The W.A.R.S. framework to design a “sincere” Notification System
Notifications should be (re-)designed in the template of time-keeping devices.
The notification area is the most lucrative spot on your smartphone. It is the first thing you see when you reach out for your phone and is always accessible at the top. It is the only spot where information announces itself upon arriving.
In context to all conversations about a healthy relationship with our smartphones, the notification shade is both an asset and a liability. It is where the most timely information must be delivered to you, and it is where companies bait you into getting sucked in their apps. The latter is occupies the much larger share of notifications today creating an exploitative realtionship we have with our phones. This is a sham considering Smartphones are supposed to be powerful inventions for a better life. I intend to fix that starting with this essay about Notifications.
For this, we must first understand what Notifications are about, and then we will explore the information that must be picked for notifications, how and when they must be presented and the permissions apps/people must have to your notification space. Let's begin.
The bare essentials of a Notification:
Notifications is time-sensitive. The notification system was concieved for information that needs to be delivered at a particular time. It’s the timeli-ness that ascribes value to a notification.
Notifications is at the top of your phone (Highest Accessibility). Whenever I pick up my phone, I must decide to not act on whatever is in my notifications, before I get to whatever I want to. It carries information that needs to be made most easily accessible.
Thesis:
Widgets, Alarms (& Calls), Reminders and Stop-Watch (& Timers) [W.A.R.S.] are four types of information that is inherently tied to time, and are designed in all devices to be easily accessible. They cover all space-time combinatorics of information to provide an easy analogy for our framework. And so I propose that, a notification system should be (re-)designed in the template of time-keeping devices. This is the big perspective here. The space-time combinatorics will become clear to you by the end. Each type will supply a specific notification type and the four combined will cover every type of information that you can think of delivering through a notification system. For this we will study each type under the following attributes:
Each of [W.A.R.S.] should be studied in terms of:
- how it attracts the attention of the user
- when it demands the user to act
- who/what generates this information
A filter based on these to identify information that must be delivered via different kinds of notifications is what I call the W.A.R.S. filter. I believe this can help to precisely design a notification system that is clear in it’s information choice, effective in it's delivery and is strictly useful for the user. Onto the first type,
The Call/Alarm type
We can say these 3 things about the Call/Alarm Type:
→ it is Information pushed at you with a ring.
→ It doesn’t turn-off until attended to.
→ It is initiated by others or your past self.
This information type requires immediate attention & quickest accessibility.
This way is only ever used for calls and alarms, but looking at the fundamental idea, it could be used for more. Consider the “Your uber has arrived” notification. This is a notification that requires your immediate action and must be delivered to you with a ring. Instead, the burden is left on the driver to call, as they invariably always call upon arriving.
Note: While designing, vibrations and ring volume can be adjusted according to whether the user is using his phone or not.
The Reminder type
→ Information pushed at you with a beep.
→ It needs to be acted upon within a time-interval [before the user forgets about the beep].
→ It is initiated by your past self.
This information type requires tentative attention & easy accessibility.
Instead of a ring you’ve to act on, it is delivered with a beep that pokes your ears. A meeting reminder delivered half hour before the scheduled time requires you to act whenever in that half hour. You set reminders for something that needs to be taken care of in an morning. Daily reminders are used when you want to cultivate daily habits, exercised in the time segment following the reminder.
The phone should beep when the user needs to act. The phone should not beep when a Dropbox upload is complete, it should beep when it fails. It should not beep when a restaurant accepts your order, or your delivery guy is en-route, it should beep when none of those happen in the expected time and you're required to act. It should, perhaps, ring if it’s urgent.
Today, The beep is the most abused form of notifying. Your phone should obviously be not beeping with news, offers, etc. My most radical take here is it should not beep for chat notifications as well.
Beeping chat notifications is anti-thetical to what chat is supposed to be: a mode of asynchronous communication. Most messages don’t warrant your close-to-immediate attention. Beeping makes it synchronous. As we will see, An ‘ongoing’ (synchronous) conversation should be dealt with the stop-watch type and asynchronous conversation shall be dealt with the widget filter.
$UPDATE: A few months after writing this essay, Google released their new version of Android which natively supports chat bubbles across all messaging apps. The chat bubbles is a direct implementation in the image of my Stopwatch-Filter for Ongoing Conversations.
