Notifications: uselessness of

[Jordan Mantha]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Mat Tomaszewski
<mat.tomaszewski at canonical.com> wrote:
> Jordan Mantha wrote:
>> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 1:52 AM, Mat Tomaszewski
>> <mat.tomaszewski at canonical.com> wrote:
>>> Bruce Cowan wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 2009-02-26 at 18:18 +0000, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>>>>> One pleasant side effect of our work on notifications is that it has
>>>>> given us the excuse to rip out some gratuitous notification bubbles,
>>>>> such as the one saying "Your laptop battery is now fully charged". And
>>>>> when an interactive notification is really necessary, an alert box or
>>>>> other window that opens in the background will usually be less
>>>>> distracting then a bubble that floats on top of your work.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Replacing a "distracting ... bubble that floats on top of your work"
>>>> with a distracting window that appears behind your work doesn't seem to
>>>> be much of an improvement. Also, why is the window list considered a
>>>> second notification area now?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> First of all, let me quickly welcome everyone and introduce myself. My
>>> name is Mat and I'm with Canonical's design team, being responsible for
>>> large part of the design of the new notification system.
>>>
>>> Now, to the point :)
>>>
>>> I can't quite see how the window that appears *behind* your other open
>>> windows, so that you *don't see it* until you close/minimise other
em>>> windows, is as distracting as big, ugly yellow bubble that appears *on
>>> top of* your open windows, covering your work. What you're saying simply
>>> does not seem logical.
>>>
>>
>> I can't quite see how you can't quite see it. :-)  The notification
>> popups allow you to quickly address whatever has come up and get back
>> to work on whatever you're doing.
>
> Yes, true. But that's only provided that you understood that you have to
> click on the icon in the first place. We believe that many people won't get
> to that conclusion with the U-M icon. That's why we decided to make life
> easier for them.

"We believe" isn't very convincing. Why do you think people don't
understand icons? What have you done to determine this? I've not heard
of anybody complaining about not being able to find the updates, quite
the contrary. Usually the complaints I hear are "why are there so many
updates?!" It's not that you're wrong, it's just that I don't have any
evidence that what you're saying is true so I wonder what evidence you
have that I don't. Has there been thought about how the icon or
current notification system could be made better? How about user
education? It just feels from this end that the Dx team had to do
something "big" out of the gate to prove themselves so they just
picked something to "revolutionize" in 6 months.

>>> I also find it very arficicial and unconvincing to distinguish between a
>>> bubble that contains actions and an open alert window as two completely
>>> different things. One of them contains text, a button to invoke an
>>> action, and another button (x) to close it. The other contains text, a
>>> button to invoke an action, and another button (x) to close it. The only
>>> difference being that the first has a shape of a speech bubble and is
>>> yellow and the other looks like an app window. What if we decide that
>>> all app windows should be yellow and look like speech bubbles? Is it
>>> going to magically turn them into notifications? Really, when there is
>>> no *functional and behavioural* difference, they are effectively the
>>> same thing.
>>>
>>
>> This doesn't make a lot of sense. If they're the same thing then why
>> are you changing it? Obviously there is difference in function and
>> behavior or else you wouldn't be gitting rid of one in favor of the
>> other. Put another why, if they are no *functional and behavioral*
>> differences then why are you bothering to change it?
>>
>>
>
> Right, I'll try to explain again. The bubble does essentially the same thing
> as the window, and behaves similarly. *Apart* from the fact, that you have
> to click on *the icon that the bubble points to*, rather than on a bubble.
> That's tricky! Not only that - the icon itself is enigmatic, and scary! Yes
> it is, it may not seem scary to you, but we want *everyone* to be able to
> use Ubuntu and update their system regularly, not just you... That's why,
> again, we want to make life easier for people.

Who is it scary to? Who thinks an icon is scary but a flashing window
list item isn't? Who thinks an icon is scary but windows mysteriously
popping up isnt? We all want to make people's lives easier I think
(there may be a few exceptions ;-)  ). I'm starting to get a little
irritated by people in the Dx Team essentially saying that they know
what users want/need/feel and the rest of don't and are just going on
our own personal preferences and experiences. I don't think that's
really what you're trying to say but it's really coming off that way I
think to a lot of developers.

>>> The only issue regarding the U-M that has been raised and I agree with
>>> is the fact that the window is big and clunky and uses a lot of RAM. We
>>> will be investigating a possibility of replacing it with a simple,
>>> lightweight alert window with short text and 3 buttons: [install now],
>>> [details...] and [later] (exact wording TBC). I'm really struggling to
>>> see how this alert box appearing in the background would be more
>>> distracting and annoying than the yellow ugliness :)
>>>
>>
>> That's really the only issue you think has been raised? And again, the
>> "yellow ugliness" bit. It's like not liking the color of the house so
>> you decide to remodel the whole thing.
>>
>>
>
> OK, so you picked up on one little word that was not in the center of the
> point I was making. That's not very constructive :)

That one little word is about the only consistent argument (along with
"icons are stupid") I've seen for why the notification system is being
remodeled.

>>> Again, I'd like to reiterate the main point: we have a good reason to
>>> believe that persistent indicators only work for some very specific
>>> cases (examples being network connection, volume, etc). We are now going
>>> through long and painful process of carefully defining these cases. It
>>> is early days, and there can be reconsiderations. So please be patient
>>> and forgiving :)
>>>
>>
>> Again, I'd like to reiterate that the "trust us, we have our reasons"
>> is not going to be very convincing to many people. I keep getting this
>> sort of double-speak feeling when the same team is having to keep
>> pushing both "we know what were doing" and "we're just starting to
>> figure this out so bear with us". If you really do know what you're
>> doing, patches welcome. If you're still not sure yet, maybe you should
>> consider waiting until Karmic before making such huge changes.
>>
>> I'd like to point out that I'm not against the notification work per
>> se. I like the new, prettier notifications I'm seeing, etc. I do
>> however think there's maybe too much assumption from the Dx team that
>> whatever they see as "better usability" *is* better usability. This is
>> why in the open source world we like to have heavy discussion about
>> the fundamental design, not just the implementation details.
>>
>>
>
> Exactly. That's why I'm here discussing it with you.  :)

And that's awesome, thanks for that. This should have happened a few
months ago, but better late than never for sure.

-Jordan