Page MenuHomePhabricator

Show notifications about Talk messages while browsing articles.
Closed, ResolvedPublic

Description

Problem:

When a user receives a message on their Talk page, they will ideally receive a notification in their system notification bar at the top. However, there are various reasons that this type of notification might get missed by the user, including a) Disabling notifications from certain apps, including ours, b) Accidentally swiping away the notification without reading it, and c) Glitches in our push notification infrastructure that would prevent the notification from arriving at the user's device.

Solution:

If the user has a new message, it would be extremely beneficial to inform them about it within the app itself, i.e. while reading an article. This can be in the form of a persistent tooltip, or a similar attention-grabbing element that guides the user to view the notification.

Conceptual notes:

  • Bring the tab icon closer to the search in the article view because it’s thematically related
  • Global elements in the app bar (tabs, notifications) should be positioned rightmost, contextual elements in the view should be positioned right next to it, like this:
    • Article view:: Tab icon, Bell icon, More icon
    • Explore: Tab icon, Bell icon
    • Saved: Filter icon, Tab icon, Bell icon, More icon
    • Search: Tab icon, Bell icon
    • Edits: (no changes)
    • User talk: Language icon, Bell icon, More icon
    • Watchlist: Language icon, Bell icon

Initial thoughts:

We could add a "Notifications..." menu item to the overflow menu while reading an article (or to the bottom button bar). When there's a new notification, we can display a tooltip that points to the overflow menu, and then show a blue dot next to the "Notifications" item. Also, in the tooltip itself we can have a button that takes the user directly to the Notification activity, or even directly to the user's Talk page.

Event Timeline

Currently exploring solutions for this in the Android strategy 2021 - 2026* deck. As this task is part of an entire strategy to improve communication in the app, it should not be tackled individually. Work on improving communication in the app likely starts in July 2021. Therefore putting this back to the Android Design backlog for now.

@cooltey

Please add the indicator to the Talk pages and Watchlist views as well 👇

Screenshot_20210823-145858.png (2×1 px, 51 KB)
Screenshot_20210823-145911.png (2×1 px, 126 KB)

And an off topic question, how much work would it mean to add the navigation bar to these two screens as well? I think it’d be a huge benefit to users. I’ll create a separate task for it then. And here’s a quick mockup to illustrate it:

Artboard.png (1×720 px, 187 KB)

Hi @schoenbaechler

And an off topic question, how much work would it mean to add the navigation bar to these two screens as well? I think it’d be a huge benefit to users. I’ll create a separate task for it then. And here’s a quick mockup to illustrate it:

I'll say that would be a medium ~ large work.

The current "Explore", "My lists", "History" and "Edits" are in an activity; Watchlist and Talk pages are in separate activities, which additional logic should be added, and also the smoothness between activities should be also considered (switch between activities will show a default transition animation)

In T281413#7301339, @schoenbaechler wrote:

@cooltey

Please add the indicator to the Talk pages and Watchlist views as well 👇

Screenshot_20210823-145858.png (2×1 px, 51 KB)
Screenshot_20210823-145911.png (2×1 px, 126 KB)

Hi @schoenbaechler

I noticed these two screens are not available to run one of the ABC tests which only shows notification dots on an overflow menu.

Is it okay to ignore the test above if the user is in a certain test group? or do you want me to route the user to another group in this case?

Great catch @cooltey — I think it’s fine to keep it as is for the ABC test!

Looks good to me for now. Disclaimer: there’s a lot of things going on for notifications in T285765 — also an ABC test. We should we wait with releasing this until we have results from the ABC test.

Thanks @cooltey — I have some late input in regards to placement of the bell icon on the various screens (from left to right):

Article view
Tab icon, Bell icon, More icon

Explore
Tab icon, Bell icon

Saved
Filter icon, Tab icon, Bell icon, More icon

Search
Tab icon, Bell icon

Edits
(no changes)

User talk
Language icon, Bell icon, More icon

Watchlist
Language icon, Bell icon


Conceptual notes

  • Bring the tab icon closer to the search in the article view because it’s thematically related
  • Global elements in the app bar (tabs, notifications) should be positioned rightmost, contextual elements in the view should be positioned right next to it

Search
Tab icon, Filter icon

Typo? Should it be: Tab icon, Bell icon?

Typo? Should it be: Tab icon, Bell icon?

good catch @cooltey — exactly how it should be

adding the info in my last comment to the task’s description so it’s easier to qa.

@cooltey — a late addition — can you change the filter icon within “Saved” to “Find in page” ?

https://fonts.google.com/icons?selected=Material%20Icons%20Outlined%3Afind_in_page%3A

It’s more clear and consistent with other places, e.g. Android’s system default to search within a list:

Screenshot_20210906-145925.png (2×1 px, 199 KB)

Sorry, I knocked this out myself while testing portions of this code.

Yesss @Dbrant — one more thing to sneak in? 👇

I realized that 'History' is using the odd filter icon too — can we replace it with the same, 'Find in page' icon to be consistent?

Screenshot_20210908-102028.png (2×1 px, 270 KB)

Moving this off from QA, since QA instructions for this workflow are in T287113#7348487

Can we add analytics for interactions with Talk pages and Watchlist notifications? Can add to the MobileWikiAppNotificationInteraction schema. Let's discuss if this is possible.