The Widget type
→ Information that user pull out, and perpetually appears in the user’s peripheral vision.
→ user may/may not act upon the information but requires update on,
→ It is initiated at a singular moment and is generated event-based
This information type require on-demand attention & glanceable accessibility.
I have a widget for chat, SMS and E-Mail on my home-screen. I glance for new messages when I can & want to, instead of being bombarded by beeps.
iPhone has a widget section in the notification shade. Most notifications should land up in that section, for most of it doesn’t need to be pushed at you, but information you pull out at will. Widgets should move spatially (higher or lower) depending on any new activity (event-based).* This can be coupled with a habit-forming “reminder” at frequent intervals. I would like a reminder to check all my e-mails at lunch, and another at the end of the day.
Persistant Notifications are basically widgets sitting in your notification shade.
Widgets needs to be deployed by the user, but a designer can choose to deploy these widgets as persistent notifications. It must only be picked as the solution when user has asked for updates. Be wary of overloading the user with any extra information.
Persistent notifications can be deployed temporarily for scenarios like “food delivered.” In which case, it is more like stopwatches and timers : widgets with a time-interval.
*Android achieves something close to this in a single notification shade.
The Stopwatch/Timer type
→ Information pushed at you with a ring and/or appears as a widget,
→ appears for a time period (usually for an ongoing action),
→ initiated by the user and terminated by the end of an activity (a stopwatch) or at a set time (a timer).
This information type require sustained attention in something & accessible controls.
The StopWatch filter includes playing multimedia and should include ongoing conversation. You hit play for what you wish to indulge in. I might as well hit play instead of the send button for an ongoing chat (synchronous) conversation I want to opt-in. The other user can knowingly participate and both of you can have a indulging conversation without being peripherally unclear about whether you will both immediately reply or not. Such confusion is a distraction to an indulging conversation. The phone beeps for every message appearing during this event, and messages appear “at the top” in a widget. Synchronous conversations must be treated like a low-key event. Think how the same setup can work best for a live sports game.
For scenarios like waiting for a “safely reached home” update from a friend, the timer filter works best. If I don’t receive an update in the elapsed time, the timer should go off alerting me to check up on the person. ‘Finding an Uber’ and ‘Your uber is arriving’ should be a Timer-like widget. They should appear as a widget showing the progress. And when either of these events don’t happen in an elapsed time, the user must be alerted demanding for an action. Notifying the users when these processes start is absurd (which is how it is done today).
In summary
Designers can create widgets for information updates that needs to be glanced at occasionally by the user’s choice. Instead of widgets, you can have temporary persistent notification or you may simply send a silent notification to check the app (only) when there’s new info for the user. Ideally, a beeping notification is something for the user to act on in a time-interval. Sound & vibrations should be employed only when it requires timely action. Extended activities on the app shall be handled like timers, and stop-watch.
One may describe an information as to be pushed at or pulled out, if & when the user is required to act, and who generates this information. Based on this, you can combine elements from either of these types to design how the information is delivered. If it doesn’t fit the time-liness and the accessibility criteria of any of these types, the information must not be delivered in the notification shade. This is the W.A.R.S. filter for non-intrusive, useful and aptly-delivered notifications.
Final Word
For Designers: Design such a notification system with meaningful controls for the user. It will help your users develop a healthy, long-term relationship with your apps. Today, many people are simply turning off all notifications. Through the W.A.R.S. Framework, your notifications can re-establish their value to the user.
As per W.A.R.S., relative to today, the notifications/inbox within your app and the widgets will rise in importance. Roughly speaking, when the framework is implemented, notifications tab will go back to being only that requires user’s immediate attention within an app. You may reach out to me if you need any help here.
For Users: Both android and iOS give significant control over notifications. Users can use the W.A.R.S. filter to customize and categorically turn off notifications in Apps to have a healthy relationship with their phones. Customizing my notifications this way, cut my addictive usage by half. All Digital Wellbeing apps be damned! You may reach out to me to know how exactly I customized mine.
Let’s create thoughtful notifications that invite the user to immerse, not distract them out of an immersion.
Mail or Tweet @ me with your thoughts.
PS. Here’s a tiny blog I wrote on SmartWatch Notifications: The Dying Need for SmartWatch Notifications