

What the Apple Watch Means for the Age of Notifications - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/what-the-apple-watch-means-for-the-age-of-notifications-1f0409a0c8e0

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joshstrange
I agree that not all notifications are equal and it sucks that our options for
notifications from an app are normally binary (on/off). Some apps allow you to
pick/choose the types of notifications you get but the problem still remains
that my phone treats them all the same regardless of if it's a CNN
announcement of a shooting or magic piano has a new song (I've since disabled
MP's notifications completely).

I say this all with no solution to put forth. I'm betting users would not be
happy having to assign a priority level to each app and furthermore not all
notifications from an app are of equal importance (ie. IFTTT SMS vs iMessage
from my Mom).

One thing, unrelated, that I hate about notifications (that IMHo greatly
diminishes my use of them in iOS) is the fact that in the notification center
they are grouped by app which is one of the stupidest things I've seen in iOS.
I want my notifications weaved together and sorted by time not by app THEN by
time. Under iOS current implementation you NC could look like this:

    
    
      * GMAIL
    
        * 1 min ago - Blah blah blah
    
        * 5 days ago - Yada yada yada
    
        * 10 days ago - Bippity boppity boo
    
      * MESSAGES
    
        * 2 min ago - URGENT MESSAGE
    
        * 3 min ago - ANOTHER URGENT MESSAGE
    
    
    

That's just stupid, it should be:

    
    
      * GMAIL - 1 min ago - Blah blah blah
    
      * MESSAGES - 2 min ago - URGENT MESSAGE
    
      * MESSAGES - 3 min ago - ANOTHER URGENT MESSAGE
    
      * GMAIL - 5 days ago - Yada yada yada
    
      * GMAIL - 10 days ago - Bippity boppity boo
    

This is just a simple example but throw a few more apps in there and it's not
unheard of to have something that happened 1-2 minutes ago buried a few swipes
down to get past other app's notifications.

~~~
untog
Android lets you manage what apps you consider to have "priority
notifications" and filter accordingly, but managing notifications like that is
a pretty awful user experience.

I don't have any alternative suggestions either. There's a mismatch in
motivations - the app makers want you to open their notification, so you can
trust them to prioritise notifications.

~~~
Navarr
Android Apps already have the ability to prioritize notifications, and at
least a couple get it right. Very few apps go out of their way to give
themself a high priority they don't need (I've not encountered any as far as I
know)

------
S_A_P
I typically don't find notifications to be a problem. I don't use them for
trivial items (such as an app like MLB like the authors complaint). You have
to curate your user experience some on your _personal_ device. It isn't
personal unless you do so. I looked at the list of apps that I allow to notify
me and its about a 50/50 mix of on vs off. However, among those I have turned
on only about 3 or 4 of them notify me very often. I think that the solution
for this problem already exists.

~~~
jfoutz
I thought apple's whole value proposition was that they curated that for you.
Very good user experience by default, that you tweak to suit your needs.

~~~
jkestner
They do. Notifications are opt-in on an app-by-app basis. Each app has to ask
you for permission to send notifications, and you can change your preferences
in the Settings app later.

------
jjp
The thing that is missing from notifications is receiver context. The time
that the notification is pushed doesn't mean that is the time that I want to
receive them. When I'm driving I don't need a notification to tell me the
latest sports score, in fact it would be a distraction. But I do want the
notification telling me that the meeting I'm driving to has been rescheduled
or that there is an accident up ahead and if I leave at the next junction I
won't be stuck in traffic for an extra 30 minutes. Bill payments are set-up on
a Sunday evening so no point reminding me on a Tuesday morning, as I'll just
forget by Sunday. Facebook you can prod me at lunch-time or in the evening,
providing I'm at home and not engrossed in a film. Breaking News maybe I want
to know, but if it's really just an update and you don't know anything more
than you knew 2 hours ago then don't waste my time.

The challenge is that the notification publisher doesn't know my schedule or
context so will never know whether it's a good time for me to receive the
notification. The device I'm using might have some explicit or implicit
insight into my schedule/context but it doesn't have any detail on what the
notification is about and whether I would want to receive it now.

Putting the fine grained control for type of notification and time of day/day
of week in the hands of the user might help, but realistically it's only a
subset of users who will invest the energy in configuring this. A learning
notification filter is the only way I can see that it would be simple enough
for most users to benefit.

