Re: [Usability] New Sound Preferences and Volume Control

["Philip Ganchev" <phil ganchev gmail com>]

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 12:53 AM, Kirk Bridger <kbridger shaw ca> wrote:
...
> So what about a volume control like this:
>
> http://thebside.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/pepper-slider.jpg
>
> Where the peppers become icons or names or whatever,

Or with an icon below each slider, as in Vista
(http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Windows-Vista-Volume-Mixer-41882.shtml).

> ...but the important thing  is they're relative to one another.

Yes, so that increasing one app's share of the volume decreases the
total share of the other apps by the same amount. The decrease can be
divided among the apps in proportion to their starting volume. That
way all proportions remain the same except the proportions in relation
to the one app whose volume is being changed by the user.

Still, can we please name some use cases that typical users might
encounter? Here is a fairly exhaustive list that I can think of. What
is typical can be debated, but I'm not including "watching a silent
movie while listening to music":

1. Giving a presentation - mute IM, email, battery(?) notifications
2. Preparing a presentation - notify at normal volume
3. Working quietly - quiet notifications so as not to startle user
4. Watching a movie with friends (or playing music at a party) - mute
(or quiet) IM and email notifications
5. Casually watching a movie (or listening to music) - IM, email(?)
louder than movie.
6. User is away from the computer - louder notifications

Thinking about such cases will help us create a default sound profile
that works correctly in most cases. From the above cases, the user
only has to configure the movie and music behavior (4 and 5). In all
the other cases, we can guess the relative importance of sounds from
different apps, and our guess is likely to be correct.