[ge-talk] Notification Server?

[Waldemar Kornewald]

Hi Niels,
hopefully this gets the ball rolling some more.

On 5/24/07, Niels Reedijk <niels.reedijk at gmail.com> wrote:
> > - 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).

I think that's the point: You explicitly ask for notification, the
"it's annoying" argument doesn't really apply. We just need to make it
such that most notifications are disabled, by default.

Notifications aren't always bad. The problem is just that unimportant
notifications shouldn't be too disturbing and the user should be able
to stop a notification, so it never takes away focus, again (unlike
Windows Update restart notifications).

There are basically two kinds of notifications that matter:
1. Unexpected events (HD full?, low battery, etc.), preventing the
user from continuing his work, requiring immediate action.
=> Here, a pop-up or other obtrusive notification should be shown.
These events should IMHO always be shown because if the user doesn't
react he might lose his work or soon be unable to continue his work,
anyway.

2. User is waiting for an event and wants to get notified.
=> Maybe pop-up, maybe blinking icon in Deskbar?
These should be explicit subscriptions.

All other notifications can be considered annoying or at least unnecessary.

What I don't like about Growl is that there are too many configuration
options which should actually be set by the developer using the API.
E.g., if the user explicitly subscribes to certain event types it
should be clear that they're important to him, so there is no need for
the user to set a priority.

My open question are:

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* How should the user get notified when he explicitly subscribes?
We need different notification types, depending on the importance.

Pop-ups could work for important notifications. If the user is
actively using his computer they might even fade away, automatically,
but if he is inactive the important notifications should stay visible
until he continues work. Also, it should be taken into account that
notifications are invisible when the screen saver is active.

Less important notifications could use a blinking Deskbar icon. Each
event could have its own icon and maybe also a short audio
notification.

-------
* How do we make event subscriptions easy and not annoying?
How fine-grained should event subscriptions be?

We could allow to subscribe per app and then per category (like
Growl). I think that per-app subscriptions should be the primary way
to manage subscriptions and the UI should focus on this (unlike Growl
which shows everything at once). The per-app-subscriptions could be
accessible directly via a context menu.

An easier alternative to per-category subscriptions would be an
importance filter or some app-defined groups. This could be detailed
enough and at the same time easier to configure than having to go
through a long list of possible notifications.

-------
How will IMs notify the user of a new message? Temporary notifications
wouldn't be sufficient. Permanent notifications would have to
disappear when the user actives the message dialog. How can this be
done?

-------
Applications should be able to associate an action with the event, so
when the user clicks on, for example, "Marc is online" he can
immediately write a message to him.

> > - 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.

This might be similar to a general "event ticker". All events you
explicitly subscribe to will be shown in a mini-view which is part of
the Deskbar.

> 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?

If the user won't or shouldn't be able to continue his current work I
think he must be interrupted.

Bye,
Waldemar Kornewald