
Notifications are Evil - cjoh
http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/notifications-are-evil
======
jaysonelliot
The author is absolutely right.

It's a fundamental rule of human computer interaction—the user should be in
control of the relationship, not the computer.

If we spoke to people the way computers speak to us, we'd be considered rude
beyond belief. Whether it's our operating systems or web sites, they're
constantly haranguing us to stop what we're doing and pay attention to them.

Let me be clear. There is NOTHING a computer needs your attention for that
can't either be handled on its own or that can't wait until you're ready to
pay attention to it.

If you're interested in being notified about an event, whether it's a new
message coming in, a process completing, or an error that's happened in the
background, you should be able to have that notification appear when the event
occurs. But that should be your choice.

The distinction between "important" and "unimportant" notifications should be
made by the user, not the machine.

~~~
Splines
_Let me be clear. There is NOTHING a computer needs your attention for that
can't either be handled on its own or that can't wait until you're ready to
pay attention to it._

I think hardware failures are probably the only class of notifications I'd
want to be told of immediately. I had a HD start to go bad that was in a
striped RAID array, I suspect it's been in that state for awhile and only
learned of it when the RAID firmware had red in it when I restarted the PC and
happened to be sitting there. I don't know why Windows never complained (I've
seen "HD is bad" notification messages before in XP, but not this time - maybe
the RAID controller abstracted the failure away?).

Similarly, I would also like to know if there were critical thermal problems
in my laptop.

In the case of imminent hardware damage or data loss, I'd like to know.

~~~
sliverstorm
_maybe the RAID controller abstracted the failure away_

Typically, it will. You need the RAID card manufacturer's software to talk to
the card to find out when a disk is going bad.

------
icebraining
_If we don't control the notifications we're receiving, we're forced to react
to them_

No, you're not. Yes, notifications should be configurable and easy to turn
off, but there's nothing that _forces_ you to react to them. You can simply
ignore them. It's a little red square in the corner, not a popup.

The author is blowing the issue completely out of proportions, in my opinion.
Not to mention the completely ridiculous title. No, notifications aren't
"evil". They're a tool, and an extremely useful one when you need it: if my
laptop is about to run out of energy, you can bet I want a big in-my-face
notification.

What's annoying (not "evil") is the lack of configurability of many systems,
particularly websites/webapps. But that's an old discussion, and many people
will argue for its benefits too.

~~~
drcube
"Ignore" is a reaction. Notifications are a distraction whether you ignore
them or not.

~~~
pestaa
So right. Not deciding what to do is deciding to do nothing in my book.

------
AndrewDucker
I completely disagree. Notifications are awesome because I can forget about
the event until it occurs.

I can send an email to you asking for information, and then push it from my
mind until I get a notification saying that you've responded. Without
notifications I'd have to go and check repeatedly to find out if you'd got
back to me yet.

The important thing is to keep important notifications and unimportant ones
separate, so that you're only notified of things you actually care about.

~~~
jaysonelliot
Yes, and that should be your choice, not the system's choice. If you decide
that some notifications are important enough to be displayed, then you should
see them.

Sometimes, a person doesn't want any notifications at all—for example, when
they're working and "in the zone," or watching a movie, or playing a game.

Sometimes, you want to be notified about pretty much everything.

The decision about when to be notified or not, and what's important vs.
unimportant, should be your decision, not your computer's.

~~~
michael_dorfman
_The decision about when to be notified or not, and what's important vs.
unimportant, should be your decision, not your computer's._

But isn't that the status quo?

I can't think of any piece of software I use that doesn't give me a fairly
easy way to temporarily turn off the notifications. I don't want to get
notified by Facebook? No problem, I shut it down. Don't want to be interrupted
by my telephone? I put it in silent mode. Etc., etc.

~~~
jaysonelliot
Both MacOS and Windows.

The OSX dock bounces when an application thinks it has something important to
tell you. Windows grab focus away from the user when a process completes. MS
Outlook throws email notifications up at you, even when you're presenting to
an audience on a large screen—always fun to see the subject lines of emails
showing up while a presenter is trying to talk.

On your iPhone, you are forced to dig into the preferences to find and turn
off the "Automatically ask to join networks" option if you don't want wi-fi
notifications popping up all over the place any time you are on the move.

Off should be the default for notifications, not on.

