[haiku-development] Re: Notification Server?
- From: "Niels Reedijk" <niels.reedijk@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 22:34:02 +0200
Hi Ryan,
2007/5/24, Ryan Leavengood <leavengood@xxxxxxxxx>:
It won't hurt us to wait a bit to see the instances when we need
notifications-like functionality and then seeing what might work best.
We have a lot of good ideas archived in this thread so we can always
come back to this later if we want. There is plenty of other things
for me to work on ;)
I´m glad I didn´t discourage you, that´s the last thing I´d want to do!
Still Neils, I would be interested in more details on how you would
approach the following use cases:
Ahhh, puzzles!
- The user is waiting for an important email and must respond to it
within 15 minutes of its arrival. How can the system help him do this
with the least stress and messing up his workflow?
Well, my first reaction is, if it´s so important, why doesn´t the
sender use the telephone! But as someone pointed out in this thread, I
can´t expect people to educate their coworkers. So in this case I
would rely on the human element. If you know that you can receive an
important email and you need to reply to it swiftly, just keep an eye
on your deskbar. I actually this being an automated thing. The current
MDR has a perfect way of user notificiation, using the simple full
postbox icon. It can even be configured to perform a nice jingle if
you´d like. I guess that it both would be enough.
- The user has an important conference call he has to join in 2 hours.
He has just enough time to finish up a project in that 2 hours, but he
tends to get really involved and won't be watching the clock. How can
the system remind him to make this call without interrupting his flow
on the project?
Well, in your calendar app you ask it _explicitly_ to set an alarm at
the starting time of your conference call. In this case a user
explicitly asks the program to interrupt him. I would imagine this
alarm doing everything, ranging from flickering, annoying animation,
noise, The A-team theme music, an annoying interrupting modal dialog.
All at the user´s request though. In this case I would consider a
popup rather meagre. And for this kind of meeting you would not need
announcements 30 minutes in advance, 15 minutes in advance, 10, etc.
If you´d want that, ask for it (in case of you traveling).
As a user interaction experiment, I´d try to let the clock or the
date, which both symbolize planning better than anything, to perform a
kind of unobtrusive countdown. Everything from bar that declines to an
object that seems to come closer to a changing colour scheme: the
redder it gets, the sooner it will happen. That would replace any need
for advance notifications.
- The user is downloading a torrent of the latest album of his
favorite Creative Commons-releasing band. He is also downloading some
other files though, so it is going to take over an hour to download.
He really wants to know when the download is done so he can play the
album, but he hates having to constantly switch to his Bittorrent
client to see the progress. How can he get on with his life while
waiting for the download, confident he will be informed when the
download is done?
Ask the bittorrent client to inform him. If he really wants to be
informed, then he requests the bittorrent client to interrupt his
workflow in any way possible. Think window popping into the
foreground. If he merely wants a subtle reminder, he´d try something
like a flickering deskbar, or perhaps a subtle popup. It would require
some trying to find out what would suit users.
This poses a general problem though. If you are playing a multiplayer
game, you don´t want to be interrupted that rudely. Interesting case.
- The user is waiting for his friend Sarah to log onto IM because he
wants to see if she and her friends can join him for a movie tonight.
It would be great if he didn't have to keep an eye on his IM window to
see when she logs in.
Well, we all know he wants to invite her friends for show. But anyway,
if you look at any major IM program, they would all have a status
window. What I´d want is a miniature version of this status window.
You know, one that I can simply and quickly attach to my deskbar (I
have it in my upper right corner and the space below it is generally
unused anyway). It could then tell me by means of gentle information
that someone got online. Or you could use popups legitimately in this
case.
Now, maybe I've "stacked the deck" with these use cases which are just
begging for a notification system, but I'm not sure how else to think
about these problems.
The problems you pose are legitimate communication puzzles. Earlier,
when I thought about this subject, I thought that the popup craze
started with MSN, and for some reason I still find that one of the few
legitimate applications. If you look closely though, the MSN
notifications are different from the various balloons used. They are
customly crafted.
Anyway, some of the more interesting problems are communication
questions put up earlier in this thread. How do you notifiy the user
effectively of the fact that his HD is almost full, or that the USB
mass storage device he attached could better be attached to another
port. How do you notify someone of a low battery status. Is it
legitimate to interrupt their workflow for that reason?
As far as I´m concerned, those are the problems of ´now´, and it would
seem for me like a fun idea to brainstorm on solving these
communication issues.
Kind regards!
Niels
Other related posts:
