[GUI] When do notifications make sense?

[Konrad Zemek]

Thomas, Celeste,

2014-05-29 21:45 GMT+02:00 Celeste Lyn Paul <celeste at kde.org>:
> 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.

I also agree with the recommendation and think it would be an improvement
to Amarok as well as other applications, but want to argue one small point
while I'm at it:

2014-05-29 21:45 GMT+02:00 Celeste Lyn Paul <celeste at kde.org>:
> (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.)

I don't feel it's at all similar. When clicking the track to play the result is
immediately obvious to the user (the music started playing). The result of
clicking Send Email is not obvious, especially since it can take much time
for various sending-related operations to complete (connecting to the server,
uploading attachments). This makes the notification more akin to the "you
can now safely remove your device" note after ejecting a disk.

Sending an email is effectively a process that runs in background. I find that
it's useful to receive a confirmation that a user-initiated action that ran in
the background has finished regardless of whether the context through which
the action was initiated is currently in focus or not. (This conclusion of mine,
of course, is pretty much what has already been said in this thread.)

    Konrad

>
> 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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