Popping the dots
Designing an interactive solution to the distracting notification dots which cripple our productivity.
What is your average screen time?
The first time I was asked this question — during COVID, admittedly — my screen time was over 13 hours! An average human being is awake for 16 hours… and I was spending most of it on my screen. It didn’t sound true because I couldn’t tell what I did on my phone all that time. I read on my phone and binge-watched a show or two, but those were the only time-intensive activities I could map: I had no games and didn’t think I spent THAT much time on social media.
As it turns out, I did. The stats revealed that social media amounted to over 5 hours, emails and WhatsApp amounted to another 5 hours, while Netflix and eBook reader cumulatively accounted for 1–2 hours only.
Thus began the skirmish of curbing my screen time. I transitioned to physical books and activities for entertainment, set time-bound locks on my social media apps, and became mindful of my phone usage. Yet, a couple of weeks later, I was still clocking a screen time average of 8 hours or more daily. What was making me use my phone so much?
Discovering the red herrings
In an age distinguished by global connectivity and knowledge available instantly within a couple of clicks, it is no wonder that the amount of time we interact with devices keeps increasing. During COVID-19, with nothing else to do, children’s screen-times shot up drastically. According to a meta-analysis published by JAMA Pediatrics, the children’s reported daily screen-time increased from 1.4 hours previously to 2.7 hours during the pandemic. This trend was mirrored by adults as well, with many reporting screen-times over 13 hours — pretty similar to me.
But with everything today — from everyday communication to entertainment and work — involving a screen, it is impossible to achieve zero screen time without disadvantages. In other words, I was okay with intentional active screen-time, such as participating in virtual meetings, exploring apps or reading e-books. This quest was targeted instead at curbing the passive screen-time, which included mindless scrolling on social media or watching a show or a movie. It was important to investigate what was compelling me to indulge in compulsive activities like doom-scrolling, aggressively clearing unread alerts and messages or opening up apps that I didn’t intend to.
For a while, it felt like a losing battle. I was trapped in this loop of finding myself scrolling without realising how I had got there, but after some reflection, I realised that I was not crazy. I was simply caught in a design that was cleverly and deliberately crafted to capture my attention and hold on to it.
Back in the day, content online came in neat pages. You’d hit the bottom, click “next,” and move on. But in 2006, designer Aza Raskin changed the game with infinite scroll — a design that ensures there’s always more to see. No stopping, no end. Just swipe after swipe.
Most social media apps are built this way. Scrolling works like a slot machine. You never know if the next post will be dull or amazing, but the possibility keeps you swiping. That unpredictability triggers dopamine — the “feel-good” chemical in your brain. One funny meme or viral video, and your brain wants more. And soon enough, what starts as a five-minute distraction, spirals into hours. It is a designed addictiveness — from autoplay videos to endless feeds and personalised suggestions, these features are crafted to keep you glued. And if for whatever reason you manage to break away from it, they have means to lure you back.
Their modus operandi? Notifications — those annoying little red dots on the corner of the app icons. Barely any pixels, but capturing attention instantly.
Notifications then and now
At their nascent stages, push notifications were built to alert users about relevant app activity and any new information. Inspired by the mailbox flags and the beeping lights on the answering machines, the first push notification by Blackberry was nothing less than legendary. But these have evolved into the endless icons, banners, and buzzes that clutter our smartphones.
For example, in its early years, Instagram’s push notifications were limited to telling you about who followed you, who engaged with your post, and who messaged you. Presently, the app shows notifications for much more than that. You are notified of somebody posting after a long time, posts that your friends have liked, for people you may know, posts that your friends comment on, and many more. Alerts which are neither important nor urgent but vying for the same screen real estate as that of a missed call from Mum. A study demonstrated that while on average, users received around 80 notifications per day, some received as many as 200 notifications on certain days. I certainly fell on the upper extreme at the time of this experiment, receiving upwards of 250 push notifications daily.
Why are apps doing this to us?