~~~
icebraining
Frankly, is the default that important? Change it once and it's off. Even if
you do that for 40 applications, it's still a very small amount of time in
total.

Maybe I'm biased, though; exploring the Settings/Options is usually the first
thing I do when I run a new application.

~~~
jaysonelliot
I think you're mistaking "what an advanced user can put up with" for what the
best experience should be.

------
TeMPOraL
I think it's nowhere near as bad as the article sounds. The red square from
Google+ is small and hidden in the place I usually don't even look, so I find
myself not realizing for days that got a notification from Google+. On
Facebook, notifications are one of the most useful features of the whole
service - they tell me about the more important[1] events that I could
otherwise miss (Facebook walls are heavily filtered; otherwise you'd be
flooded by updates). And they don't even appear on your e-mail, unless I ask
for it (Facebook has now disabled almost all e-mail notifications by default).

So I'm sorry, but I'm not convinced by this article. On the contrary, I find
notifications to be one of the best UI solutions out there. They are
completely noninvasive[2] and make sure you don't miss anything, so you don't
have to constantly check what is going on. It boils down to what
alexchamberlain said in the thread - event-based architecture beats polling in
almost all cases.

[1] - if we can call anything on Facebook "important". But things like
comments to my updates, or activities of my closest friends are things I don't
want to miss.

[2] - Twitter, G+ and Facebook notifications are generally numbers on the
webpage title / notification bar. They do not play sounds, they do not pop
windows up. If one gets distracted by that, I recommend not keeping
FB/Twitter/G+ tabs open in the browser during work.

~~~
wavephorm
But on Google Plus, you can't easily make that red square go away. You can't
just right click "clear". You can't even open it open and click "clear". It
forces you to go down the list and manually click on each action, before it
makes it go away. It's extraordinarily annoying.

~~~
commandar
You can click on the notifier and then click away. It won't clear out the
notifications, but it will mark them as read and unhighlight them.

------
freshlog
To understand why the social web is so noisy, simply follow the money.

Salespeople need marketers to sell products, marketers rely on Facebook and
Google to buy targeted advertising slots, who in turn optimize their social
networking tools to encourage everyone to share even more, all the time.

Frictionless sharing, as Zuck puts it, because the more you share, the more
keywords they can accumulate and sell as ad slots to marketers and sales
people.

For the rest of us, we have our work to do and there's only a small window of
our day when we're most productive.

Understand that the social web, as we know it, isn't designed in a way
optimized for our productivity and happiness. It serves the tripartite of
salespeople, marketers and social networking companies.

Sure it's free to use, but if you're not paying for the product, you are the
product.

I've since weaned myself from Facebook for more than a year with a little tool
I made that helps me, my wife, family, friends and colleagues be more
selective about what they share in a attention-respectful and considerate
pace.

It's called Handpick, which helps you collect links for different groups of
people and send a single email digest daily or weekly, totally cutting out
pesky notifications in our lives.

<http://handpick.me>

Let me know what you think.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Cool idea, is it opt-in for the receiver though? Otherwise it sounds like
another unwanted notification.

~~~
freshlog
Well, your recipients should be friends, family or colleagues you care about,
so you'd be sharing very specific things that you know they will like.

Bundling all the links into a daily or weekly email digest would be less
disruptive than sharing via facebook, imo.

------
j45
Interruptions are the enemy of productivity.

I don't have issue with notifications that wait for me to review them but I do
absolutely abhor notifications that think I exist to serve them.

This is fundamentally about respect. It's my currency and respect for others
and their time is something I do my best to abide by.

