Loomio
Mon 17 Dec 2012 9:51PM

Fixing Notifications

RG Robert Guthrie Public Seen by 54

I want to present my solution for improving the UI and backend for the notifications system in Loomio.

We remove notificaiton generation for all events except for things which directly involve you, requiring acknowledgement, such as when you are mentioned in a comment or win $1000 and need to claim your prize.

We introduce a new component called Recent Activity which uses the Daily Summary backend to group activity around discussions and motions, showing at most 1 item per discussion where there has been activity since you last looked

Things I'm unsure of:
* If the Recent Activity should be a dropdown alongside notifications and groups, or a page or both, or even integrated into them somehow.

  • Should the Recent Activity component show recent activity for all groups or just the one you are currently viewing?

Things I would like someone else to do:
* Mockups

RG

Robert Guthrie Mon 17 Dec 2012 9:52PM

I have to say.. creating that discussion was a LOT snappier than in 1.2. Yay

RDB

Richard D. Bartlett Mon 17 Dec 2012 9:59PM

I'm unsure of why you'd want to outsource the job of making mockups for this feature?

RG

Robert Guthrie Mon 17 Dec 2012 10:19PM

Ok I'm willing to mock it up but if someone wants to give it a go before then that would be nice.

RG

Robert Guthrie Tue 18 Dec 2012 12:10AM

Why didn't I put this in features??? What kinda noob am I?

Anyway @richardd.bartlett I have a mockup for you:
https://loomio.mybalsamiq.com/projects/fixnotifictionswithactivitydropdown/Activity+and+Notifications+Side+by+Side+in+Harmony+Forever+%E2%99%A5

I may have shot myself in the foot putting a heart character in the title of the mockup.

I think this could exist as both a full page and a drop down.

@jonlemmon how do we move this discussion to the features group?

@benjaminknight Hows it going?

@aaronthornton hows the coffee today?

RG

Robert Guthrie Tue 18 Dec 2012 12:26AM

Or would it be better in the UX subgroup?

I DONT KNOW!

AT

Aaron Thornton Tue 18 Dec 2012 7:36PM

Hey Rob, Coffee is very nice. How did you know I have fallen into the habit of catching up on Loomio while I drink my morning coffee at home. Uncanny timing, If I were a paranoid conspiracist I might think you had control of my webcam. Any who, I love your mock up, got to say it again Balsamic rocks and am glad you gave us the push we needed. The issus I have is an age old one. This seems to be replacing the Dashboard(Home). Its the Dashboard/Dropdown juxtapose we had with the groups. All this information is displayed on the dash. Agreed when your not on the Home page it may be useful, but thats what the Homepage is for, right?

BK

Benjamin Knight Tue 18 Dec 2012 7:47PM

This is awesome Robbie - I think @aaronthornton 's point gets to something more fundamental - that any redesign of the notifications system ties in really closely to the redesign of the dashboard/homepage. Worth tackling both at the same time to ensure coordination?

RG

Robert Guthrie Wed 19 Dec 2012 12:53AM

I think we agree the widgets are right.. it's just a matter of their containers and positioning.

What are the other functions that you expect of the home page? I've got another (more radical) UI concept brewing.

RDB

Richard D. Bartlett Wed 19 Dec 2012 7:33AM

I agree we need radical UI thinking, so long as it is informed by the user feedback we're seeing. Right now we're still failing to communicate the basic mental model: user has many groups, group has many discussions, discussion has many decisions.

For whatever reason, our UI does not make this model as intuitive as possible: people still don't grasp the discussion-has-decisions idea. We're seeing people start decisions when they really mean to start new discussions.

I have a hunch that people who make this mistake might not even know the group page exists. Perhaps one solution is to make the connection between the group and the discussion clearer. Here's a quick stab to give you the gist of what I mean.

I woke up this morning with a phrase on my lips: notifications are navigation. I don't use my notifications to find out things relevant to me, per se, I use my notifications to tell me what page to go to next.

IMHO, having a list of this group's discussions readily available like this would solve the navigation issue (prev/next buttons being problematic) and reinforce the mental model in one swoop!

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