Better History controls in Control4

By Kiki Biancatti in Control4 - Home/Office automation 0 Comment

In the latest Control4 update (3.2.0), an option has been added to the Control4 app called “History”, where you can easily see all events that happened around your environment. This is great but a little noisy.

It shows “movement” events in a weird way, putting “opened” and “closed” at the end of it, e.g.:

  • Entry Movement open
  • Entry Movement closed

This shows that the movement started and ended, which is fine.Image preview
Figure: Bad Example – Opened and Closed is not the best wording for movement

It is not a natural way to read quick movements. For example there is a difference between a car that quickly passes by and one that parks. Say you had a camera facing a busy street, do you want 2 events (open and closed) for every car that passed by?

The same argument works for people that walk past a sensor. This creates visual noise.

2 improvements for the UI would be:

  1. Change the wording – instead of “Entry movement open” and “Entry movement closed” use “Movement started” and “Movement ended”
  2. Single status message – Have a record for “Brief movement” instead of “started” and “ended” for the quick movements
  3. 2 status messages – For activities where someone was in the room for say 10 minutes, you could change “Entry Movement ended” to”Movement ended (10 minutes)”

 

Have separated folders for a Team “chat” files and Team “project” files

By Tiago Araujo in Teams 0 Comment

Currently, any images or documents shared in a Team chat conversation will automatically be in the “Files” folder. These files are often temporary.

The “Files” folder should have only permanent files that are relevant to the project.

Figure: Bad example – Files with different purposes are mixed in the same folder (tab). In blue we see conversation images; in red we have the project files

We believe chat images should go into a separated “Conversations” folder, so we have 2 folders (tabs):

  • Conversations: files from chat (mostly temporary)
  • Files: files manually added as a resource to the project (mostly permanent)

Help me switching devices nicer + security issue

By Adam Cogan in Teams 0 Comment

I add people into Teams calls all the time and I switch devices during group calls often. No problems.

There is a problem on an individual call and I believe there is a nasty scenario that the other person experiences when I change devices. The other person accepts the new call from me and then they have a:

  • Phantom call – this new call is going on fine, but they are seeing the call on hold call 
  • I then typically hang up from the old device (that says on hold) and now they can hear me but see nothing else reflecting on their side. This is a security risk. If I was to go on mute and just listen the other party would not know!

Suggestion #1:

…Right now I am in a call (with a person called Jernej K) and the Teams | Calls list does not reflect my current call… it would be handy to show that person at the top eg.
        Jernej K
       (your current call)

Figure: Missing my current call

Suggestion #2: 

…For this current example, when I call him from another device (say my current ipad battery is low or the camera is temporarily not working until a reboot) it would be good to clean up the current experience.

Currently he receives another call from me and answers it like normal.

Figure: This would be better if this call did not need to happen

Then he sees the existing call is ‘On hold’ (but he can hear me fine).

Figure: Both ends see the call as ‘On hold’

On my end I see the current call… and the old device has that call ‘On hold’ so I naturally hang up the call from the original device (eg. iPad with low battery), the ‘On hold’ call disappears on the other’s side and the call is still active.

When this happens, he can’t see the call and there is no visual indication for it (eg. if I was to go mute, I can hear him but he doesn’t know he’s still on a call). 💥

Note #1: *IMPORTANT* His current status in a Teams is showing as “In a call” instead of “In a meeting” (so there is a way he could detect the phantom call).

Note #2: I was using 3 iOS devices and a Surface Laptop and the other person (Jernej K) was using a PC (Windows Desktop client). We were able to replicate this every single time in various setups.

GitHub App – Help me see a cleaner user experience (Little issue with overlapping popups)

By Christian Morford-Waite in GitHub 0 Comment

I discovered a possible UX issue when modifying a GitHub Pull Request using the iPad App.

There are multiple popups that appear, which is noisy and unintentional.

Figure: Bad Example – The GitHub iPad app shows multiple overlaying “Got It” boxes when reviewing changes

I wonder if this is the intended UX… I am aware one benefit of this UX is that the user knows which popup to read first.

GitHub App – Help me see the changes as easily as the webpage

By Christian Morford-Waite in GitHub 0 Comment

I  found an issue when using the GitHub App on the iPad when reviewing a Pull Request.

It’s not clear to see the changes and for small grammatical changes the web view is required.

Figure: Bad Example – Using the GitHub iPad App in dark mode you cannot see the lines highlighted (Only numbers)
Figure: Bad Example – Using the GitHub iPad App in light mode you cannot see changes within the highlighted lines
Figure: Good Example – The Web view clearly shows the highlighted changes (See the darker red and darker green)