So turn the notifications off. All of the apps on my phone are customisable, all of them have settings which allow me to say "I don't want you to tell me when things happen."
Personally, I think the pendulum will eventually swing back as users get tired and frustrated with all these services vying for their attention.
On the whole though I'm finding Android to be an interesting environment where I can hopefully get more things running how I would like.
I'm speaking to where the assumption that notifications should be on by default is coming from and how selfish it is on the part of the developers.
Anything I love I want it to occupy my true attention. I'm at the point where I wish I could filter only certain email addresses, SMS' and phone calls to ring, and let the rest fall to a central policy...
Do you know of anything that does this? It's on my list of researching as I'm making the switch.
What makes you think it's the developers in this case being selfish and not you? The numbers might be on either side, or on nobody's side depending on how the problem gets framed.
I may not be thinking about this correctly, but some assumption has to be made:
(1) Notifications on by default. (2) Notifications off by default.
Either (1) or (2) can of course be presented to the user as being the default case and the user can be made aware that the default can be modified. Which seems optimal, until you remember that default choices developers make about notifications are not the only choices they make regarding defaults. Lots... most settings are given default states.
So then it's a question of which settings are explicitly presented to the user as having defaults and being modifiable. Are they all important enough? Of course not. Are notifications? Maybe.
But if notifications are important enough, then it's very likely that others will be important enough as well. And this means that upon installing a program, the user is in for a real choice making treat.
Most users are simply not capable of reasoning about such choices. And if they are capable, then they'll likely either know how to find and change the setting or know how to find out how to find and change the setting.
In all other cases, it only makes sense to make assumptions about what users want when they probably don't know what they want, or can't really reason about the situation due to lack of language-tools or context or background or whatever.
The most irresponsible and selfish thing for developers to do to such users is say, "Here are a bunch of choices. Figure it out yourself." Most can't figure it out themselves, would make the wrong choices with regard to themselves, and would be less happy for it. Developers can sometimes make horrible and damaging assumptions about users, yes, but I don't think this is one of those times.
In the case of notifications, most people I know want to be notified 9 times out of 10 about facebook mentions, google+ circle adds, SMS, etc. etc. Mostly these people love the interactions, it's why they have smartphones in the first place. Call it vanity, vacuous egotism or what have you. I am very, very suspicious of it myself.
(There is an excellent philosophical discussion to be had about the responsibility one has for ones own attention and the attention one demands of others -- and that discussion would probably end in a denunciation of all things notification-like, but I'm setting that discussion aside here for a pragmatic one instead.)
But the fact remains developers are probably making the right choice and assumptions about the default-is-on state of notifications when it comes to most users. Now, I understand you do not like the notifications. In that, you are not alone. My guess is that the set of people who despise notifications is probably not too divergent with the set of people who know how to turn them off. Granted, I've got no data on that. And maybe somebody else does (it would be a very interesting data to reason about!).
So all this is to ask about the question of responsibility on the part of the developers. And at the bottom of my reasoning here is the idea that (1) developers must make assumptions about defaults, because (2) users can't in most cases be trusted to make those assumptions themselves, and (3) if assumptions must be made they better be made with the majority in mind.
http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/the-information-die...
iOS has had in it the form of "This application would like to use notification", the first time you start an app, for ages. Maybe it's one of the things I'm very visibly noticing in switching to Android.
It's not a complicated setting.
"Do you want to be notified when there's an update to be had?" The first time the app runs. It's when the attention to that app is the highest, we've just picked it and installed it and want to try it.
It could be a system wide setting; that filters down into all mobile apps, or just be unchecked, or you decide not to.
If notifications are on by default, it's often selfish motive in the design to get higher uptake and stickiness of the app. We all know that most apps overwhelmingly are rarely used after installation despite the notifications defaulting to be on.
I was also, specifically, speaking about apps with notifications, on mobile devices. If you wish to extend that generally to software in general that's fine, fair and your decision, but it's not what I'm speaking to.
Its entirely pragmatic to be able to have a say in how your focus, productivity and attention is interrupted. It's not philosophical. I like getting stuff done, and separating the signal from the noise of what to pay attention to is integral to that.
Most users have enough of an issue handling the information overload they're facing. Instead of technology being an empowering tool it's become quite the opposite when they're not given good examples of not proactively being to make one basic decision, "should I bother you".
Apps need to make notifications smart by first adding options for what kind and how often they pop up. Facebook appeased me some time ago but now is back to annoying me. I used to get emails for every little thing that happened on Facebook then I was allowed to set it so I got one consolidated email every so often. Great. Now they end up buzzing my phone with every little comment or Like. That's annoying. If they could let me set it so that I was notified once per post of comments or maybe one notification after X number of actions that would normally trigger a notification that would be awesome but having my pocket buzz every two seconds sucks.
My girlfriend once commented on everything she could on my wall for more than 20 minutes and my phone was literally buzzing the entire time. I had to call to tell her to quit commenting. She burst out laughing because she knew all the notifications would annoy me. It was a super frustrating joke.
As someone who isn't very social to begin with, an overload of notifications can actually be overwhelming and make me less engaged instead of more engaged. Smart use of notifications gets me using your service. Buffer does this right. I get, at most, 2 notifications if I have an empty buffer and it gets me adding more. Mint gives me 2 notifications a week: one if a bank account goes over or under a certain threshold and another with a summary of my finances at the end of the week. That's great. Twitter, Facebook, Livingsocial, Groupon.. They're all annoying.
I guess the point is that "dumb" notifications are like getting a cold call from someone who hasn't done research about you, tries to sell you something you wouldn't ever want and mispronounces your name on top of it. Smart notifications are like good friends that call you up every so often just to see how you're doing and to see if maybe you want to make plans for later.
Maybe it could work by giving these services like Facebook an email address like you@SmartNotifications.com and then they filter them and send them to your real inbox in a smart way. And for SMS maybe use something like Twilio or AmazonSNS and give the Facebook type app a unique number that directs all notifications to the SmartNotifications app then it filters them for you and forwards them in a smart way to your mobile device. Now, for app notifications I'm not sure how that would work as I can't think of a way for a third party to intercept that type of thing so maybe you'd just have to turn notifications off on your phone and rely on SmartNotification email and SMS alerts.
But the article makes a good point about all these websites having a vested interest in annoying you. Surely google and Facebook could implement this and I find it hard to believe that they haven't done it because they just haven't gotten around to it. It would make sense that they would want to avoid this feature so that kind of rules out hoping to build this sort of thing and selling it to them. We're left with circumventing the system and doing it without their approval potentially making anyone who does this an enemy to web apps and a friend to the users. Unfortunately the apps will probably have more power and make it difficult to operate. But we can all still dream.