What the Apple Watch Means for the Age of Notifications | Hacker News Reader

What the Apple Watch Means for the Age of Notifications

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26 pointssteven32 comments

I agree that not all notifications are equal and it sucks that our options for notifications from an app are normally binary (on/off). Some apps allow you to pick/choose the types of notifications you get but the problem still remains that my phone treats them all the same regardless of if it's a CNN announcement of a shooting or magic piano has a new song (I've since disabled MP's notifications completely).

I say this all with no solution to put forth. I'm betting users would not be happy having to assign a priority level to each app and furthermore not all notifications from an app are of equal importance (ie. IFTTT SMS vs iMessage from my Mom).

One thing, unrelated, that I hate about notifications (that IMHo greatly diminishes my use of them in iOS) is the fact that in the notification center they are grouped by app which is one of the stupidest things I've seen in iOS. I want my notifications weaved together and sorted by time not by app THEN by time. Under iOS current implementation you NC could look like this:

  * GMAIL

    * 1 min ago - Blah blah blah

    * 5 days ago - Yada yada yada

    * 10 days ago - Bippity boppity boo

  * MESSAGES

    * 2 min ago - URGENT MESSAGE

    * 3 min ago - ANOTHER URGENT MESSAGE

That's just stupid, it should be:

  * GMAIL - 1 min ago - Blah blah blah

  * MESSAGES - 2 min ago - URGENT MESSAGE

  * MESSAGES - 3 min ago - ANOTHER URGENT MESSAGE

  * GMAIL - 5 days ago - Yada yada yada

  * GMAIL - 10 days ago - Bippity boppity boo

This is just a simple example but throw a few more apps in there and it's not unheard of to have something that happened 1-2 minutes ago buried a few swipes down to get past other app's notifications.

I have the exact same complaint about ios notifications. This is definitely one area where the Android experience is far superior (it does what you suggested)

Yeah, I've seriously looked at Android because of this reason (among others). I'm jailbroken and I really wish there was a JB tweak to get this styling. I'd easily pay up to $10 for it.

Android lets you manage what apps you consider to have "priority notifications" and filter accordingly, but managing notifications like that is a pretty awful user experience.

I don't have any alternative suggestions either. There's a mismatch in motivations - the app makers want you to open their notification, so you can trust them to prioritise notifications.

Android Apps already have the ability to prioritize notifications, and at least a couple get it right. Very few apps go out of their way to give themself a high priority they don't need (I've not encountered any as far as I know)

That previous post should say "can't", not "can", ha.

Interesting perspective. I prefer the opposite. Then again I try to only allow people to notify me for the most part (phone and messages app) and disallow other apps (like games, real estate, social, etc) anything but badges. I guess this means my approach is more like "What is up with mail?" vs "What happened in the last 5 minutes across all apps on my device?"

Sounds like you want the BlackBerry hub :-P It's got both forms of views ;-)

I like the notifications grouped by app, it lets me scan and clear an entire app in one go, vs clearing each individual line. Less labour, less friction, more likely that I'll use notifications.

I've ordered the apps to show the app on top which I'm expecting important info from.

Tbh, I've almost all notifications off as well, my default for almost any new app asking to notify me is DENY.

In app choices of which sort of notifications you'd like to receive would be great, whether in the app itself or in system settings.app in the apps settings (ideally they would reflect). But failing that, it's mostly off except for anything that is actually important, then ordered by app importance.

I typically don't find notifications to be a problem. I don't use them for trivial items (such as an app like MLB like the authors complaint). You have to curate your user experience some on your personal device. It isn't personal unless you do so. I looked at the list of apps that I allow to notify me and its about a 50/50 mix of on vs off. However, among those I have turned on only about 3 or 4 of them notify me very often. I think that the solution for this problem already exists.

I thought apple's whole value proposition was that they curated that for you. Very good user experience by default, that you tweak to suit your needs.

They do. Notifications are opt-in on an app-by-app basis. Each app has to ask you for permission to send notifications, and you can change your preferences in the Settings app later.

I just looked at the MLB app, it allows a fine level of control over notifications, moreso than most apps. So it's a weird example he used.

The thing that is missing from notifications is receiver context. The time that the notification is pushed doesn't mean that is the time that I want to receive them. When I'm driving I don't need a notification to tell me the latest sports score, in fact it would be a distraction. But I do want the notification telling me that the meeting I'm driving to has been rescheduled or that there is an accident up ahead and if I leave at the next junction I won't be stuck in traffic for an extra 30 minutes. Bill payments are set-up on a Sunday evening so no point reminding me on a Tuesday morning, as I'll just forget by Sunday. Facebook you can prod me at lunch-time or in the evening, providing I'm at home and not engrossed in a film. Breaking News maybe I want to know, but if it's really just an update and you don't know anything more than you knew 2 hours ago then don't waste my time.

The challenge is that the notification publisher doesn't know my schedule or context so will never know whether it's a good time for me to receive the notification. The device I'm using might have some explicit or implicit insight into my schedule/context but it doesn't have any detail on what the notification is about and whether I would want to receive it now.

