Projects/Usability/HIG/Notifications: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 10:05, 27 June 2013

Purpose

A notification is an information that is not directly relevant to the user's current task. It is displayed via a certain notification mechanism on a panel above/below the taskbar notification area. Notifications inform users about non-critical problems, but they don't prevent them.

Notifications pop up and overlay all other windows. Multiple notifications are stacked vertically. Notifications disappear after a short period automatically (unless the cursor hovers over them), but can be closed by the user at any point. Each notification has its own central configuration which can be reached by a button next to the close button.

Examples

(remark: pictures only?)

Positive

Email received
New update available
Download completed
Low battery power

todo: picture

Negative

Low space on medium (this information becomes relevant for file managers and invoked as modal message in this case)

todo: picture

Guidelines

Do not use notifications for user assistance (consider to use tool-tips or balloons for short information, or refer to help system for extended text.
Do not use notifications for context relevant information that might interfere with the actual workflow (consider to use a message dialog.
Do not add controls to notification.
Do not override system settings.
Provide title and content text
Make sure to make the origin of the notification clear from the notification title. For instance: "Amarok: Now playing" or "Konsole: Event"
Keep the notification content concise (no more than about three simple sentences).
Customize notification with the origin's icon.
Provide actionable information (e.g. "Low battery power" "Only 13 min (2%) capacity remaining. Please save your stuff now. Your system will get shut down soon.")

Code snippets

to be done

@@ Line 19: / Line 19: @@
 * Do not use notifications for user assistance (consider to use [[Projects/Usability/HIG/Tooltip|tool-tips]] or [[Projects/Usability/HIG/Balloon|balloons]] for short information, or refer to [[Projects/Usability/HIG/HelpSystem|help system]] for extended text.
 * Do not use notifications for context relevant information that might interfere with the actual workflow (consider to use a [[Projects/Usability/HIG/MessageDialog|message dialog]].
-* Do not add controls to notification. <span style="color:blue">Thomas: I would remove this. Adding action buttons is allowed in the API and has reasonable use cases, other controls simply cannot be added technically)</span>
+* Do not add controls to notification.
-* Do not override system settings. (remark: more specific)  <span style="color:blue">Thomas: Which settings do you mean here?</span>
+* Do not override system settings.
-* Provide title and content text (remark: not precise enough) <span style="color:blue">Thomas: guidelines regarding the wording of title and content are indeed very important. Maybe celeste can help here.</span>
+* Provide title and content text
 * Make sure to make the origin of the notification clear from the notification title. For instance: "Amarok: Now playing" or "Konsole: Event"
 * Keep the notification content concise (no more than about three simple sentences).
-* Customize notification with the origin's icon.  <span style="color:blue">Heiko: (remark: word "origin" needs to be replaced; "icon" might be replaced by technical term) </span>
+* Customize notification with the origin's icon.
-* Provide actionable information (e.g. "Low battery power" "Only 13 min (2%) capacity remaining. Please save your stuff now. Your system will get shut down soon.") <span style="color:blue">Heiko: (remark: should be according actual text)</span>
+* Provide actionable information (e.g. "Low battery power" "Only 13 min (2%) capacity remaining. Please save your stuff now. Your system will get shut down soon.")
-* <span style="color:blue">Heiko: to be defined: Are all notifications configured in KCM? If not, how to separate? -- Kai Uwe: All notifications emitted through KNotify (ie. application has a notifyrc file) can be configured. Using the FDO notification dbus iface directly is discouraged. In 4.11 there's a configure button on notifications.</span>
 == Code snippets ==
 to be done