When an app doesn't respect me, or my time, and interrupts me, it's indirectly
saying it's more important than anything I'm working on. It might not mean to,
but it's like someone showing up at your desk demanding attention for their
question without any regard for what you're working on.

Example: I just switched to a Galaxy Android phone from an older iOS phone.
This isn't Android's fault, I'm sure I'll find it elsewhere too.

My punishment for adding my accounts to a modern mobile OS? My notification
center blinks like a Christmas tree.

I am a person that barely tolerates SMS or voicemail notifications. No problem
is rarely that big that it can't wait an hour. Or two. Being the path of least
resistance and being available to the whims of others simply leaves you
drowned in more information than is humane. It's better to reward people who
make requests as far in advance as possible, and reward them with those
quickest, preferred emails.

I run a consulting business that primarily develops products. I am, by the way
of having good systems and processes, able to work with this rule. I can reply
to emails every few hours. Emergencies, still get dealt with as emergencies.
Just put a Priority 1 in the subject of the email, or call the emergency
voicemail, and it's a fire drill, with the minimum hour(s) we agree to every
fire drill.

I don't care to receive a notification that a new meetup has been created. I
don't care I received an instant message right this second. I wish Gtalk would
stop harassing me for signing in with. I'm scared to hook up my other IM
accounts.

I don't care what a single app has to tell me right this instant. Sorry, but
it won't improve there quality of my life this instant, or the next 5 years.
It's just noise, 99% of the time.

If it's a new attention economy, I'm not going to let others decide the rules
of how I spend my most valuable currency -- my attention so easily. When I
did, it robbed me of focus, productivity and momentum, and let others set the
priorities in my life. Theres no imagining how users who aren't aware of how
they're being distracted and overwhelmed might overcome this.

I personally feel that part of this is the fault of the Blackberry culture
that I watched in total horror: Blackberries made people feel like they were
being more productive.

The too oft reality? blackberries are great for the people asking the
questions. For the overwhelming majority that answer the questions for a
living, they are now busy doing other peoples work. They are busy dealing with
the poor planning of others now disguised as an emergency.

Only one thing. Poor planning on your part doesn't make am emergency on my
part. I now have to deal with this culture of interruption, packaged as
notifications but it's just really lazy. It's not a new economy, it's not a
new world. It's someone wanting to micromanage my time that doesn't understand
my time. Thanks, but no thanks.

Sorry apps, but you aren't the center of my life, just because I installed
you. You're not that important. I'm not that important, but I value my time
and like feeling good about what I accomplish every day.

If I need your notifications I can turn them on. Otherwise, quit being an
attention seeker. I find it pretty disrespectful that you think I exist to
serve you, app; it's the other way around.

Instead of improving the signal to noise ratio in my life you are polluting my
life with more nose.

What have I spent the last 3 days doing? Learning to turn off every single
notification and only find apps where I can control them.

~~~
AndrewDucker
So turn the notifications off. All of the apps on my phone are customisable,
all of them have settings which allow me to say "I don't want you to tell me
when things happen."

~~~
j45
I am.. slowly.

I'm speaking to where the assumption that notifications should be on by
default is coming from and how selfish it is on the part of the developers.

Anything I love I want it to occupy my true attention. I'm at the point where
I wish I could filter only certain email addresses, SMS' and phone calls to
ring, and let the rest fall to a central policy...

