A watched pot never boils

I’m fond of such technology and seek out services that can help me stay in touch with friends, conduct business, learn new things. The common set-up of these ‘background services’ requires that I add a means to be reminded when the status of the service changes. This frees me up to continue with other activities and ideally makes for time spent more productively.

It’s how you say it

The question for interaction designers is how to alert the user when the status has changed. For background services that present no requirement for immediate action such as such as email, twitter, mobile messaging, RSS feeds and iChat the balance has to be struck between alerting the user and interfering with what they are doing. i.e Non-modal. Or in non-geek-speak, glanceable.

If you think about email, that is the little envelope icon that appears on the application icon in the dock ( or system tray ) and the transient new message preview.

The Twitterific client uses a similar technique by changing the colour of the application icon when new tweets arrive. My landline answerphone turns on a red light, iChat blinks the active conversation in the browser title bar.

The company Ambient Devices trade solely in this space. The most ingenious of their products being the umbrella which automatically checks the weather forecast and glows a light in the handle to indicate inclement weather.

This form of feedback is filtering into diverse environments. A physician clinic for example is using it to improve the performance of their physicians by enabling patients to rate their appointment experience and visualising the results as colour fields in the waiting room.

“Only two sites have the glanceable dashboard. ‘Our assumption is physicians will change their behaviour to get more green lights’”

I wonder what this colour-and-shame/carrot-and-colour?! approach does for the physicians motivation. What would it be like in a different scenario? e.g. at the design studio where I work clients complete a project scorecard, which rates performance across a few metrics, after the project is complete. The success of the idea depends on the granularity of the implementation. A company-wide performance beacon would engender collective responsibility and involvement to make sure the light stays green. However broadcasting personal traffic light performance would most likely do the opposite and create cliques and resentment as people get branded. “I wouldn’t use her for that project she’s a red.”

Technically afflicted

So what about the tic. Well in effect I have become the regulator in the system and checking for updates to the twittering bird and mail icon has become second nature. Being the curious type, if the status has changed i’m more likely to check it, notwithstanding pressing issues which can be a real distraction. Less often but nonetheless apparent are phantom tingles, thinking my mobile is vibrating in my pocket to let me know I have a message. I don’t think it’s time to call the doctor yet but perhaps going off radar now and again will provide moments of solace and less eye darting. maybe. bark.