[Sigia-l] Notification schema?

[prai at prady.com]

Joe,

Preference, Settings, Options, Customize, Properties - I have visited
these issues once in my previous life and want to broaden your perspective
on it (however you may find this may not direcetly relate to your
question) -

The issues of 'Preference', 'Settings', 'Options', 'Customize' or
'Properties' should be dealt with high degree of caution. In my
interaction with the users I found that these terms are often confusing
and inappropriately used.

In my attempt I try to classify things only as 'settings' and
'preferences' distinctively. For example, I called it a 'setting' to view
the 'Inventory' in 'Dollars' or in 'Units', however, I called it my
preference (if I have the privilege) to ask the system to notify me 'When
inventory goes down by XYZ level".

Another point to classify what is ‘Setting’ and what is ‘Preference’ is to
go down the hall and speak to the Technical Architect as how he is
allowing the user ‘Privileges’. When I had to create a distinction between
these terms, I called in all the global ‘parameters’ under ‘Settings’ and
all those which were ‘Privileges’ as ‘preferences’.

Yet another point to classify ‘settings’ vs. ‘preference’ is the ease of
use one wants to provide to these elements. With ‘preferences’ most often
strategy dictates that it has to be tugged under cover, while ‘settings’
needs to be upfront.

Although this principle is debatable and I have not found any study which
leads to any conclusion, still I believe, this is more a matter of
semiotics and standardization of interface guidelines. One must do enough
user research to figure out what best fits for their system and design
these and enforce it with the clear Guidelines for all future use.

Please look at Apple Human Computer Guidelines to read how they define
‘preference’.

Probably I have not tried to answer your question directly but hopefully
my experienece will help you think more. Any questions you may have are
most wellcome.

Pradyot Rai


> Hi,
> anyone done any work or know of any work done on setting up
> notifications? It might be related to setting preferences, but here's
> what I'm working on: * The intranet is largely an information
> repository.
> * Users can comment on documents (discussion group).
> * Most documents go through an approval/review workflow, with different
> statuses throughout the docs' lifecycles. * Users can also select a
> specific document to watch, overriding other settings they might've mad.
> * The system can send email notification when new documents are created,
> new discussions are posted, and new statuses are applied.
>
> I'm looking for info about the usability of preference-setting areas.
> Also, I'm looking for work on the act of notification itself: how much
> do executive-level users want this kind of information? Has anyone done
> observed research into this sort of thing?
>
> Anything that might be helpful would be most
> appreciated...workflow-related stuff that has notification and
> preference-setting components, that sort of thing.
>
> TIA,
>
> joe
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