Putting the fine grained control for type of notification and time of day/day of week in the hands of the user might help, but realistically it's only a subset of users who will invest the energy in configuring this. A learning notification filter is the only way I can see that it would be simple enough for most users to benefit.

    We are about to experience a hyperdrive
    acceleration of notifications, propelling
    us to a crisis situation

The only crisis that's looming is a storm of 1 star ratings and uninstalls for app makers that send too many push notifications. If anything, the Apple Watch and other wearables will force app makers to think more critically about the shit they send out right now.

I get that on my Pebble. The app store is terrible for this. Every time an app is updated, I see nothing pushed to my phone but surely my watch will buzz. Stupid.

The problem that the author complains of--high noise to signal on notifications--can exist on the iPhone of a careless user.

The solution doesn't need to be as complicated as an AI for sorting your notifications, just a set of filters. Notifications for messages from my family and major stock moves, badges or silence for all else.

1. Notifications on a watch do not need to be more disturbing. To the contrary, it is quite possible that the vibration on the wrist is easier to ignore than the phone, that it is easier to just check the display very shortly, instead of fumbling with the phone in your pocket. That was one of the reports from the android devices used.

2. There is no age of notifications. There is one system where notifications seems to go a bit rampant, and even on iOS user have the option to just not opt into them (like several others mentioned here already).

3. The great AI solution actually colides with the idea of seeing them as a feed, because there, the solution is rather to let the feed be filtered by humans. I don't let newspapers ping me, I follow friends who ping me with articles from newspapers. And there always where notification we let humans decide that we want to see them, they are called texts/sms/chat messages. A technical solution might be nice, but is probably not necessary - especially since it is so much easier to just not accept anything unimportant to send you a notification.

4. A really great notification concept is notify-osd on the ubuntu desktop. That concept behind the software defines notification as awareness things that users might want to see or might want to ignore, so they are in black boxes that can be transparent when the mouse hovers them, they are only shown shortly, they don't make a sound, they are not animated, they never expect any input. It's the perfect system for stuff that is not really important. If one really has to let every crappy app ping oneself, it should be with a notification system that adopts this principles.

I feel like I have already been through this process without an Apple Watch, because I always keep my smartphone in my pocket with my wallet, so whenever it vibrates with a notification I can feel it buzzing on my skin.

I solved it by just going to Notification Center and turning off notifications for everything except Calendar alerts and SMS messages.

It doesn't always work. I sometimes get spam texts. But it's better than it was.

I have this exact same setup - except a) add a Pebble - iPhone isn't on me at all times (e.g. shower). b) I add alerts for work mail server, but none for personal mail c) VIPs bypass all my filters

All that said, Pebble still buzzes too much - e.g. Ascension game invites/turns don't show on phone, but cause my watch to buzz.

Maybe... the Apple Watch will resolve that issue.

The suggestion from the author is for development of AI to sift through notifications.

I am all for AI... yet, How about you don't install that app? How about you just let your phone ring?

No really... you don't have to check it. It's sad to see three people on a table, each on their own phone.

Cherish the moment with those humans. Forget about your phone.

>It's sad to see three people on a table, each on their own phone.

"Hey Becky, did you see that Facebook post the other day?"

"No"

"Go check it out! You too Ashley!"

all three of them go and look at it so they can discuss it

Is that not enjoying moments with other humans? Who are you to say how people should enjoy themselves?

>"Hey Becky, did you see that Facebook post the other day?" >"No"

"Oh well check it out when we finish with our meeting. Oh right did I tell you about what happened the other day ..."

>Oh right did I tell you about what happened the other day...

"No, what?"

"Oh I went to the mall. Bought some new jeans."

"Oh that's cool..."

"Yeah..."

"..."

"So anyway, about that thing on Facebook..."

they all check the thing on Facebook

cue 90 minutes of laughing and joking about the thing they now all share in common and may even still make reference to ten years down the road

Well if the shit you read on Facebook is the most exciting thing to talk about .. then the issue aren't notifications and social media.

Like I said: Who are you to say how people should enjoy themselves?

The "notification" problem boils down to this: many want your attention; you only want to give attention to what is relevant to you, at a particular time. What is signal some times is noise others. It's not just NOISE Versus SIGNAL. It's NOISE Versus SIGNAL for USER X at TIME Y.

configuring preferences for this problem takes time and dedicated thought (when they're even available to be customized!), resources that users have been reluctant to spend on personal technology. The example in the article was really just due to wrongly selecting a "send me messages" option; THAT bad user decision produced enough frustration to write the OP. This will compound and be very frustrating eventually for 'bad operators'; if you don't have spam properly filtered out of this feed or that one, it compounds at the phone-notification level. In viewing technology, I don't really like saying "well, they're just a bad user", it smacks of Jobs' comment on the iphone 4: "you're just holding it wrong".

