Designing — Notification & Alerts

I was riding my bicycle and I realised I was peddling way too slow. Thought to myself why?

Then I thought maybe the song that way playing was too slow but then, why should that slow me down? The chain of thoughts started to explore what was the connect between the sounds and the impact that it created on our actions. On contrary to this situation, when we hear a fast tempo song we seem to push the cycle to its limits or increase the tempo of the dance. Started a bit of categorisation in the sounds that we are used to,

1. soothing

• a soft and harmonious sounds (like chirping of a small bird)
• instruments, vocal
• interactions (voice)

2. noise

• sudden loud sounds (loud roar)
• creepy sharp sounds (shrieking)
• background interference that are not related to us

But there should have been a deeper connect as to how our brain deciphers the sounds in such a way. Well let’s analyse why some sounds make us feel good, while others make us scared or annoyed or angry.

As a human being we relate higher decibels to threat, thing could have been this way due to our reptilian brain being tuned to map it to a wild animal or danger and hence that triggers an alarm for flight or fright or fight. Even though we live in a domesticated world, our instincts still remains the same as that of a cave man after millions of years of evolution.

Coming back to our context, we tend to pedal the cycle faster when in correlance to the tempo of the song [as a response to our adrenaline pump induced by the sound].

a. What are the emotions surrounding the sounds that we hear?

b. How do they affect us?

c. Can we map chart for sounds vs emotions?

d. What are the context, cultural and geographic impact?

These are the questions you may need to ask yourself before choosing an tone for a notification.

Maybe thats the least aspect that you are bothered about while you are designing an application. It is not always about visual aspects but design has more to do with all 5 senses; depending on the context — notification & alerts are as important as visual aspects. Let us discuss about some context here.

Pardon me for the choice of examples 😂

On a hungry Sunday afternoon as we wait for the butter chicken and biriyani from zomato or swiggy, there goes the door bell — TING TONG! Yes, thats the sound of heaven!! Hope this explains better about the relation between the sound & emotion. It’s a gush of excitement and child-like happiness.

Let me give another example, the notification of Uber’s customised alert that sounds like that of a “Car door opening” to indicate your pick-up has arrived. The sound is so unique that you understands even without reading the text notification. Thats, the kind of notification am talking about. Even a visually challenged person can understand that alert. These can be trivial things, but they definitely leave a mark when it helps reduce the cognition or anxiety also being an inclusive design solution when caters to different set of people with challenges.

How many times have we picked the phone to check, if the car has arrived on hearing a generic notification? But this customised notification tells you with 100% surety that your pick-up car has arrived.

Not all the applications require customised alerts, but yet making an effort to understand who our users are? what they do while the notification is triggered? and how do they perceive it — is worth understanding.

Even before you get into that, try to understand why do we need notifications or alerts? We want the users to perform an action either within the application or externally. This action has an impact directly or indirectly to the value proposition or ROI or productivity. Will this trigger nudge them do the action, is something that needs to be pondered. If not, how do we nudge them to do? What is the next step they are required to act upon?

Yes, there seems to be too many question around a simple alert. But thats the level of depth we need to understand in designing intricate aspects of an application. Unfortunately people perceive design as only visual, design can be holistic only when it satiates all senses involved in the interaction — and that was the end of my bicycle — chain of thoughts.

Catch you later with some more chain of thoughts soon! Feel free to comment your thoughts.