The discussion revolves around the understandability of notification UI elements in a forum. mik01aj highlights that users often misunderstand icons, such as the like symbol and @mentions, and questions the clarity of certain UI changes. strager agrees that icons can be confusing, noting the difficulty in interpreting them without prior experience. Mittineague suggests adding tooltips to improve clarity, though acknowledges users might still overlook them. codinghorror argues that users will eventually learn the symbols, comparing it to learning new technology like iPads or mice. AmiAthena points out that @mentions are now standard across platforms like Twitter and Facebook. riking clarifies that the UI is not intuitive but learned, and AmiAthena adds that it’s more about learned intuition than natural understanding.
From what I’ve seen, some of my users don’t really understand what notifications mean. For example, seeing this:
They don’t know that means that it’s a like and not a reply. They don’t know that @ means “you were mentioned”.
And there’s one more thing that even I (that forum’s admin) don’t understand: .
What does this mean?
I think there’s a lot to improve in the notification UI. Imho Facebook is a good example here. Their notification messages are very clear. Imho StackExchange notification system is ok, too.
While you are correct that it is a little confusing for users (that’s the trouble with Icons…they are easy to misinterpret) using Facebook as an example is a BAD idea - FB has one of the worst UI and user experiences on the entire internet. It’s an example of what you DON’T want to do…
Still, I don’t think it would take that much work to at least give the “circles” a “tooltip” of some sort.
Granted, many would miss reading even that - if they are already missing the “notifications of @ name mentions, replies to your posts and topics, messages, etc” for the speech bubble, would it really help much having similar for the circles too? But it might be something to consider
*Note, there is already a title “tooltip” for the icons in the list (but not the links)
What more could be done that isn’t already being done?
@mentions are fairly standard these days, too. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all use @ to mention people, so it’s fairly intuitive that that notification would mean that.
means that it’s a like and not a reply. They don’t know that 
.
mean?
