[Usability] Fwd: New Sound Preferences and Volume Control

["Diego Moya" <turingt gmail com>]

2008/12/3 Pedro Maurício Costa <pmauricio costa gmail com>

Well... That brings another issue: prioritization. This means, for
instance, that if you are listening to music and some other
application needs your attention immediately should be able not only
to be louder, but also make other apps quieter or even mute them. What
do you think about this?

It's the audio equivalent of the modal alert box. If I hate it when it blocks my flow of interaction, why would I like it to break my flow of sound? I don't want to miss a line of dialog in a movie just because a new mail arrives.

This problem is solved in visual terms with the usage of non intrusive notification balloons. What you need is a sound metaphor for non intrusive notification (maybe a jingle, like those used in PA systems, but played as a background sound)?

And definitely, this functions have to be evaluated in the context of goal oriented usage scenarios.