Notifications/User Experience

User Experience
Key Components of the Notifications Experience are:
 * 1) Notifications Growler & Notifications Flyout
 * 2) Notifications Archive
 * 3) Notification Settings
 * 4) Email Experience
 * 5) Real time Confirmations/ Notifications

Notifications Growler and Flyout
A new user interface link, "Notifications," will appear in the user's chrome. If the user has "unread" notifications, the number of unread notifications will appear next to the link as a badge upon a red background. This badge will auto-update (see below). Clicking on the "Notifications" link or the badge will display the Notifications Bar (clicking on it again, or anywhere outside of the Notifications Bar, will close the bar, possibly marking all Notifications as read). The Flyout will carry groups of Notifications. Groups are categories of notifications arranged in a specific priority based on a users mental model. The content within each group will be ordered in reverse chronology. A group at the top may contain Notifications that are older than those contained in groups beneath it.

Archive
An Archive of notifications where a user might be able to go to a dedicated page and see a history of notifications will be available. The feed/ groups here will be time capped with the ability to see previous notifications. Buckets are sorted in reverse chronological order with the most recent timestamp held within the bucket.

Notification Settings
Settings around Notifications can be customised to a large extent. Although Echo attempts to carry smart defaults, an editor may decide what type of notifications they want to switch off. Here are some suggested mocks for preferences cleanup. This is purely a wireframe and hence the colors etc could be ignored for now.

Email Experience
Open questions around the email notifications experience:
 * 1) With the assumption that there are relevant notifications what is the frequency of email notifications: Daily, Weekly, Bi-monthly.

Design Considerations:
 * 1) Email notification should carry actual content not just pointers to content
 * 2) Notifications should be actionable from within your email
 * 3) Notifications must be bundled in email just like the flyout to avoid inadvertent spam.
 * 4) Email must be aware of 'Read Notifications' Flag
 * 5) What happens when we detect that a user is reading an email notification on a mobile client

Real Time Notifications
This is a list of real time Notifications
 * 1) Real Time System Messages
 * 2) Edit Notices
 * 3) Error Messages
 * 4) Descriptor Messages
 * 5) Protection Notices
 * 6) Talk Page Edit Notices
 * 7) Site Notices
 * 8) Central Notices

Read vs Unread
Note: It is important to note that all notifications exist in a state of "read" or "not read". The process by which a notification is marked as "read" is something that we will want to experiment with. There are several ways of handling ''Notifications as Read":
 * 1) They have been "seen" (e.g., when the user views their notifications)
 * 2) They have been "acted upon" (e.g., the user visits their talk page after being notified it was edited)
 * 3) They are manually marked read

The mockup provided assumes that notifications are marked read upon being seen.

Elements and Process
A new user interface link, "Notifications," will appear in the user's chrome. If the user has "unread" notifications, the number of unread notifications will appear next to the link as a badge upon a red background. This badge will auto-update (see below).

Clicking on the "Notifications" link or the badge will display the Notifications Bar (clicking on it again, or anywhere outside of the Notifications Bar, will close the bar, possibly marking all Notifications as read).

Notifications are "bucketed" by the wiki they have come from. Individual wiki buckets will contain all unread notifications from that wiki, regardless of timestamp.

Buckets are sorted top-to-bottom based on the most recent timestamp held within the bucket. Thus, it is possible for a bucket at the top of the bar to contain Notifications that are older than those contained in buckets beneath it provided that there are Notifications that are newer than the most recent Notification in lower buckets.

Buckets will have a header that indicates which wiki they are coming from (both its "official" name and the "URL"). Headers are not hot.

Inside each bucket, Events are displayed. Events may be atomic or bundled, depending on the preference of the Publisher. Events contain timestamps printed in context-relative format (e.g., "10 minutes ago, "3 hours ago"), with the most recent listed first.

Event text should really be capped at 250 characters.

Events should have distinguishable icons. (Should the process of Event-to-Icon association should happen at the Central Service layer or at the Publisher layer? Or skin?)

Clicking on any one Event's entry will cause that Event to be "actioned" - usually going to view the item in question.

The entire section of the Event is "hot". While some things (such as user names) may appear to be hot links, they are not - the entire element is and is focused on a single URL.

At the bottom of the Notifications Bar will be an additional link, "View all notifications". Clicking this will bring the user to a Special page which lists all notifications, read and unread.

Echo Replaces

 * The "yellow bar" notifications about talk page edits, LiquidThreads "New Messages" link and special page, others as determined.

Old Use Case Stack
The following is a list of use cases taken from the RFC talk page. This list shouldn't be taken too literally. The cases here are meant to provide an idea of the types of emails that the notification should support. These also assume the lack of a threaded discussion system. (not in any specific order)


 * When someone leaves a message on my talk page, I receive an email which includes the following information:
 * Username of the person who wrote on my talk page
 * Content of the message left on my talk page (including section heading)
 * Instructions on how to reply
 * When I register for an account on Wikipedia, I get an email welcoming me.
 * When I complete my first successful edit on Wikipedia, I get an email congratulating me. Email contains more ways for me to get involved.
 * When I reach autoconfirmed status, I get an email letting me know I can edit BLPs’s (I’m not suggesting we actually do this -- I’m just trying to give a sense for the type of functionality).
 * When I complete 100/500/1000/etc edits, I receive an email congratulating me.
 * After completing 10 edits and xx amount of time, I receive an email with “tutorial” type information. (Idea here is that we send out more tutorial information on syntax, policy, etc. for editors who show that they are well-intentioned).
 * When someone reverts my edit, I receive an email letting me know what happened and why.
 * When I submit a page for creation, I receive an email letting me know that my page has been submitted for creation.
 * When the page I submitted changes state, I receive an email letting me know what happened.
 * I receive an email when someone expands an article I created, letting me know what the additions were and who made them.
 * When I rate my first article, I receive an email thanking me. (Rating could mean adding a comment)
 * When my rating comment gets promoted to the talk page, I get a message letting me know, with a link to the talk page discussion.
 * When I rate my 5th article, I receive an email thanking me for my contributions, and encouraging me to try to edit.
 * I can opt to receive periodic emails about Wikip/media developments (e.g., new features)
 * I can sign up for emails about specific Wikiprojects.
 * If I stop editing for x weeks, I receive an email encouraging me to resume editing.
 * When a page I recently edited gets a template, I receive an email letting me know what happened in plain language.
 * When my talk page gets a template, I receive an email letting me know what happened in plain language.
 * When a bot does something, I receive an email letting me know what the bot did, without referring to the bot/requiring me to know what a bot is.


 * Email controls:
 * I can opt to receive no emails.
 * I can opt to receive all my emails in a daily or weekly digest.
 * I can consolidate emails by type (e.g., all emails about users editing my talk page)
 * I can opt out of emails by type (e.g., automatic congrats emails, talk page notifications, etc.)


 * We should have ways to ask for emails from users that haven't provided (e.g., user submits a MoodBar comment but hasn't provided an email address).