Friendly to user or system?
More comfortable we become with computers ,more we become like them. And that’s irony for me. In early 2000s emphasis was put on how to make end users believe that they are interacting that is more close to them than some piece of machinery. For me personally though this was happening in early 200s but it was Steve Jobs who was acting commander. All his UI made it feel as if it was something pure mechanical or more precisely ‘skeuomorphism’. But this is slowly changing. People are more comfortable with computers than ever before. Rather than computers becoming like humans , we are becoming like them. For e.g. Notifications. Normally developers keep some for logging , to keep track of events and identify the root cause of issue when things go south(GOT reference anyone?)
User notifications are I think are way of systems providing the feedback for users about their action or it’s reaction to it. User Notifications primarily exist in two mediums ,either as collective repository or one off. If you ever had chance to use facebook, you may have used both. So Collective Repository Notifications are the one on the top right along with friends and messages. And for One-Off , these are the ones which you get on bottom left. I think that FaceBook like many things does this right.
User Feedback is an another animal of it’s own. Feedback has many orientations depending upon the size ,location and UX involved with it. For basic tasks we have star rating system and which I think is more of one way interaction with system , that is system stores feeback and some staff member may correspond with user based upon the rating. But technically it’s one way and we won’t call it two way. Often feedback crosses it’s path with Notifications.
Feedback and Notifications are different and somewhat same
Way we see it (in project wise not as permanent as we are still juggling with it) that feedback is used when context and user interaction is different, that is if we need to tell something about action then we use feedback from system , if we need to tell them about data then we use notifications. For e.g. if we need to use tell end user that data manipulation(Login , entering fields and etc) was not success we use notification. If they are trying to do something that is not valid (note we are talking about what they want to do ,not data per se) then we use feedback. Frankly I think one day I will wake up in the morning and realise that it’s wrong , maybe it should have been the other way or something else. But till then we are going to use it to make sure at least system wide convention. I think at least that user will realise it sooner or later.
Ok now we have cleared what and where to use them , now time for how to use them. For feedback , I abide with one rule , does the input(form or table or anything else) has if else conditions , such as following.
- Do you want to remember login?
- Want to store sensitive information?
- Want to enter details now or later?
- Should you upload the photo or system should assign you avatar based upon your gender
If yes then put checks in your javascript logic and create feedback. Simple as that, think of it as strict rule but not as rule above all. As for library we use simple SweetAlert one.
It’s fairly simple to use it also as React wrapper and AngularJS wrapper. Sweet!(No Pun Intended)
Notifications
Now time for notifications , well for notifications I think most important question is , do you need to keep history of notifications for end user to see?
If the answer is yes then copy facebook model shamefully.After all imitation is flattery.
If no then use One-Off. For such notifications style there are multiple libraries. We just Toaster though there are many. For us it was important to notify the user by colour such as warning , danger ,error and so forth. But to be frank we don’t think they are that important, I think even if you notification library doesn’t support colour it should be all right.
Hopefully one day AI will take over talk to people just normal folk do, then we will see who will need Notification and Feedback.