During the past couple of years I’ve heard a lot of people talk about how the smartphone can be a great tool in facilitating behavior change. Many apps are built to do just that (I even did a presentation on how RunKeeper is Changing Fitness Behaviors), but in order for most apps to be successful on an on going basis the habit of actually thinking of and choosing to use that app must first be created.

In 2008, the CEO of the company I was working at urged everyone to create a twitter account. At first, I didn’t get it. “Why would I stop what I’m doing to post a text message to a bunch of people who may or may not give a f*ck about what I have to say or what I’m doing?” I thought. For the first 3-4 months I tweeted a grand total of probably 3 times, inspired mostly because my coworkers were talking about Twitter or a specific tweet which caused me to feel guilty for not having used it in a while.

Then one day I read an article about Twitterrific, an app that made it possible for me to use twitter without having to go to the website, and decided to give it a try. It was compact, semi-transparent, and it was native which felt like a better UX. It also had a feature where after I closed the window it would pop back up after a certain amount of time (15 minutes maybe?) so long as I had new tweets. It sounded like yet another way for an app or service to try and gain my attention so they can upsell me or get me to engage with their product so they could get another DAU, but I was wrong.

What made all the difference was that the content Twitterrific was showing me was both contextual and relevant to me, which made it feel like Twitterrific was just removing the friction and bringing me the content that I signed up to consume without me having to think to do so. Ultimately, the fact that the app came to find me with this contextual and relevant content was what caused me to create a relationship with the app and get me to engage regularly from then on.

When we were doing our initial research for what would later become Breeze, we found that most of the people we interviewed actually smiled and in some cases even made their own sound effect (“Ding!”) when just reading through a sketched storyboard and seeing a picture of a notification the app might send you. This caught pretty much everyone on the team by surprise.

With so many notifications like game requests from Facebook, or notices that new functionality was added to one of the apps you last used 3 months ago, or the dreaded “We miss you! Maybe if we try and sound really friendly you’ll open our app and we can report you as another active user,” (sorry, medium doesn’t have a sarcasm font… yet?) it’s easy to see why notifications have such a negative connotation.

But look at things like text messages, reminders, or alarms (as just a few examples). These produce some of the most received notifications on the phone, but you rarely see anyone get upset over the quantity or timing of them.

They’re called smartphones for a reason, and it’s because they know so much about us not only in terms of static information (name, phone number, etc.), but also in hyper contextual information (where I am, who else is near me, am I moving or stationary, etc.). The truth is if smartphone is to be smart in any way it can’t rely solely on when I choose to use it, it needs to reach out to me with useful information on it’s own and notifications are the only way it can achieve that.