Poll: what number comes at the beginning?
Jul. 24th, 2008 12:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
One of the most important concepts in CommYou's new integration with IM is the notion of a "thread slot" -- the number that is assigned to a particular thread of conversation. Since you are potentially juggling several conversations in a single IM window, you need an easy way to refer to a specific one.
At the moment, I'm allowing ten slots at any given time (which seems about as many as you can keep track of anyway). These are, of course, numbered 0 - 9. One of the first points made yesterday (by
laurion) is that that's pretty geeky. Every computer science student knows that the number line starts with zero, but most other people in the world thinks it starts with one.
I suspect he's right, and am leaning towards simply slicing slot 0 away, so you get threads 1 - 9. But before I go changing the code, I figure I may as well do a quick survey of opinion among my admittedly-unrepresentative friends:
[Poll #1228967]
At the moment, I'm allowing ten slots at any given time (which seems about as many as you can keep track of anyway). These are, of course, numbered 0 - 9. One of the first points made yesterday (by
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
I suspect he's right, and am leaning towards simply slicing slot 0 away, so you get threads 1 - 9. But before I go changing the code, I figure I may as well do a quick survey of opinion among my admittedly-unrepresentative friends:
[Poll #1228967]
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-24 05:57 pm (UTC)But, haven't you heard of the Law of Non-Random Numbers? There can naturally be 0 of something, 1 of something, or N things. Anything else is an imposed limit. If you've got a power of 2 or (n^2)-1, at least that suggests a data representation limit. Round numbers in decimal sound really forced.
Personally, I rarely have more than 3 or 4 IM conversations open at a time, and almost always 1 or 2.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-24 05:58 pm (UTC)If you are showing numbers, go with 1-9. Normal people will not feel warm and fuzzy about zero relativity.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-24 06:02 pm (UTC)"Conversation Number XXX" is, of course, ambiguous -- does that mean the Conversation NAMED XXX, or the XXXth conversation. I think that that ambiguity lies at the heart of the problem, and you want to stomp it out. Don't let implementation details sneak into your UI.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-24 07:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-24 08:56 pm (UTC)The masses don't start numbering things at "0". They start at "1". You should start where they do.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-24 09:16 pm (UTC)For basically "normal" humans, one seems the better choice.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-24 11:11 pm (UTC)Unless there's something special/unusual about #0.
(For instance: If you're numbering comments, I could see the original post being #0.)
But that doesn't seem to be the case here - and even then, it could be confusing.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-25 03:36 am (UTC)Subject lines are good for conversations but verbose for IM. But subject lines can be compressed -- one key word or an abbreviation -- at a little more pixel load but less cognitive load than numbers. In a later use case (I don't expect this in an early version), it would really rock if clients get to set that tag locally. 'Cause the conversation might be mainly about new features in Java 7, but I'm watching it because I just got a resume for a senior-guru position from one of the participants. Or it's about styling of 15th-century Italian balli, but I'm really just following the entangled thread about the class that Master So-And-So is going to teach on this at Pennsic. Conversations aren't about the same things to every participant, necessarily.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-25 04:31 am (UTC)