Michael Hanson
unread,Mar 26, 2012, 7:35:11 PM3/26/12Sign in to reply to author
Sign in to forward
You do not have permission to delete messages in this group
Sign in to report message
Either email addresses are anonymous for this group or you need the view member email addresses permission to view the original message
to mozilla-l...@googlegroups.com
I'd say we have a wide-open slate for UI experimentation right now. But here's my 2 cents:
I think that social cues are very, very powerful - in text, chat, voice, or video. Any UI that includes faces of my peers and family is going to present a strong, constant stimulus. A request for attention from a social peer carries with it an entire train of obligation, reciprocity, politeness, and other complex social behaviors.
When my tools connect me meaningfully with someone I care about, it can be delightful - a high point of my day. But when there is nothing there for me, strong repeated social stimuli are going to be fatiguing, distracting, and annoying.
What this means in UI terms is that we should adopt the lightest possible design touch. A social notification is the most powerful thing my computer or phone can do to get my attention, and we should treat it with that respect - which includes never pushing it on users, and providing many ways to hide, constrain, or minimize it, if necessary.
If this sounds like I think the UI of Rockmelt (and Flock, and a whole host of Firefox social addons) is too busy... then, yes, I do think that. But I also grant that it is a very difficult design challenge, and that different users want different experiences from their tools. There is room for many renderings of the social universe, here.
I'll also raise another UI challenge, which is that we are experimenting with providing social surfaces that are "in the browser" - but rendered from service provider's content. That creates a platform with tremendous flexibility and creative possibilities, but it also means that we have to depend on providers to design appropriate visual elements. We can resize, minimize, and hide content - but we can't fix a bad color scheme or too-rapid updating. That will require a co-evolution of design principles, which is a process that has been ongoing for the last several years and will continue for many more.