A critical analysis of notification systems
Lessons and opportunities lying ahead of the current systems.
The two worlds
Look at the above picture — to the left is the user’s world: a world where the person’s kids, family, hobbies, work and other things reside. The user’s interaction with this world is the “typical experience” of a human being. This world is accessed both with and without a digital device like a smartphone. People feel a need to be focused and connected with this inner world.
On the other side, there is a world outside of the user’s: a world where other people are sharing their stories, opinions and news among other things. This outside world is accessed both through intrinsic and extrinsic triggers, almost always through a digital device like a smartphone. People strive to be informed of (and even addicted to) the happenings in this outside world.
Our current notification systems fail to alleviate the constant tension between the need to be focused and the need to be informed; leading to an ever-distracted mind.
About this critique
- Our aim is to establish an understanding of the fundamental differences between two of the major notification systems (iOS and Android) and raise questions around how current notifications systems could improve.
- Each major point will include a hypothesis, a scenario backing it, a visual as necessary and a How Might We statement to trigger further exploration into this point.
- Remember — This is a critique of the system design, not the designers.
Smartphones are the primary source of our information, connectivity and distraction today. This brings us to an analysis of notification systems — iOS and Android, that are our touch points to the external world.
Android — Unattended notifications are to-do list items
Let’s understand how Android’s notification system works in general. Some kind of trigger (more on triggers later) results in a notification being created. For our example of a notification, let’s take a direct message on LinkedIn. As soon as a notification arrives, Android pushes it (to the lock screen or top area if unlocked) and collects an app icon in the status tray to signify an unattended notification. Swipe down from the top or view the lock screen to view a list of all the notifications you have.
Apps retain cards that can be dismissed or acted upon. Over time, depending on how actively you are interacting with your notifications, you may find more and more notifications in the list.
What effect could Android’s notification system have?
Notifications on Android are generally hard to miss, thanks to the fact that the notification panel takes over the lock screen when the phone is locked. This helps the user keep a tab on important things that don’t quite deserve their immediate attention. Android makes this easier further by grouping notifications from the same app together — for example, notifications from a single thread in a chat app is grouped into one big notification card that you can expand. By keeping the notifications persistent on the lock screen and grouping notifications, Android ensures that going through notifications later is not an arduous task.
However, the flip side to the visually ever-persistent notification system is that they demand attention and action. Here’s a scenario –
Bob receives a notification triggered by a message on LinkedIn. He ignores it for now, as he is trying to focus on something else. Now every time he passes through the lock screen, this notification is right there reminding him of an action he needs to take. While it is great that the system is collecting all the things that he has to get back to, this also becomes a distraction since the system is implicitly assuming that Bob needs to get to them now.
This is certainly not a bad thing though. Android tries to make sure that Bob is able to stay on top of all that is happening — much like a to-do list application. Depending on what kind of notifications you have at any given moment, it could cause anxiety or feel assuring that you will remember to get back to important items.
Some important questions raised by this scenario –
- Does the Android notification system make Bob feel distracted?
- Do multiple notifications collected on the lock screen cause anxiety?
How might we…? Create a notification system that doesn’t demand our attention on every interaction with a smartphone but also helps us stay on top of things.iOS notification system
iOS’s notification system is a timeline. It is a passive-aggressive system that interrupts you only once with every notification and then pushes the notification into a timeline — A steady stream of alerts that are triggered from various sources.
What effect could the iOS notification system have?
iOS notification system respects the user’s behavior of ignoring a notification. It does so by pushing notifications to the lock screen once and if the user ignores it (by unlocking the phone without interacting with any notification), it resets the lock screen to its clean state. This; in my view, is a form of balanced interruption — it interrupts the user once but doesn’t keep getting in the way every time the user interacts with the phone.
However, it doesn’t do a good job at managing and organizing those notifications; especially important ones. Here’s a scenario –
Let’s say Bob is on an iPhone. He has a dozen Instagram notifications above a text message notification from mom. To worsen things; in a few hours, there are so many notifications in the notification center that he cannot go through each of them. He clears them all.
This creates an imbalance — the most important notifications are lost in the shuffle as it is overwhelming to look at a huge stream of alerts in a single place (on top of that, iOS treats every notification as its own cell and does not group multiple notifications into one).
Now app badges are designed for this very purpose — so that each app can tell you that it needs your attention. However, too many badges could lead to divided attention, distraction and anxiety. Badges could have a similar effect to Android’s persistent notifications but only worse — they cannot be cleared easily.
How Might We...? Create a notification system that has balanced interruption but also provides powerful techniques for notification management.BONUS How might we..? Create a notification system that does not make notifications hard to manage by stashing them all in a drawer.
Triggers — what leads to a notification?
Currently, notifications are organized by time and by app. Android goes a step ahead though — in my observation over a few months, notifications seem to be organized by priority. For example, a call or a reminder may stay on top but other items get shuffled to the bottom of the list as more items accumulate over time.
In order to truly understand the different types of notifications, we must know the different types of triggers that cause a notification. A trigger (in this context) is any human or system that causes a notification on the end-user’s smartphone. When we look at a notification, we know the person or system behind it; and that is what makes triggers important.
Our smartphones do not categorize our notifications based on triggers. Here are some examples of the different kinds of triggers (and this just scratches the surface)–
- Important System triggered notifications: Notifications like low battery, a software update or an emergency alert.
- Other external world triggers: A not-so-close-friend posted on instagram in a while, News-related notifications, 50th person who liked your photo etc.
- Self-triggered notifications: a reminder or an alarm
- Many to one communication: a group message from Slack or WhatsApp.
- One to One communication: A single person is trying to get in touch with you. These are; in my opinion, the most important notifications — could be a text from your Dad/mom/close friend, an important call you missed etc.
The image above shows how there are certain things we may care about more than others. This begs a larger question though — should notifications be treated as an incoming stream of information that the user can control in ways other than just blocking apps?
How might we…? Create a notification system that is focused on human connections and what the user cares about the most in general.Notifications matter
As our digital world becomes more complex, we need to think critically about how we connect with other humans, important information and most importantly, our personal assistants.
More critical analysis
If you liked this analysis, you should read my first critical analysis post about the iOS lock screen –
Shankar wrote this story to share knowledge back with the design community. All articles published on uxdesign.cc follow that same philosophy.
