If you're reading this, there's a good chance it's because of my messy, unusual title, and that it unconsciously drew you in to this first sentence. You noticed, without noticing: as I'd intended.
For better or worse, we are all getting pretty adept at picking up on such irregularities on computer screens, especially thanks to the annoying red circles on our phones showing there's an update or an unread message. Love 'em or hate 'em though, they work: eventually, they bug us enough to take action.
That said: on with my story.
This evening, one of my colleagues at Workfront asked me the following:
My client is looking for a way to make notifications within Workfront more "in your face." Initial ideas were having something like blinking, a sound effect, or pop-ups (not sure how I feel about that last one). Do you have anything along those lines already built or do you have any ideas of what you could do to make notifications more prevalent for them?
I mulled it over for a bit, and then -- with a tip of my hat to Craig Lanthrop's post last month to "https://community.workfront.com/p/fo/st/topic=39&post=1222#p1222">Make Workfront Full Screen (in Chrome) -- I extended his concept by adding this little snippet at the bottom of the initial Stylebot Options he'd provided:
.notification-count.unacknowledged {
height: 80px; }
The result is shown in the screenshot below: from now on, whenever I have at least one unread Workfront update, it gets "annoyingly long" (but not "rediculously long"), drawing my attention and incenting me to check and acknowledge all messages, thereby returning the height to normal. As with my title, it offends our sense of aesthetics and calls us to action.
So! If you're looking to reinforce "Workfront Good; Email Bad", I invite you to try it out!
Regards,
Doug
