Garo Garabedyan- a private blog

Have you sometimes started writing some long text, and suddenly the computer pop-ups window explaining something. You continue typing because you don’t look at the screen but on the keyboard. So going this way of entering text nowhere you press space or enter and then the default button of the pop-upped window is activated and the window disappears. At most of the time you can’t understand what happened.

Is it proper the operating system to warn you when you are typing nowhere? It is technologically possible, it only have to find that receives symbols which are not captures by any running program. This way it can warn you and possibly prevent you to not press enter/ space and choose the default option of something pop-upped.

Some things to be done:

• when application (active at the moment) receives symbols (commands from the keyboard) which are not commands on which it can react, the application should pass this commands to the operating system
• operating system when receives commands from the keyboard first have to check are they commands on which it can react, and if not (and if there are running 2 or more than 2 GUI windows, which are not minimized by the user) to alarm the user

Operating systems capture the input of text and tries to focus the file/ folder which starts with the entered text (in Windows only the first character of the file/ folder name). When the entered text doesn’t refer to any file and the user continues typing text by pressing some character (and the wrong characters’ count become 2) then is proper to alarm the user.

Other possible idea is to not let windows to pop-up before you have finished typing (a time constant have to elapse before you get the new window pop-up) by minimizing the pop-upped windows and even when a new window pop-ups to have a second time constant keeping the window inactive (to not click with the mouse and this time to see the po-up window and your click to affect the pop-up).

Have you been reading or writing something important and while doing so to be interrupted by a pop-up message or flashing area on the screen informing you about a new message (in general: event) on a group chat where you are in (skype) and/or a new message in an IRC channel (mIRC and even other chat clients). When you are doing something important on your PC you should be sure that there will not appear any kind of interruption. And because you can’t lock the all kinds of events while you are working on your main task, and maybe it is important to be in touch about some very important events (i.e. private message from someone, this event is addressed just to you, not to a crowd). You should decide for every application (and any application should enable it to the user) that do you want to receive events by the general way, or just for a period of time to receive event though a quieter way.

Back to the example in Skype and mIRC. Imagine you are doing something important and on the same time the group chat with all your classmates/colleagues gets really active and every time when you close the chat window you see a pop-up about a new message and a new window is opened and starts flashing. Skype should provide you with the ability to ignore events from a list of group chats and/or even people (other useful feature is to deny any group chat and people and enable a list of group chats and/or people who are not obeying the last rule), now Skype software lets you to say that you are not reachable and ignore any event from the Skype network. If you use Skype for many purposes you have to be free to choose which events and from who are interesting to you at some time.

I find this useful in Skype, mIRC and the rest services which present events, especially in chat/ conversation ones.

Possible implementaions

• Adding a button “ignore <name> for a moment” which stops presenting events of any kind while it is not pressed again (the next time the button is named “stop ignoring <name>”).
• Addig a main button “ignore all event for a moment” which stops presenting events of any kind while it is not pressed again (the next time the button is named “stop ignoring all”). Adding a new button connected with the last one to every place where it is able to be received and then presented event which button is named “enable presenting events from here” and it makes the same as it is named. Of course when you press once ignore all and then a list of enabling buttons for a concrete sources the time when you press stop ignoring all the system should have an politic (shared with the user) about the enable this activated buttons about the next time when ignore all is activated.
• It is useful to capture the moment of time when a user is using the PC and is ignoring some events, without declaring its ignoring state to the application. This time the application should stop warning and present a quiet (small and not flashing) sign about the occurred new event(s).

Short story
I have got SonyEricsson K310i. Once while I was chatting with a friend of mine, he gave me his mobile phone number. So I started writing it in the Contact list but suddenly I have received a phone call from him and this pauses the process of adding his number and causes popping up a dialog box asking me did I want to answer his call or not. At this time I was just going to save his contact by pressing “Save” but “Save” button turns into “Answer” and I actually answered his phone call.

Possible user scenario
I don’t find it useful to see pop-up dialog box of phone call with possible choices while you are doing something on your phone. I think that it is not a good manner to provide the user with an active choice while he is interacting with his phone. I think that the dialog box at this situations have to not receive commands at the first 1 up to 2 seconds from its appearance. When this period of time goes by, the phone have to allow the user to make his choice.

iPhone in example, when the phone receives an ansync event, a dialog box is popped up, but because the all screen of iPhone is touch screen, the buttons of the popped up dialog are placed on different locations from the previous buttons of the application before the async event.

Using Data collected from the phone User Interactions
Mobile phones should save every event (even the pressing of the buttons in order to see what time is it) with the particular moment of its happening, this can turn them into a portable diary by letting user add note when some idea or something happened. Presenting this all data can be a useful toll to calculate what time what he was doing, only saving what time a comment is added isn’t enough to determine the time period of work.

Many phones have profiles which set specific phone options. Some general profiles are ‘Home’, ‘Meeting’, ‘In car’, ‘Outdoors’, ‘Handsfree’, ‘Office’, ‘Normal’ and can be added additional profiles. Calculating the time period in which these profiles are set can give a lot of information about the stress of the phone owner. Special application can advise the phone owner to have a rest if it is needed if additional data about what kind of work the user is doing and with how many people. By using what time of the day what profile is set, what time the phone is charged, the phone can conclude many things.