Inbox, how will it work?

Keeping the old one available in a non angular version would be perfectly fine for me as well.

It's not 100% finalised but this is how I imagine it. Keen to hear from @robertguthrie too.

First, assume there is a 'mute' button for threads and groups. Default inbox view shows you all the non-muted threads with new activity. You can navigate 'next, next, next' to get through them from start to finish, at which point your inbox is empty. You can add/remove stars, you can mark as read, and you can mute. So like the existing inbox but better I hope.

The filters are like the Gmail mobile app: show me just starred threads, or all threads (including muted stuff), or just threads from one group, or threads I'm participating in.

My vision seems to be the same as Richards. The idea is to suggest default workflow to keep up to date, but at the same time expose general purpose functionality like sort options and filters on top of the 'list of discussions you're interested in'.

Although most users don't maintain inbox zero, we recognise that it's critical to some and want to support it nicely.

We don't want to overload it though. We're excited about building a search bar to be a nimble way to spelunk though all loomio content easily.

I'm really pleased you're asking about this and value hearing what your requirements are JV.

Hey @robertguthrie @joshuavial what do you think of these designs?

Default view, showing you just your unread threads:

Mark as read + mute options shown on hover:

Filter options:

Mutes and filters are great but for me their is a real cost to switching contexts by having all groups in the same stream. The thing I love about the old inbox is parsing threads on a per group basis so if there was an option to sort @richarddbartlett's designs by group and then to mark a whole group as read that would be perfect.

Having that option in my settings or a toggle on the inbox would be fine for me but the 'mark whole group as read' within easy reach is pretty key. Being able to quickly edit a groups settings and adjusting its notification levels would be bonus territory.

Thanks @joshuavial - I wonder if you're particularly keen on 'mark as read' because there's a lot of content right now that you would mute if you could?

that's possible and it could be that after playing with mute I wouldn't need the mark as read. My suspicion is that I would only mute some of the conversations though as my use case is to go through each group one at a time and answer the 'what has changed since last time' question. Often when it's just people voting but not commenting I will clear a thread without jumping into it and I expect I wouldn't mute in that case. Also there are some groups (loomio features for example) which I probably wouldn't mute each individual thread and would sometimes dive into them and sometimes not.

But if I had to choose I would put group threads by group way more important than mark all threads in a group as read.

I really value the grouping by groups of the inbox too. When I look at a dashboard, even just for a group and its subgroups, I often feel a bit overwhelmed — the ordering feels random (there's not much meaning putting two discussions next to each other only because someone happens to have commented around the same time in each). When I look at inbox I get a sense of what each group is up to, almost at a glance.

@richarddbartlett tiny bit of feedback on the mockup: the mark as read tick looks a lot the dropdown menu chevron

@richarddbartlett mostly for my own interest I just had a play with your mockup, adjusting spacings & fonts to be like Gmail's mobile web version. Yours felt a bit gappy & flat to me.

@joshuavial @matthewbartlett @robertguthrie I've done a quick draft of a "Group by group" inbox. The typography could do with some work, but I think the general idea has merit.

(Shown here with the third list item in hover state)

Or here, with a different style: more prominence on the unread counts and fewer lines

Also keen to hear @jonlemmon's thoughts as it's your design I'm butchering.

@richarddbartlett
I like the prominence on unread and icons to differentiate between proposals and discussions.

PS - Which tool are you using for your mockups?

PPS - Now when I type @ to reference another member the list appears but the blue fill completely obscures the persons name

Thanks @alandavison, I'm using Sketch - closed source and not cheap but super super great.

Here's how that style would flow through into the 'latest threads' view:

Thanks @richarddbartlett I guess you have seen my quick "User profile / Contact / Activity" mockups. Many years ago (15) I used Fireworks for quick mockups. The ones I have uploaded were done in InDesign which is OK but far from ideal. I will take a look at Sketch and was just looking at InVision and NinjaMock

@richarddbartlett Just clicked the Sketch link and it is Mac only so no good for me, I will keep looking at the alternatives.

FYI I've had a lot of good times with Balsamiq too https://balsamiq.com/

Yep that works fine for me @richarddbartlett - I'm ambivalent about colours, fonts and spacing etc. and the mockup you did with the discussions sorted by group would cover all my needs.

@richarddbartlett On the subject of the Inbox, something I was thinking about today having pinned it to the screen. I like the update time but could it include info on who updated it? For example :

2 hours ago : by you

16 minutes ago : by @richarddbartlett

Hmmm... interesting @alandavison.

I'm wary of overloading the inbox with too many pieces of information. I want the inbox to be the simplest possible index of threads. Then I want the wall/activity feed to behave like the inbox, but with all the content expanded out:

@richarddbartlett I'm guessing that is a design for the "wall" until I can play with the functionality of that I can't really comment but with the Inbox pinned I still feel it would be useful to know who last posted in the topic. Currently my pinned inbox is not auto-updating so when I click the link for something showing "6 minutes ago" I go to my post from "30 minutes ago".

If I click refresh in the browser I get bounced back to Loomio Beta and have to manually enter the url for angular then re-pin my inbox (by scrolling all the way to the bottom) is in not possible to include a pushpin icon in the top corner with a tool-tip?

Yep the intended functionality is for the inbox to stay pinned when you pin it open - the current behaviour is that way just because we did it in a cheap/slightly broken way, to give us something to play with..

I think ordered by group is inherently more useful as a default view.

And instead of having the ability to sort the order of the groups, I think we should just have starred groups ordered alphabetically, then all the other groups ordered alphabetically underneath the starred groups. Way easier to manage that way.

I also think the default view should be "latest", not "unread". People who want the "unread" workflow can select it themselves, whereas if you default everyone to "unread" you'll get lots of people wondering why discussions have disappeared and how to get back to them. Also, I think the "inbox-zero read everything" workflow is too hands-on for many people using Loomio. Instead of focusing on "unread" as the default workflow, I think we should focus on "unseen"

This means changing the default question to:

"Which discussions have been active since I was last here?"

As opposed to:

"Which discussions have activity that I haven't read?"

Because the latter question can be really overwhelming if you're an infrequent user.

To give an example, imagine pulling down the groups dropdown and seeing this:

Starred Groups
--------------
 [5] Enspiral
 [2] Loomio Community

My Groups
--------------
[32] Diaspora Community
     Enspiral Space
 [2] Wellington Housing Co-op
     ... 

The number on the left represents the number of discussions in that group with new activity. As soon as you visit the group that number disappears.

Now, I know this doesn't really make sense if you've got the inbox open on the left all the time (because you're always seeing the active discussions for each group). But what I'm trying to get at is the paradigm shift from thinking about "unread" to thinking about "unseen". With that in mind, I think we can design a much more pleasant browsing experience for a larger subset of our users.

Awesome stuff thanks @jonlemmon. Yep I am way in favour of ordered-by-group rather than ordered-by-activity, and I agree that 'inbox zero' is a minority use case.

@jonlemmon Following on from your proposal above, defaulting to "latest" also means that you can jump to that quickly and respond (if you have anything to add) or just "like" or "support/promote" another members post.

There is more chance of a real-time conversation being developed leading to more input from two (or more) members of that group who happen to be online at the same time.

Often I find my discussions fractured or time-delayed which feels more like messaging than real "communication" or dialogue

@richarddbartlett proportion of 'inbox zero'ers is something we could measure, if we wanted

I don't think it's worth the effort.. we know that it's critical to some users and that we can support it easily.