Scope: Providing Awareness of Multiple Notifications at a Glance

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Scope Providing Awareness of Multiple
Notifications at a Glance

• Maarten van Dantzich, Daniel Robbins, Eric
  Horvitz, Mary Czerwinski
• Microsoft Research

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Notification Overload
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Show me all the important new stuff without
bothering me too much.
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The Scope
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Scope Goals

• Glanceable need only a quick look
• Unified all notifications in one place
• Unobtrusive minimize distractions
• Lightweight assisted prioritization

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Desktop Video
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Learning From Email Workflow

• Flow unobtrusively show newly arriving
  notifications
• Triage show all the notifications that have
  arrived since the last time the user attended to
  the Scope
• Task management let users edit metadata
• Archive Let users keep items on the scope
• Retrieve Let the user easily see summary info
  about a particular notification AND quickly
  access the original item

Thanks to Gina Venolia
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Information Sources (Current)

• Email (Outlook)
• Calendar Appointments (Outlook)
• Tasks (Outlook)
• Web Alerts (Custom)
• News, stock-alerts, weather, traffic
• Prioritized by Notification Platform

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Basic Design
User is at center of Scope Items closer to the
user are are more important to the user
LESS Urgent
Inbox
Alerts
MORE Urgent
Tasks
Calendar
Notification Item with visuals for metadata
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Demo

• scope_geometries_01.html

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Feature Overview

• Levels of Detail
• Wedge Expansion
• Filtering
• Lens
• Top N list
• Single-item list
• Rich tooltips
• Inspector

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LOD Glance ? Interrogate
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Wedge Expansion
Show more of each item
Show more items (of lower priority)
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Filtering
Show only email
No Filter
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Lens
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Lists
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Rich Tooltips
Alerts
Email
Todo
Calendar
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Inspector

• Appears when user double-clicks on an item
• Clicking on button within Inspector opens source
  document in native application

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So Why Did We Make It This Way?
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Feedback Channels Available

• Sound
• Color
• Animation
• Position, shape
• Position
• Shape

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Interaction Channels Available

• Hover
• Click
• Double-click
• Drag-and-drop
• Zooming
• Lens

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But Design Challenges

• Alert the user without distracting the user
• Pop-out for urgent, new, overdue items
• Distinguishable visuals (at all sizes)
• High contrast between item background
• Contrast between wedges
• Usable in grayscale
• Boolean states for many properties
• vs. many states for few properties
• Use as few different icons as possible

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Design Evolution Analysis

• Pretty (candy drop)? Clean (flat)
• Complex ? Simple
• Representational ? Iconic ? Abstract
• Animated ? Static
• Minimize distractions
• Minimize visual noise
• Usable at small sizes

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Tangibility
Flat less visual noise
Pretty candy drop tangible
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Evolution of MetaData Visuals

• Complex
• Representational

• Simple
• Abstract

Symbols for metadata and position for type
Rich icons for metadata
Rich icons for state and type
alpha-numeric for type and symbols for metadata
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Item Design Elements (Email)
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Item Design Composition
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Why Show Visuals For Metadata?

• If auto-prioritization works, arent visuals
  redundant?
• Items are more distinguishable/identifiable
• Builds users trust in systems intelligence
• Users feel in control
• Edit priority and type by dragging items

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Overall Design Refinement
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Color vs. Grayscale
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User Studies
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User Studies Tasks (Sample)

• Determine which items are of high urgency and
  which are lower
• Find an unread email of high urgency that was
  sent only to you, from a known contact
• Find meetings that are not close to your office
• Use filters to show only email messages that were
  sent specifically to you
• Read a high urgency email sent only to you

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User Study Results

• Visuals were learnable within an hour
• Spatial coding of urgency is unfamiliar
• Finding a high-urgency email
• Beginning of session 234
• End of session 0034 (find, read, close)
• Animation too distracting
• Liked idea of trainable reasoning

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Implementation

• Visual Interface Macromedia Flash
• Scalable vector graphics
• Fluid animation
• Fast, iterative authoring, rapid-prototyping
• Supporting system and shell Visual Basic
• Talks to Microsoft Exchange/Outlook
• MAPI, CDO interfaces in VB
• XML communication between Flash and VB
• Prioritization via Notification Platform

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Future Directions
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Different Wedge Semantics
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Dynamic Wedge Proportions
Alerts
Inbox
Inbox
Alerts
Tasks
Calendar
Tasks
Calendar
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Center vs. Edge Centric
Most important items near perimeter
Most important items near center
Look in one place for important stuff
More room for the important stuff
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Warped Wedges More Space for the Most Important
Items
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Fins Showing More Items
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3D
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Other Form Factors
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PDA
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PDA Video
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Adapting Design to a PDA

• No hover ? overloaded click
• No double-click ? press-and-hold
• Much slower CPU ? Simpler visuals

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Watch Form Factor
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The Scope Conclusions

• Manages multiple notification streams
• Glanceable
• Learnable
• Sensitive/subtle design space
• Adaptable to many platforms

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End
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Notification Platform

• Newness
• Item Type
• Due date
• Recipient
• Key words
• Usage for similar items

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Email Workflow

• Flow As people are working on other tasks, they
  want to keep up with the flow of incoming
  messages as they arrive.
• Triage After people are away from their email
  for a period of time, they need to catch up and
  deal with all the email that accumulated while
  they were away.
• Task management People often use email to remind
  them what they need to do, and to help them get
  tasks done.
• Archive People store email so they can refer to
  it later.
• Retrieve After archiving messages, people need a
  method of retrieving messages.

Thanks to Gina Venolia
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Element Design
Pushpinned task
Email from known contact AND sent to me and a few
others
Pushpinned email from someone special
Overdue task
Pushpinned meeting requiring travel time to
attend
New appointment
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Synonyms For Glance

• Fleeting look
• Momentary look
• Quick look
• Glimpse
• Peek
• Perusal