This problem is not distinct to an individual mobile user overloaded with notifications. We have this problem in every service we interact with that provides a regular stream of information. In email, this started as SPAM and NOTSPAM as the only measure. If it's from a human, it's relevant. There's one step further with this in Gmail with "important" notification (based on who sent it and what you open). Mobile notifications make a good example of the problem, because they are the final layer of "what is relevant" filtering between so many info services and a single user. Even with binary on/off for many of those streams, the problem remains, and compounds with expectedly careless users.

Automating relevancy measurement will be one of the more "creepy" technologies, I believe, because of the nature of human memory. We will find very quickly that a computer can be "better" (er... faster and more user-aware) at deciding what we want to look at than we ourselves are.

We will also find that the computer can, through micro-decisions, drive a particular thought or behavior pattern. By tending to ignore "health-related" notifications because you are personally uncomfortable with them and view them less than other notifications (as an example), it could exacerbate that problem by further obfuscating such notifications based on that preference. OR, the opposite: have a predisposition to ignore money notifications because of income apprehension? Computer knows and compensates, notifying for these personal weak points more urgently. These examples are strained, but they express the idea.

Compare to facebook's microdecisions to show you more or less of your ex-lover's posts soon after breaking up. These could vastly affect a person's behavior, and we trust in the "know by wire" system to do what is "best" for us.

We've outsourced the relevancy for news events to journalists, editors, and individual publications for hundreds of years ("I'm a WSJ man", for example). the ability for technology to challenge that relationship is just beginning to come into its own. The need for a journalist at the bottom level of "event or not" decision making is still necessary (this is changing too, but still necessary), but publications are now more like buckets of particular editorial opinion and style that are churned together on other platforms than they are decisions of "this stream or that" that users make.

What I see is a need that every technology user shares on many platforms, and a moral hazard of sorts for whoever develops a solution for that need. We already trust in facebook and google to show us what is most "relevant" to us, to not manipulate us for profit. As we rely more and more on automated measures of relevancy, we put more and more trust into their making such measures benevolently.

So what’s the solution? We need a great artificial intelligence effort to comb through our information, assess the urgency and relevance, and use a deep knowledge of who we are and what we think is important to deliver the right notifications at the right time.

I believe the answer to this question is far, far simpler. The problem started in the second paragraph.

... MLB.com At Bat apparently deemed this important enough to broadcast to hundreds of thousand of users who had earlier clicked, with hardly a second thought, on a dialogue box asking if they wanted to receive notifications from Major League Baseball.

MLB.com decided nothing. They asked if they could send messages. The author decided that anything MLB.com At Bat wanted to send him was important enough to interrupt, as he puts it, "enduring a meeting, playing basketball, presenting to a book club, daydreaming, watching a movie, enjoying a family meal, painting their masterpiece, proposing marriage, interviewing a job candidate, having sex, ...".

"MLB.com At Bat would like to send you notifications (Yes / No)" is pretty clear and to the point. They want to message you. If you want to be messaged, click yes. Sure, app operators can be reckless and bad citizens, but the ultimate control is in your hands. That last push notification giving you permission-granting-remorse? It's trivial to disable notifications on a per-app basis, or even restrict them to something non-intrusive.

There is no notification alert crisis. Apple and the other smart watch makers are not releasing wrist-mounted spam machines. You will be able to choose who you trust to interrupt you, and you will have decently granular controls over how these notifications present themselves. It is up to you to decide who to trust with the ability to grab your attention at any moment. If you place that trust poorly you have the ability to revoke that grant at any time.

Personally I feel like I have a lot of control over how distracting my mobile device is. I only allow alerts from Hangouts, iMessage, Slack, AlienBlue, and whatever turn-based game I'm playing at the moment. These are apps where I'm interacting with another human, where the notification will probably get me to interact with the individual. I restrict or deny notification permissions for every other app. Rarely do I press "Yes" to the request for notifications. When I do, at the first breach of trust that app gets permissions removed. Uber is a good example, I granted notifications thinking it would be nice to not watch the map when waiting for a car. Uber took the opportunity to send me a push advertisement for some weekend rate thing, so now Uber can never message me for anything. Map watching isn't very onerous, still better than waiting for a cab to show up, so I'll deal.

I agree with you that the problem is self-inflicted (and MLB is a pretty frivolous example), but that doesn't mean we don't need help. Asking people to manage their notification settings is asking them to think harder than apps ever do.

Especially the various ways that apps use or abuse the privilege, it's hard to make a decision as to whether push notifications for this app are worth it. I often press "Yes" to get an idea of the impact, and if the app proves annoying, then I turn them off.

Not to nitpick the author and his anecdote, but the MLB At Bat app actually affords the user considerable control over what you do and don't receive in a push notification. There's the binary yes/no for news, and then you can add your favorite teams (wherein you'll only receive notifications that have to do with those teams). You can further enable/disable things like game start, lead change, score change, game end, highlights, and game news. You can do all of this sorted by team. TBH it's probably the best experience I have with an app that gives me notifications because I get exactly what I want and not a push more.

It will be hard to avoid notifications on your watch.

But it will take much less attention to process them.

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