chat window which currently has focus. 
I had a configuration at some point (not sure anymore if it was the default 
back then) which always threw a notification when a new message came in, even 
if it came in in the currently focused chat window. It was horribly annoying.
Of course track changes in Amarok are not as frequent as incoming message in a 
lively chat, but redundant information isn't good in genera unless it's 
critical information which users absolutely must notice.
Therefore I'd suggest to not throw OSD and system notifications when the 
Amarok main window has focus or the user is currenlty interacting with the 
media player popup.

I'm looking forward to your take on this!
Cheers,
Thomas


[1] http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=285&t=121300&p=311815#p311813
[2] http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/HIG/Notifications
[3] http://i.imgur.com/9Gi2aom.png