Re: Levels of Importance or Priority

I remember the last time this was brought up the same conclusion was
reached and it devolved into an argument about priority and how
websites will fight over priority.

Looking at this fresh, and personally being familiar with the
notification system in Google's Android version 4.1; as well as the
fact that Notifications are currently opt-in on (I think all?) vendor
implementations, a priority system makes a lot of sense.

If you'll take a look at
http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/notifications.html and
scroll down to the heading "Correctly set and manage notification
priority", you can see that Android 4.1 implements 5 basic priority
types.

MAX [Urgent/Time Critical]
HIGH [Important/Realtime]
DEFAULT
LOW [General Updates]
MIN ["Opportunistic"]

In my personal use of the operating system, the apps that do use these
notification types use them fairly well.  If we consider websites
similar to apps, and the fact that notifications are based on a
permissions system, we do not have to worry about spam.

I think we can learn a lot from Android's implementation of a
notification priority system, and I think it would be a good idea to
move forward basing a priority system off of it.
-----
Navarr T. Barnier (熊軍平野)
me@navarr.me
http://navarr.me/


On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 9:42 PM, Doug Turner <dougt@dougt.org> wrote:
> The real problem with this suggest is that the importance will very
> greatly and the user agents will have a terrible time figuring how to
> expose this sanely.  I worry about a rush to the bottom (or rush to
> everyone using the greatest importance).
>
> Even in your example, you have two use cases that we all can agree are
> super important -- a school shooter and a weather alert.  These would
> be using whatever the highest importance we defined.  However, you
> also are talking about some sales app that your customers are using.
> Would those notifications also have the same high priority?
>
> Thanks,
> Doug
>
> On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Michael Fairchild
> <mfairchild365@gmail.com> wrote:
>> As of right now in the Web Notifications API, there is no way to set the
>> importance of a notification.  I think this is a very important feature and
>> should be considered for adoption.
>>
>> I have noticed that in a few other threads, the concept of levels of
>> importance or priority (I will refer to it as priority from here on out)
>> have been brought up.  However, the concept has received a lot of
>> resistance.  I want to argue for the adoption of it in the Web Notifications
>> API.
>>
>> I am currently working on a Visitor Chat system, in which a visitor can go
>> to a web site and start a chat with an operator.  I have implemented Desktop
>> Notifications in Google chrome to help notify operators of new chat
>> assignments.  I have also implemented other notification features such as
>> sounds.  The issue that I am having is that some of the operators that are
>> assigned to the system are also assigned to answer calls and emails.
>> Company Policy and their current system configuration does not allow for
>> sound to be enabled, thus they have to rely on seeing desktop notifications
>> when a new assignment comes in.  Unfortunately, the the Desktop
>> Notifications are too small and often go unnoticed, thus resulting in a loss
>> of customers.
>>
>> While a solution to this problem could be to create a custom notification
>> application, I believe that a better course of action would be to use a
>> specification such as Web Notifications.
>>
>> My instance is also not a lone instance where a higher priority notification
>> would be useful.  Some other examples would be weather application that
>> notifies you when there is a tornado warning in your current location.  Or
>> an alert application for a university that displays a notification when
>> there is a shooter on the camps.
>>
>> While I don't care how the UA handles the higher priority notifications, I
>> think the priority should be defined in the API.  Some browsers might choose
>> to center them on the screen, others might make them bigger, others might
>> make them flash.  How it happens, is not important.  There are also several
>> ways that non visual UAs might handle higher priority notifications.
>>
>> I know the issue of who should assign the priority (API or end user) was
>> mentioned before.  While I see the concern, the notification priority should
>> be defined in the API and up to the programmer.  If the user does not like
>> it, they can turn off the notifications.  Or the programmer could implement
>> a feature to let the user select the priority of notifications for the site.
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Michael Fairchild
>>
>

Received on Monday, 3 September 2012 04:17:16 UTC