We’re working on making user friendly language choices on our IFTTT channel and I’d love to get some feedback.
Trigger and action fields are commonly labeled as just a noun: “url”, “text”, “name”
Since our triggers and actions are often complex comparisons we’re playing around with the idea of adding in some text that will help people to create sentences out of their triggers/actions.
We’ve tried to combine these two ideas and come up with the idea t
Trigger = My Core published an event
Trigger Fields =
If (Event Name)
is (Event Contents)
Device Name or ID
If (Variable Name)
Is (Test Operation)
Than (Value to Test Against)
We’ve also added in much more specific “helper text” to guide people along. An example: Helper text for If (Event Name) will be -> Fill in your published Event Name; ex: monitoring a washing machine? Event Name = Wash_Status
I would really appreciate and value any feedback you are willing to offer on this wording. We really want our IFTTT channel to be user friendly, and understandable for people who are new to the Spark system. Obviously part of that is providing great examples, but another part of that is making sure our channel is really understandable!
The Action titles and descriptions look great! They make sense immediately.
I don’t quite get that feeling for the titles of the Spark triggers. When looking around at some other channels, I feel like the titles of triggers are very concise and clear as to what they mean. For instance, “Any new public track” for Soundcloud or “New Critics’ Pick Movie Review” for New York Times. Also, there seems to be a naming convention with the triggers that we’re not following. Almost all trigger titles have the word “New” in them, which aren’t currently part of our titles.
Here are my suggestions for trigger titles:
New published event (My Core published an event)
New variable value (My variable)
New function result (My function)
New connectivity state (My core is)
I would also slightly modify the descriptions of the triggers:
New published event: This trigger fires when one of your Spark devices sends a particular event. Set the event name and desired event contents for full control of the trigger.
New variable value: This trigger fires when a variable on your Spark device is set to a desired value. To fire this trigger you will need a Spark.variable somewhere in your code. IFTTT will periodically check the value of the variable over time.
New function result: This trigger fires when a function run on your Spark device returns a desired value. Set both the function inputs and desired result for full control of the trigger. IFTTT will periodically check the result of the function over time.
New connectivity state: This trigger fires when the connectivity of your Spark device changes (i.e. goes from offline to online or vice-versa).
In general, I do think we should get rid of the “My Core” language in the titles. I think it’s relatively intuitive that this will be used for a person’s particular Core, every action/trigger involves a person’s Core but it’s only in one title. Also, when the photon is released it would be nice not to have to go back and change this language, hence why I opted for “Spark device” in the descriptions.
Would be curious to hear other people’s thoughts! Go Spark + IFTTT!
I stumbled upon this thread while trying to get a published event to be detected by IFTTT, and while I realize it’s a very late posting, here are my C$0.02.
I found the text accompanying the is(Event Contents) line confusing. My understanding (based on a posting from moore7) is that the trigger is triggered if the data from the event equals the value in that text field. So, to be symmetric with the If(Event Name) text, I’d suggest something like … Fill in the value that Data (the contents of the published event) must equal to trigger the event – leave blank if the event name itself is sufficient.