Notifications: uselessness of

[Scott Kitterman]

On Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:46:18 +0000 Mat Tomaszewski 
<mat.tomaszewski at canonical.com> wrote:
>Jordan Mantha wrote:
>> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Mat Tomaszewski
>> <mat.tomaszewski at canonical.com> wrote:
>>   
>>> Jordan Mantha wrote:
>>>     
>>>
>> irritated by people in the Dx Team essentially saying that they know
>>
>>   
>>>> however think there's maybe too much assumption from the Dx team that
>>>>
>>>>       
>>   
>I've got an underlying feeling that you'd love to join our team ;-)
>
>(All the points you've raised have been answered at some point in this 
>thread, I hope everyone will forgive me if I end it here).

Except they haven't. The feeling I get from many email and IRC discussions 
with people involved in Canonical Dx is that they are so convinced of the 
correctness of their design that any disagrement with it must stem from a 
lack of understanding from the community.  

Personally, I've invested a fair amount of time in reviewing the available 
documentation and in discussions with people on the Dx team.  I understand 
the design.  Explaining it again isn't going to help.  While I think there 
are good aspects of the design, it suffers from some serious flaws that 
members of the community are attempting (without apparent success) to 
communicate to you.

I agree with the premise that an icon can't really communicate "you have 
updates".  I can even see where that might mean it's useful once to provide 
some explanation the first time it comes up.  It does not follow that users 
will never know what an icon means and some kind of pop-up is required 
EVERY time.

My reading of the traffic on this list is that outside the Dx team there is 
a pretty strong consensus against this change.  I'd suggest this might be a 
good chance to demonstrate openness to constructive criticism and change 
course.

I've actually gone through this kind of experience recently. Adept 3 (new 
in Intrepid) switched to a new icon.  The FIRST time I saw it I didn't know 
what it was and some kind of pop-up explaining it might have been useful.  
After the first time, I knew.  For the second and every subsequent use I 
would consider a pop-up excessive and intrusive.

If we consider that any of our users concerned with system updates are at 
least literate, they have demonstrated an ability to learn to associate new 
abstract symbols with specific concepts.  I think learning a certain icon 
means updates are available is quite approachable for them.

Scott K