Hello all: On Mon, 2008-12-08 at 06:03 -0500, Philip Ganchev wrote: ...
After reading this discussion, I have the strong impression that we are trying to use sound volume control to solve problems that should be handled otherwise. Let's see: > 1. Giving a presentation - mute IM, email, battery(?) notifications A presentation mode should block much more than just sound: it should block notifications completely, so that you don't get dialog boxes or notification bubbles either. It may also block programs running in the background such as the file indexer. For this reason, this should be handled at a completely different level, e.g., by providing an API for notifications that makes it possible for certain applications to block them. This should also happen automatically, by the way: the user shouldn't be expected to set the current profile, but the profile should be activated automatically by the presentation program when it moves to fullscreen mode. > 2. Preparing a presentation - notify at normal volume This is the default behavior and applies to most other situations. > 3. Working quietly - quiet notifications so as not to startle user The purpose of notifications is to be noticeable. What this means to me is that they should be clearly louder than whatever background sound (music, movie, etc) you're currently playing. Alternatively, they could just temporarily turn down the volume of the background sound. By the way, if a notification can be safely ignored, it probably should be removed, anyway. > 4. Watching a movie with friends (or playing music at a party) - mute > (or quiet) IM and email notifications Once again, such an activity should put the system in something similar to presentation mode. I really wonder if there's any difference at all. This means, block notifications instead of just blocking the sound of notifications. > 5. Casually watching a movie (or listening to music) - IM, email(?) > louder than movie. Music listening and movie watching are different use cases. Music can be listened to in the background, whereas movies typically require concentration. Of course, there are people who like to have movies or TV running "in the background" while doing other tasks, and in this case, movies should be handled just like background music. I would say, this could be easily handled by putting the system in "presentation mode" when the music or movie player is running in fullscreen mode, and handling it as background otherwise. > 6. User is away from the computer - louder notifications This can be detected automatically in many cases through the screen saver. > Thinking about such cases will help us create a default sound profile > that works correctly in most cases. From the above cases, the user > only has to configure the movie and music behavior (4 and 5). In all > the other cases, we can guess the relative importance of sounds from > different apps, and our guess is likely to be correct. What I conclude from the previous analysis is that the behavior can be determined automatically by just knowing what the *type* of a sound is, and if you are in presentation mode or not. I see three main sound types: 1. Multimedia: music or video soundtrack. 2. Non-critical notifications: sounds used to provide feedback for UI actions (click when you press a button) or to inform of non-critical events (a new email arrived). 3. Critical notifications: sounds used to alert the user about critical conditions (battery is almost empty, your processor is so hot that it will burn in 30 seconds, your boss/girlfriend is calling and she will fire you/put your things on the street if you don't answer right now...) This leaves us with six possible combinations: In normal mode: - Play type 1 at the volume level set explicitly by the user. - Play type 2 in such a way that it is audible (but not startling!) over whatever is playing in the background. - Play type 3 in such a way that is clearly noticeable. This probably implies temporarily turning down types 1 and 2. In presentation/multimedia mode: - Play type 1 at the volume level set explicitly by the user. - Don't play type 2. - Play type 3 in such a way that is in clearly noticeable. This probably implies temporarily turning down type 1. We may consider a third, "away" mode. But I don't know if it's really needed. It would be like normal node, by making type 3 eventually louder. As a result, it looks to me that we could provide an appropriate behavior for a large percent of users and use cases without having to ask them to micromanage volume. The interface is reduced to a single volume slider. The rest is handled appropriately and automatically. By the way, I don't see a need to control the volume of multimedia applications separately. If you think of it, unless you are a multimedia freak who enjoys playing five videos simultaneously to show the power of his processor, you don't want to play more than one think at a time. Either you have some music or you have a movie running, and that's it. This means that a single slider for multimedia volume should suffice. Cheers, M. S. _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
