Most inboxes count everything. Every unread message, every like, every "someone viewed your profile", all folded into one red number that stops meaning anything by the second week. We wanted the number on the Inbox tab to mean one thing: somebody is waiting for you to answer.
What counts
Three kinds of thing need an answer from you, and only those three badge the tab.
- An invite to train, from someone the app picked for you or someone who found you.
- A seat request on a session you host, when the session asks for approval.
- A join request on a club you lead.
Each one is a card at the top of the Inbox, under a heading that says exactly what it is: Waiting on you. Sessions come first, in the order they happen, so the one at nine tomorrow is above the one next weekend. Club requests follow, longest waiting first.
Chat unread never counts. Messages show their own marks inside the tab, and a club's channels show theirs on the club. A red number that means "someone needs you" is useful; one that means "there are messages" is not. We would rather you glance at the tab and know.
Answered in place
You answer on the card. Accept, decline, approve, join. The card settles where it is, with what you did written on it, and stays until you leave the tab. It does not vanish under your thumb, and the list does not jump. If the answer cannot go through, because the session filled while you were deciding or the invite expired, the card comes back with a line that says why, and you can try again or let it go.
Who can message you
A direct message on Mura can only start from something you already share: a session you are both in, a club you are both in, an invite one of you accepted, or people you follow each other. Nobody can message you cold, and that rule is Mura's, not the app's: there is no screen, and no trick, that gets around it.
The reason is partly safety and partly signal. A message from someone you ran with on Saturday is worth opening. A message from someone who found you in a list is usually not, and we would rather not have the list.
Chats have a lifetime
A session's chat is for the session. It opens when the session is posted, it is where the plan, the parking and the weather get sorted, and it closes a day after the session ends. Once closed, the composer is replaced with a single offer: plan the next one, which opens the composer with this session copied forward a week.
A club's channels live with the club, not here. They are not listed in the Inbox at all, and that was a deliberate call from the day we designed clubs: a club is a place you go, not a thread in your inbox.
Notifications, asked for at the right moment
We ask for permission to send notifications at exactly four moments: after you send an invite, after you join a session, after you send your first message, and after you create a club. Never at launch. Each of those is a moment where you have just done something you will want to hear back about, and the prompt says so.
If you say Not now, we do not ask again for two weeks. Only Turn on reaches the system's own dialog. And every notification opens the thing it is about, the session, the club, the conversation, rather than a generic inbox.
The point of all of it is the same as the badge: when Mura asks for your attention, it is because a person is on the other end.