------
aaronbrethorst

        We are about to experience a hyperdrive
        acceleration of notifications, propelling
        us to a crisis situation
    

The only crisis that's looming is a storm of 1 star ratings and uninstalls for
app makers that send too many push notifications. If anything, the Apple Watch
and other wearables will force app makers to think more critically about the
shit they send out right now.

~~~
freehunter
I get that on my Pebble. The app store is terrible for this. Every time an app
is updated, I see nothing pushed to my phone but surely my watch will buzz.
Stupid.

------
jrlocke
The problem that the author complains of--high noise to signal on
notifications--can exist on the iPhone of a careless user.

The solution doesn't need to be as complicated as an AI for sorting your
notifications, just a set of filters. Notifications for messages from my
family and major stock moves, badges or silence for all else.

------
onli
1\. Notifications on a watch do not need to be more disturbing. To the
contrary, it is quite possible that the vibration on the wrist is easier to
ignore than the phone, that it is easier to just check the display very
shortly, instead of fumbling with the phone in your pocket. That was one of
the reports from the android devices used.

2\. There is no age of notifications. There is one system where notifications
seems to go a bit rampant, and even on iOS user have the option to just not
opt into them (like several others mentioned here already).

3\. The great AI solution actually colides with the idea of seeing them as a
feed, because there, the solution is rather to let the feed be filtered by
humans. I don't let newspapers ping me, I follow friends who ping me with
articles from newspapers. And there always where notification we let humans
decide that we want to see them, they are called texts/sms/chat messages. A
technical solution might be nice, but is probably not necessary - especially
since it is so much easier to just not accept anything unimportant to send you
a notification.

4\. A really great notification concept is notify-osd on the ubuntu desktop.
That concept behind the software defines notification as awareness things that
users might want to see or might want to ignore, so they are in black boxes
that can be transparent when the mouse hovers them, they are only shown
shortly, they don't make a sound, they are not animated, they never expect any
input. It's the perfect system for stuff that is not really important. If one
really has to let every crappy app ping oneself, it should be with a
notification system that adopts this principles.

------
JeremyReimer
I feel like I have already been through this process without an Apple Watch,
because I always keep my smartphone in my pocket with my wallet, so whenever
it vibrates with a notification I can feel it buzzing on my skin.

I solved it by just going to Notification Center and turning off notifications
for everything except Calendar alerts and SMS messages.

It doesn't always work. I sometimes get spam texts. But it's better than it
was.

~~~
r00fus
I have this exact same setup - except a) add a Pebble - iPhone isn't on me at
all times (e.g. shower). b) I add alerts for work mail server, but none for
personal mail c) VIPs bypass all my filters

All that said, Pebble still buzzes too much - e.g. Ascension game
invites/turns don't show on phone, but cause my watch to buzz.

Maybe... the Apple Watch will resolve that issue.

------
knob
The suggestion from the author is for development of AI to sift through
notifications.

I am all for AI... yet, How about you don't install that app? How about you
_just let your phone ring?_

No really... you don't have to check it. It's sad to see three people on a
table, each on their own phone.

Cherish the moment with those humans. Forget about your phone.

~~~
freehunter
>It's sad to see three people on a table, each on their own phone.

"Hey Becky, did you see that Facebook post the other day?"

"No"

"Go check it out! You too Ashley!"

 _all three of them go and look at it so they can discuss it_

Is that not enjoying moments with other humans? Who are you to say how people
should enjoy themselves?

~~~
tdkl
>"Hey Becky, did you see that Facebook post the other day?" >"No"

"Oh well check it out when we finish with our meeting. Oh right did I tell you
about what happened the other day ..."

~~~
freehunter
>Oh right did I tell you about what happened the other day...

"No, what?"

"Oh I went to the mall. Bought some new jeans."

"Oh that's cool..."

"Yeah..."

"..."

"..."

"So anyway, about that thing on Facebook..."

 _they all check the thing on Facebook_

 _cue 90 minutes of laughing and joking about the thing they now all share in
common and may even still make reference to ten years down the road_