Do you know of anything that does this? It's on my list of researching as I'm
making the switch.

~~~
ryanklee
> how selfish it is on the part of the developers

What makes you think it's the developers in this case being selfish and not
you? The numbers might be on either side, or on nobody's side depending on how
the problem gets framed.

I may not be thinking about this correctly, but _some_ assumption has to be
made:

(1) Notifications on by default. (2) Notifications off by default.

Either (1) or (2) can of course be presented to the user as being the default
case and the user can be made aware that the default can be modified. Which
seems optimal, until you remember that default choices developers make about
notifications are not the only choices they make regarding defaults. _Lots_...
_most_ settings are given default states.

So then it's a question of which settings are explicitly presented to the user
as having defaults and being modifiable. Are they all important enough? Of
course not. Are notifications? Maybe.

But if notifications are important enough, then it's very likely that others
will be important enough as well. And this means that upon installing a
program, the user is in for a real choice making treat.

Most users are simply not capable of reasoning about such choices. And if they
_are_ capable, then they'll likely either know how to find and change the
setting or know how to find out how to find and change the setting.

In all other cases, it only makes sense to make assumptions about what users
want when they probably don't know what they want, or can't really reason
about the situation due to lack of language-tools or context or background or
whatever.

The most _irresponsible_ and _selfish_ thing for developers to do to such
users is say, "Here are a bunch of choices. Figure it out yourself." Most
can't figure it out themselves, would make the wrong choices with regard to
themselves, and would be less happy for it. Developers can sometimes make
horrible and damaging assumptions about users, yes, but I don't think this is
one of those times.

In the case of notifications, most people I know _want_ to be notified 9 times
out of 10 about facebook mentions, google+ circle adds, SMS, etc. etc. Mostly
these people love the interactions, it's why they have smartphones in the
first place. Call it vanity, vacuous egotism or what have you. I am very, very
suspicious of it myself.

(There is an excellent philosophical discussion to be had about the
responsibility one has for ones own attention and the attention one demands of
others -- and that discussion would probably end in a denunciation of all
things notification-like, but I'm setting that discussion aside here for a
pragmatic one instead.)

But the fact remains developers are probably making the _right_ choice and
assumptions about the default-is-on state of notifications when it comes to
most users. Now, I understand you do not like the notifications. In that, you
are not alone. My guess is that the set of people who despise notifications is
probably not too divergent with the set of people who know how to turn them
off. Granted, I've got no data on that. And maybe somebody else does (it would
be a very interesting data to reason about!).

So all this is to ask about the question of responsibility on the part of the
developers. And at the bottom of my reasoning here is the idea that (1)
developers _must_ make assumptions about defaults, because (2) users can't in
most cases be trusted to make those assumptions themselves, and (3) if
assumptions must be made they better be made with the majority in mind.

~~~
j45
First, I'm not speaking to creating a ton of settings that can be customized
any which way. I'm simply starting with the belief that interruptions are
disrespectful.

iOS has had in it the form of "This application would like to use
notification", the first time you start an app, for ages. Maybe it's one of
the things I'm very visibly noticing in switching to Android.

It's not a complicated setting.

"Do you want to be notified when there's an update to be had?" The first time
the app runs. It's when the attention to that app is the highest, we've just
picked it and installed it and want to try it.

It could be a system wide setting; that filters down into all mobile apps, or
just be unchecked, or you decide not to.

If notifications are on by default, it's often selfish motive in the design to
get higher uptake and stickiness of the app. We all know that most apps
overwhelmingly are rarely used after installation despite the notifications
defaulting to be on.

I was also, specifically, speaking about apps with notifications, on mobile
devices. If you wish to extend that generally to software in general that's
fine, fair and your decision, but it's not what I'm speaking to.

Its entirely pragmatic to be able to have a say in how your focus,
productivity and attention is interrupted. It's not philosophical. I like
getting stuff done, and separating the signal from the noise of what to pay
attention to is integral to that.

Most users have enough of an issue handling the information overload they're
facing. Instead of technology being an empowering tool it's become quite the
opposite when they're not given good examples of not proactively being to make
one basic decision, "should I bother you".

