Fixing Notifications

I think it might be a bad idea to try and solve this by explaining the model. It's better if you can just get them to click where they need to click and have them pick up the model later.

I think that the home screen is doing most of the same navigation as the nav bar... and if a big drawer with some group list, activity list, notification list popped down, with the same format as the home screen that might be cool.

Hey I like that sidebar @richarddbartlett

Sweet, I'm loving the direction of this conversation. Let's keep brainstorming and producing more unique ideas. Then we can iterate the design of each idea independently and once we get further down the track we can choose one we like. This concept is known in the UI/UX world as parallel prototyping. It's known to have really good results because it keeps the designers detached from a specific mockup and produces results you might not originally have thought of. Also, usually the different ideas end up influencing each other. I'll try to submit some mockups soon as well.

Basically, I think this is something that we should keep experimenting around with for a little while before committing to any one specific option.

Looking forward to seeing where this heads!

@richarddbartlett I like the side bar. It adds cohesion through showing everything at once(google wave), but... take a step back and shake your head a few times... it adds complexity for the new user as there is more to take in all at once.
The usable screen would need to be bigger(reclaiming the 'taupe' colored side of the page) or the font a lot smaller as I dont think you want to squeeze this comment space any more. As a user coming from MY OWN level of understanding I would love to have that panel on the side, the question is...is this desire representative of our user base?

@richarddbartlett interesting idea! I think it would be super useful, and defz something to explore further.

I don't think it resolves the need for Next/Previous navigation - imagine for a minute that tabbed browsing doesn't exist (for a decent proportion of our users this is effectively true). Still requires lots and lots of clicking back and forth (just now you're doing it inside a discussion rather than on the Home page or Groups page), which some people find super frustrating.

I like the idea we talked about a while back of converting the Home page into a page showing semi-expanded recent/important/active discussions/decisions, grouped by group.

And I LOVE NEXT AND PREVIOUS BUTTONS!

PS I will endeavour to learn to start making mockups to turn these meaningless words into compelling pictures

@benjaminknight I'm pretty sure RDB's mockup would take the same number of clicks as next/previous buttons... (i.e. half as many as the current scenario)

@richarddbartlett The sidebar idea reminds me of the homepage mockup you did a while back https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_Yex4bwI5AnbEF4WEl5WHQzYTQ/edit

I think there is potential for something similar to the above where full proposals could be displayed on the right pane (JS-style), i.e. you could reply/vote/engage with every proposal on your dashboard without having to leave the dashboard.

@robertguthrie I'd be curious to see what you came up with, but your balsamiq mockup is not public. Can you make it public, and could someone invite nicolas.wormser@gmail.com to balsamiq? Chur

@nicolaswormser done.
https://loomio.mybalsamiq.com/projects/fixnotifictionswithactivitydropdown/Activity+and+Notifications+Side+by+Side

Try to imagine it as an activity page or in some other display mode. I'm not sure how it is best positioned but put it somewhere and it will soak up redundant notifications.

That's interesting. But I wonder where the notification box would go, and if the activity widget wouldn't get overloaded if you go on a holiday for a week.

I think that instead of trying to make multiple widgets that pop out everywhere, we could think about how the dashboard can give a better overview of what activity recently happened. This probably means creating an "activity view", different from the "inbox view" (what we have at the moment). Then we could switch from one view to another…
Notifications-wise, we would get only one notification, saying that we've got new activity on the dashboard.

Here's my take at it :
- The activity view on the dashboard
http://imageshack.us/a/img201/692/dashboardactivity.png
- When we click on "Notifications (4)"
http://imageshack.us/a/img266/3451/dashboardnotifications.png

This is a solution that makes more sense to me.

p.s. An access to Loomio's Balsamiq would have been helpful

@nicolaswormser that looks awesome!

@jonlemmon has exclusive rights to give people access to our Balsamiq account :)

@nicolaswormser nice mockup. My only question would be is the inbox view even required - can it just be activity view and still work as well?

Thanks guys. @jamesmccann it could totally work without the inbox view. I was just thinking that maybe the inbox/current view had the advantage of being more compact, especially if you don't care about the discussions that have new activity.
But the point is, supposing that only discussions you're following (feature to come) appear there, I guess you WOULD care.

So yeah, let's ditch the inbox view (and add the pager to the activity view), I guess.

Also, to be more precise, assuming that we display only activity for discussions we follow on the dashboard, the blue marker in front of the discussions for which there have been new comments since last visit still makes sense (because this is for all discussions, not only the ones I follow).

Not sure if I'm being clear enough.

@nicolaswormser and @jamesmccann I really like where this is going. The notifications dropdown will then reallly only be for 'likes', 'mentions' and proposals closing soon.
Everything on the home/activity page is activity. Only showing old discussions or those without activity when searching. Love the simplicity.