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Example UI Spec: Sound Instant Messages By Ellen Isaacs This page last updated: September 13, 2000 Figure D6. Hubbub with bub selected Users can send each other Sound Instant Messages, which are short sounds that have meanings associated with them. (A sample of the sounds is available.) To send a SIM, the user selects the bub they wish to contact and then clicks one of the SIM icons above, types the keyboard equivalent for it, or chooses it from the Sounds menu. The SIMs appear as icons only, but as soon as the user holds the cursor over them, a tooltip with the lable appears and the sound button "pops" into 3D and in color, as shown in Figure D6. When the user sends a sound, if the sound reaches the bub, it plays back to this user so they know the sound was sent. If it does not reach the bub, it does play and a footer appears and says "Sound message not sent." When the user sends a sound, the recipient hears first the sender's Sound ID followed by the SIM. (Note that this is the opposite of the awareness sounds, which play before the SID.) In addition, they see a visual alert of the message. In Figure D6, the footer shows what it looks like for Walendo when Ellen sends him the SIM "Hi". This footer also appears on any IM windows that may be open as well. [We need to figure out if there are any exceptions to this.] If the recipient is currently not accepting sounds, either from this user or from anyone (mute all), then when the user moves the cursor over the icon, it pops up but doesn't turn color and a tooltip says "{label} (Bub's sound are muted)" (e.g. "Hi (Bub's sounds are muted)". If they click the button anyway, then the footer still appears on the recipient's footer but the sound does not play. On the sender's window, the footer says "Bub's sound are muted." If the recipient is blocking all sounds from that sender, then they do not receive the visual alert or the sound. The sender sees the same "Bub's sounds are muted" tooltip and footer. Note that when the user selects a bub's name, it may have information that is out of date about the status of the recipient, by as much as 30 seconds (but usually within 15 seconds). Therefore, it is possible that a SIM tooltip will say that sounds are muted when they are not, or the reverse. In the first case, when the user sends the sound, they do NOT see the "Bub's sounds are muted" footer, and if they point to the SIM again, the "muted" tooltip would be gone. In the latter case, they would not see the "muted" tooltip when they initially pointed to the SIM button, but then when the sound played, the footer would tell them the recipient's sounds were muted, and if they put their cursor over the SIM again, it would show the "muted" tooltip. If a user selects a bub who is offline, the sound messages become disabled so the user cannot send them a sound. (They can, however, send them a text message that will be sent as email. See description at end of Text Instant Message section. Figure D7. SIM log screen The Hubbub desktop client provides a log of the last [10] SIMs to arrive. This might be useful if the user receives a series of sounds and did not see them all in the footer. Or they may have muted Hubbub and had their attention elsewhere, but they can still find out the most recent messages to arrive. To see the log, users chooses "Recent messages" from the File menu on the main screen. This brings up the log screen, shown in Figure D7. When the user double-clicks on an entry, it starts an IM window to that person. Since users can run Hubbub on multiple devices, SIMs play only on the active device if there is one. If there is more than one idle but available device, the sound plays on all such devices.