The world of digital apps is pretty competitive today. An app’s success is measured by daily average users (DAU) and monthly average users (MAU), and to enhance these metrics, apps deploy various alerting mechanisms. The notification dots solve a purpose: manufacturing FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and reeling the users back in — irrespective of where the ‘in’ actually is. It is no longer just the social media apps skirmishing to grab your attention urgently; food delivery, banking, news, period tracking, and travel booking apps are some of the others using the same tactics. Apps featuring these badges see up to 88% higher open rates compared to those that don’t.
And THIS was impacting my screen time.
Every time I went to search something on the internet, open a book, or text someone, I was getting waylaid by click-baity push notifications — see this, eat this, buy this, invest in this — which would easily steal my attention for anywhere between 5–15 minutes. Additionally, if left unattended, the amount of red-dot build-up on my screen was downright anxiety-building.
Constant phone notifications mess with our mental health by pulling our focus away from what matters. When notifications keep bombarding users, it interrupts their focus and attention, making it harder to concentrate on tasks. This constant distraction can contribute to stress and even depression. It may also lead to issues like phantom vibrations (where users feel like their phone is buzzing even when it’s not), leading to more unnecessary checking of the phone.
Popping the dots with Peek-A-Boo
While turning your notifications off is one way to deal with this, I wanted to find an alternate way. With notifications turned off completely, I worried about missing things that I did want to get notified of in real time.
Hence, I set out to craft something that is as voluntary as opening a drawer, checking in when I want and shutting it back — sometimes entirely undisturbed. After iterations, the current interaction proved to work the best. The interaction works within the app icon’s space on the home screen. Instead of a cluttered and disorganised notification drawer, every alert is compressed into a number, which you can tilt your phone to peek at.
If there are no notifications to show, the app icon does not tilt. It is either information or no information. This prototype can be used to show selective notifications for alerts you have opted for, such as price drops on bookmarked items in an e-commerce app or stock prices from your watchlist in a finance app. The appearance can be customised according to individual icon identities, using their brand colours and fonts.
Figma and Play made the design easy to craft. The responsiveness to the tilt was configured by integrating feedback from the phone’s gyroscope and accelerometer. The first version was clunky. The interaction wasn’t intuitive and the tilt felt awkward at certain angles. Some fine-tuning of the gyroscope sensitivity fixed that neatly.
Opening up to feedback
With a demonstrable prototype on hand, it made sense to see what other designers thought about this intervention. The response was overwhelming. Forty per cent of the comments were negative. They all raised concerns of practicality. The most prominent issue everyone agreed on was triggering the interaction accidentally, while others insisted that manually turning notifications off was better and easier.
However, thirty per cent of the commenters found the interaction design creative and innovative. Their positive sentiments demonstrated the potential this solution has, but the lower upvotes on these made it clear that nobody was running to use it immediately. The remaining thirty per cent, which had received this prototype neutrally, liked the idea but agreed that Peek-A-Boo needed refinement.
The takeaway
While the prototype currently tries to address the concerns highlighted in the initial feedback from the design fraternity, it is far from perfect. The prototype doesn’t have any intelligence backing the screening that it does, and neither does Peek-A-Boo eradicate the anxiety of pending notifications effectively. It merely hides them until you are ready to clear them.
Peek-A-Boo is an example to highlight how even complex problems can be solved with simple, thoughtful solutions. Today, we have access to a range of advanced technologies. We have the tools to leverage any existing software and hardware to innovate: by creatively rethinking it is possible to create solutions that are not only accessible but also impactful.
With more processes and activities upgrading themselves to be digital, the day is not far when a screen will help you do everything — if it doesn’t already. The solution to minimising digital overwhelm or developing healthy screen habits does not lie in villainising screens or blocking incoming information. It is in developing healthier coping mechanisms and exercising awareness and control. But the onus doesn’t entirely lie on the users either.
As designers, the onus is on us to create workflows that not only serve the purpose of the app but also are empathetic and respectful towards the potential users. Similarly, businesses carry their share of responsibility too. It is imperative to define how a feature is intended to be used and develop ways to drive engagement without coming at the cost of the users’ mental health.
