[GUI] When do notifications make sense?

[Celeste Lyn Paul]

Thomas,

I agree with your recommendation that a track change notification should
not be shown when the control (Amarok, Media player popup) is the current
focus of the user and the user clicks the track change button. In my
notification research, I consistently find lower user experience results
when a notification is directly related to the action the user just
initiated.

The rationale is that the user initiated the action and is aware of what
the system response is. They don't need confirmation of an action they
initiated or is expected to complete 99.99% of the time.

(This is a similar to clicking Send Email and then getting a notification
that the email was sent. Of course it was sent. I clicked Send Email. I
only want to know if it DIDNT send.)

Cheers,

~ Celeste


On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 8:39 AM, Thomas Pfeiffer <colomar at autistici.org>
wrote:

> 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
>



-- 
Celeste Lyn Paul
KDE Usability Project
www.kde.org
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