Notification Overload?
We are seeing an increasing trend of mobile-only business. Ecommerce is going mobile only. Does this signify the beginning of a notification drawer and lockscreen battle? In this article, I will share some of the notes I made while reading a few papers on the impact of mobile notifications.
Notification
Iqbal and Bailey [1] define a notification as a visual cue, auditory signal, or haptic alert generated by an application or service that relays information to a user outside her current focus of attention.
Notifications can be useful, informative and valuable if the content is interesting and at the same time annoying and frustrating too. Their nature is disrupting and are intended to grab attention. Here are a few points that will help you decide on suitable notifications for your applications.
- People tend to drop the current work to check a notification, and it becomes difficult for them to return to the previous task. This effect gets multiplied when the task is cognitively demanding.
- An increase in the no. of notifications results in negative emotions and stress. However, there is a feeling of connectedness with the notifications. On an average, a person receives 65 notifications a day, most of which are system generated or triggered by a chat conversation application ( Whatsapp, FB messenger or BBM) or SMS related. But…
