Bug 491632 - Battery Critical notification wording and countdown could use some improvement
Summary: Battery Critical notification wording and countdown could use some improvement
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: plasmashell
Classification: Plasma
Component: Power management & brightness (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: 6.2.4
Platform: openSUSE Linux
: NOR minor
Target Milestone: 1.0
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords: usability
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2024-08-12 17:04 UTC by John Veness
Modified: 2024-12-18 21:41 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments
Battery Critical notification (30.31 KB, image/png)
2024-08-12 17:04 UTC, John Veness
Details

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Description John Veness 2024-08-12 17:04:52 UTC
Created attachment 172548 [details]
Battery Critical notification

SUMMARY
I have a couple of suggestions for improving the current Battery Critical notification - see Expected Result.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Use a battery-powered device
2. Allow your battery to deplete to 5%
3. Observe the Battery Critical notification

OBSERVED RESULT
Notification says:

   Battery Critical (5% Remaining).
   Battery level critical. Your computer will enter hibernation mode in 60 seconds.

The notification will be static over those 60 seconds (unless you plug a power lead in, in which case it will disappear, as expected.)

EXPECTED RESULT
I suggest that the "60 seconds" part of the message be turned into a countdown that updates once per second, so the user can see exactly how long they've got to rush for a power lead.

Also, "Your computer will enter hibernation mode" could be less jargon-y as "Your computer will hibernate", especially as the button below says "Hibernate Now" not "Enter Hibernation Mode Now". Possibly it shouldn't say "Your computer", maybe just "The computer" or "This computer" - I'm not sure if there's a HIG for this.

Also also, you may not need the repetition of "Battery level critical" in the body, as it's already in the header, especially on a message you want to read quickly.

As always, I suggest a usability expert should take a look at the wording for this rather than just taking my suggestions!

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20240811
KDE Plasma Version: 6.1.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.5.0
Qt Version: 6.7.2
Kernel Version: 6.10.3-1-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Comment 1 Nate Graham 2024-08-12 18:01:43 UTC
Good points. The text changes are simple, I'll do those.

As for a countdown, I'm not sure how to do that technically, but I *think* it's possible. It might have be implemented with an actual progress bar.
Comment 2 Bug Janitor Service 2024-08-12 20:22:59 UTC
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/powerdevil/-/merge_requests/412
Comment 3 Nate Graham 2024-08-13 13:51:54 UTC
Git commit aed6c50a31808eed35563df73482035e32369af0 by Nate Graham.
Committed on 13/08/2024 at 13:47.
Pushed by ngraham into branch 'master'.

Tweak notification text to be more user-friendly and less jargonistic

Some of the notification labels suffered a bit from excessive wordiness,
repetition, and jargon. This commit cleans them up to be more
HIG-compliant by rephrasing some things:

- Don't repeat the title in the body text.
- Minimize or eliminate the words "you" and "your", which sound awkward
  or accusatory in English.
- Use the term "system" instead of "computer", because not all systems
  are computers (e.g. phones using PlaMo have Powerdevil).
- Use the term "power cord" instead of "AC adapter", because it's more
  common and also more accurate since not all power cords do electrical
  rectification (e.g. a USB charger plugged into a car's 12-volt
  socket).

M  +9    -9    daemon/powerdevilcore.cpp
M  +2    -2    powerdevil.notifyrc

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/powerdevil/-/commit/aed6c50a31808eed35563df73482035e32369af0