Improve User Experience by Hiding Badge When Count is Zero

I completely agree with you, as badges should work to draw the attention when necessary, not by default.

This is a technical change, so this idea can not be implemented in the UI change propositions we are going to implement. 

I hope this idea gets more votes, as, indeed as you said, a badge with nothing to draw the intention for can frustrate the user trying to perform actions to get the badge out of the screen.

I actually like the way this currently functions. It displays the number you tell it to display and nothing if you set it to null. Making it configurable would be a solution as well, but I see that as yet another option in the SF that needs to be learned and devs forget to set when needed.

I would still like to keep the option to show a badge even when 0, so I can use that value to colour the badge. Like as a sort of traffic light system where 0 is green and certain thresholds orange and red.

This would be an option, but still would make it possible to forget to set 0 = NULL, where our users still get to see a badge. 
It should be the other way around. Default, 0 shoud be no badge, unless a developer really has a reason to change this.

Can you give me an example of any other program/platform which shows a badge with 0?

Thats a valid point, I can't think of any other program that does this. Yet I can think of situations where I would like to do this. For example to highlight that there are no detail items on a detail tab where there should be some. Making it configurable and defaulting to the nullif 0 solution as you proposed is still valid though.

That is certainly very creative. 

But that also means that you are trying to solve a challenge by using a feature in a way it is not designed to do. 
The badge is a very common feature used by other programs, making it a feature we as developers should copy to make it recognizable to our users: a badge commonly means one or more actions are needed on an item, and we use the badge to provoke the user to perform all actions so that the badge disappears. 

Like with your mail applications, or tasks apps, or basket in any webshop for example.

Changing this behavior should be done very sparingly and we as developers should be VERY aware at what our users expect. 

It was just to mention a reason why I would like it to be an option to keep, before it turns into a change where the 0 result is always a no badge available. I do not mind it being a default to hidden.

I have seen few examples in internally developed monitoring software where the people are used to the rule “a badge is shown when something is counted and none if the functionality does not exists”. Automated production lines and Security are those in my experience.

That doesn't surpass the fact that our users are used to the common behavior and expectations of badges from other platforms and programs: perform actions to get the badge to disappear.

That is why I think a badge with the 0 value needs to be avoided at all times. Like with your suggested situation, the users would always have a badge on a detail tab. What would that mean? What can the user possibly do to get the badge out of their view?

Let's take an example: how would you like to have an email program that always has a badge (with 0 or any other number) on one of your subgroups? And there would be nothing you could do to get that badge out of the way.

Let’s not make this a bigger thing than it is. I was merely voicing a opinion. If it were an option, I would not turn it on for my Mail application, but I would turn it on for my Error logging application. Like a tile for that last one would show a nice “Past hour errors (0)”. If I want I can use custom css to colour the background differently.

OP was giving a nice solution how it might even be workable as an option.

Thinkwise can decide what they want to support and what type of users they wish to focus on.

I agree @Mark_Plaggenborg, and thanks for sharing your opinion! 

The argument that we need to be very careful when using UI features in a different way than users may be used to, is very valid but keep in mind that we as devs sometimes need to get creative since we are limited to the features available to us in the Software Factory.

As Mark said, thinkwise can decide what to implement. I’d just really like to keep the 0 badge functionality in some way. :P

Great conversation guys, thanks for your input! I believe that Thinkwise should make it the default/easiest to use a certain functionality for it’s intended purpose. This guy refers to it as the Golden Path: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jason-fried_one-of-my-favorite-things-about-designing-activity-7211806944347447297-wwKc

In this particular instance I believe we all agree that this Idea should be implemented as suggested: default to not showing a Badge if count = 0, but do allow the Developer to adjust this. 
 

It’s not the highest of priorities (more on that later), but these kind of examples are exactly what we’ll be looking at over the course of the coming year in order to help Developers be faster and more easily successful with the Thinkwise Platform. So please keep these suggestions coming!