------
jsz0
Isn't this really more about OCD-ish behaviors than notifications? There's no
good reason you have to act on every notification you receive unless you want
to. In most cases you have a choice to even receive the notifications in the
first place. Notifications are great if they are used responsibility. To me
this is just part of a bigger trend where it seems to be socially acceptable
to use technology as an excuse to justify bad behaviors.

~~~
sukuriant
Possible, though personally, I have to turn off sounds to my instant messages;
and, if I'm anywhere near my up-turned phone, just the sight of a blinking
message is enough to completely derail me. My response? no sounds on IMs,
minimal flashing if I can control it (sometimes even just having the window go
into the not-flash,-but-constant-on mode when it gets a message); and, for my
phone, flipping it over so I can't see the notification blinker.

But yes, I obsessively need to help people by responding to those
notifications, so I can understand the struggle.

------
alexchamberlain
This is a qualitative comparison of polling verses an event based design. We
all know that event based systems are harder to design, but use far less
resources.

------
tdavis
One of the many things I love about using next to no GUI programs and a
minimalist window manager is the lack of notifications.

The only time I get a notification is when I receive an email (assuming I have
a terminal running mutt for that address) or a PM/IM (assuming I have a
terminal running irssi). And the notification? The color of a 30x10 pixel
block changes from black to red.

I can turn off this notification on a service-by-service basis with a simple
hotkey that disables the visual bell in my terminal.

That's it! No growl-like service telling me when anything happens anywhere in
the world. No badged icons reminding me I still have 17 unread items. If I
want to be distracted, I switch desktops to see what alerted me; if I don't, I
can ignore that one for hours.

------
njharman
Interruptions are evil. I'm lucky (I guess) in being oblivious and able to
tune stuff out (as long as it doesn't make sound, steal focus). I didn't
notice that g+ red box or knew what it meant for awhile. I used reddit for
months before someone told me I had "replies" and I asked what he meant and he
said the orange letter icon, means someone has replied to you. I said "oh",
and carried on with whatever I was doing. Which brings me to the point of my
comment. Not being distracted is a self-discipline. By letting yourself be
distracted you are as much to blame as notifications.

------
will_lam
Really timely. Thanks to cjoh for posting this as it chimes in with what I've
been feeling recently.

I've relentlessly turned off all notifications from any app. Goes the same for
email as well. I'll only check for updates when I feel I need to. Going so far
as deleting Twitter and Facebook apps. Foodspotting, Yelp, Path etc etc,
notifications are all off. I value my time ferociously and snuff out anything
that comes between me and focusing on the important.

------
joering2
question: is there an app/would there be a market for an app that i can
download it to my phone and then go online and setup custom alerts when a
notification should popup on my mobile dev screen?

example. on my webserver at work i setup simple php page with JSON output: {
monitor_param: 1 } when everything OK, or { monitor_param: 0 } when there is
an issue. then i go online and setup custom alert that can reach my php script
every couple minutes/seconds and check the status. IF monitor_param == 0 then
push an alert on my mobile dev screen.

can see multitude of places you could use it!

~~~
dpritchett
Might be easier to use an sms api like twilio to alert you when the monitoring
api shows a notable event. barring that there are mobile notification brokers
out there, I think urban airship is one.

------
bergie
This is something that GNOME3 does right: if you set yourself as "busy", then
you won't be bothered by notifications.

------
EGreg
This is why in our platform we let you manage your subscriptions and
notifications to every stream :)

------
michaelfeathers
Everything that gives you notifications should give you the option to get them
in digest form :-)

------
unfletch
"Evil" ain't what it used to be.

------
drivebyacct2
1\. Turn them off. Mute your phone, use one of half a dozen ways in Android to
mute/hide/ignore notifications. Install a Greasemonkey script to hide the G+
notification count.

2\. Get some self control. My phone beeps at me all the time and I'll go 45
minutes without even considering looking at it.

This seems like the epitome of a first world problem. "My phone notifies me
when something is happening and I just can't help getting distracted by it".

~~~
glhaynes
I agree — yet at the same time we have to recognize that most people (maybe
_all_ people, from time to time?) have trouble with this, so it's perhaps an
opportunity for designers to help regardless of whether they "should" have to
or not.