~~~
tdkl
Well if the shit you read on Facebook is the most exciting thing to talk about
.. then the issue aren't notifications and social media.

~~~
freehunter
Like I said: Who are you to say how people should enjoy themselves?

------
bradleysmith
The "notification" problem boils down to this: many want your attention; you
only want to give attention to what is relevant to you, at a particular time.
What is signal some times is noise others. It's not just NOISE Versus SIGNAL.
It's NOISE Versus SIGNAL for USER X at TIME Y.

configuring preferences for this problem takes time and dedicated thought
(when they're even available to be customized!), resources that users have
been reluctant to spend on personal technology. The example in the article was
really just due to wrongly selecting a "send me messages" option; THAT bad
user decision produced enough frustration to write the OP. This will compound
and be very frustrating eventually for 'bad operators'; if you don't have spam
properly filtered out of this feed or that one, it compounds at the phone-
notification level. In viewing technology, I don't really like saying "well,
they're just a bad user", it smacks of Jobs' comment on the iphone 4: "you're
just holding it wrong".

This problem is not distinct to an individual mobile user overloaded with
notifications. We have this problem in every service we interact with that
provides a regular stream of information. In email, this started as SPAM and
NOTSPAM as the only measure. If it's from a human, it's relevant. There's one
step further with this in Gmail with "important" notification (based on who
sent it and what you open). Mobile notifications make a good example of the
problem, because they are the final layer of "what is relevant" filtering
between so many info services and a single user. Even with binary on/off for
many of those streams, the problem remains, and compounds with expectedly
careless users.

Automating relevancy measurement will be one of the more "creepy"
technologies, I believe, because of the nature of human memory. We will find
very quickly that a computer can be "better" (er... faster and more user-
aware) at deciding what we want to look at than we ourselves are.

We will also find that the computer can, through micro-decisions, drive a
particular thought or behavior pattern. By tending to ignore "health-related"
notifications because you are personally uncomfortable with them and view them
less than other notifications (as an example), it could exacerbate that
problem by further obfuscating such notifications based on that preference.
OR, the opposite: have a predisposition to ignore money notifications because
of income apprehension? Computer knows and compensates, notifying for these
personal weak points more urgently. These examples are strained, but they
express the idea.

Compare to facebook's microdecisions to show you more or less of your ex-
lover's posts soon after breaking up. These could vastly affect a person's
behavior, and we trust in the "know by wire" system to do what is "best" for
us.

We've outsourced the relevancy for news events to journalists, editors, and
individual publications for hundreds of years ("I'm a WSJ man", for example).
the ability for technology to challenge that relationship is just beginning to
come into its own. The need for a journalist at the bottom level of "event or
not" decision making is still necessary (this is changing too, but still
necessary), but publications are now more like buckets of particular editorial
opinion and style that are churned together on other platforms than they are
decisions of "this stream or that" that users make.

What I see is a need that every technology user shares on many platforms, and
a moral hazard of sorts for whoever develops a solution for that need. We
already trust in facebook and google to show us what is most "relevant" to us,
to not manipulate us for profit. As we rely more and more on automated
measures of relevancy, we put more and more trust into their making such
measures benevolently.

------
titusjohnson
_So what’s the solution? We need a great artificial intelligence effort to
comb through our information, assess the urgency and relevance, and use a deep
knowledge of who we are and what we think is important to deliver the right
notifications at the right time._

I believe the answer to this question is far, far simpler. The problem started
in the second paragraph.

 _... MLB.com At Bat apparently deemed this important enough to broadcast to
hundreds of thousand of_ users who had earlier clicked _, with hardly a second
thought, on a dialogue box asking if they wanted to receive notifications from
Major League Baseball._

MLB.com decided nothing. They asked if they could send messages. The author
decided that anything MLB.com At Bat wanted to send him was important enough
to interrupt, as he puts it, _" enduring a meeting, playing basketball,
presenting to a book club, daydreaming, watching a movie, enjoying a family
meal, painting their masterpiece, proposing marriage, interviewing a job
candidate, having sex, ..."._

"MLB.com At Bat would like to send you notifications (Yes / No)" is pretty
clear and to the point. They want to message you. If you want to be messaged,
click yes. Sure, app operators can be reckless and bad citizens, but the
ultimate control is in your hands. That last push notification giving you
permission-granting-remorse? It's trivial to disable notifications on a per-
app basis, or even restrict them to something non-intrusive.

There is no notification alert crisis. Apple and the other smart watch makers
are not releasing wrist-mounted spam machines. You will be able to choose who
you trust to interrupt you, and you will have decently granular controls over
how these notifications present themselves. It is up to you to decide who to
trust with the ability to grab your attention at any moment. If you place that
trust poorly you have the ability to revoke that grant at any time.

Personally I feel like I have a lot of control over how distracting my mobile
device is. I only allow alerts from Hangouts, iMessage, Slack, AlienBlue, and
whatever turn-based game I'm playing at the moment. These are apps where I'm
interacting with another human, where the notification will probably get me to
interact with the individual. I restrict or deny notification permissions for
every other app. Rarely do I press "Yes" to the request for notifications.
When I do, at the first breach of trust that app gets permissions removed.
Uber is a good example, I granted notifications thinking it would be nice to
not watch the map when waiting for a car. Uber took the opportunity to send me
a push advertisement for some weekend rate thing, so now Uber can never
message me for anything. Map watching isn't very onerous, still better than
waiting for a cab to show up, so I'll deal.

~~~
remarkEon
Not to nitpick the author and his anecdote, but the MLB At Bat app actually
affords the user considerable control over what you do and don't receive in a
push notification. There's the binary yes/no for news, and then you can add
your favorite teams (wherein you'll only receive notifications that have to do
with those teams). You can further enable/disable things like game start, lead
change, score change, game end, highlights, and game news. You can do all of
this sorted by team. TBH it's probably the best experience I have with an app
that gives me notifications because I get _exactly_ what I want and not a push
more.

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elcct
It will be hard to avoid notifications on your watch.

~~~
gress
But it will take much less attention to process them.

