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Lay user here. I feel a rare sense of violation whenever I find an unexpected push notification on my Android device. Perhaps it's because most of my experience

Lay user here. I feel a rare sense of violation whenever I find an unexpected push notification on my Android device. Perhaps it's because most of my experience is as a Windows user; if I see something 'spammy' popping up unexpectedly somewhere I might expect to see system-related or user-defined stuff, my instinctive reaction is one of suspicion than an app has wrapped itself around the OS/my device and over-stepped its invitation to be installed and used. It reminds me of malware that would pop up in the icontray of some people's Windows systems, or the 'helpful' driver control centres.

csydas 11y ago
I don't think you give yourself enough credit as a user - I would suggest a more typical "lay-user" is not going to even slightly comprehend the design of the system that runs on their phone, that is, they can't much figure out what happens during installs much less envision what it means for software to "wrap" around the OS/device. The truth is, I don't think a lot of people find notifications all that frustrating, at least not privately. Regardless of the content or how annoying it is, whenever someone's phone alerts/buzzes with new content, they tend to look. Though this is anecdotal, I can recall friends even in the tech field who would pull out the phone mid conversation to get a notification from Facebook or from a shopping app offering a 10% discount; they'd look, complain about the annoyance, put it away, and then repeat as soon as the next notification popped up. This is a bit of a tinfoil hat theory, but I suspect that the entire structure of notifications is just designed to feel good on a certain level - even though you don't want the content, you're important because you're receiving so many notifications. No one else can see what it is you're getting, no one else knows that it's just some offer from a company, they just know that you get a lot of notifications on your phone. (Or, conversely, maybe they do know, but at the end of the day, you're the one who is so busy that you need to keep checking your phone while theirs sits idly by)
- DrScump 11y ago
  "... they'd look, complain about the annoyance, put it away, and then repeat as soon as the next notification popped up." But I'm guessing they'd be a lot less likely to purchase anything from that entity than before the pushes. That's how I react.
- gizmo686 11y ago
  Alternatively, they think that their is a chance that it is an important notification and are willing to take the chance that it is not, rather than risk missing an important one.
- MistahKoala 11y ago
  Perhaps; what we might think of as 'lay users' might have more dimensions to their experiences of responses, though. A lot of novice users certainly don't have much idea of what happens in an install or on the OS (at this level, technology is often 'magic'). To that end, something unanticipated can be unsettling. For example, my mum might install an app (which she can just about do). For her, she's installed it and only seems to expect to interact with it when pressing its icon. When a notification appears, it causes her to slightly panic or become uncertain about what has just happened and why, so she'll often consult me (when I'll simply swipe it away for her). It doesn't matter that the notification might give a clue about what it relates to - it's already thrown her. It's this kind of experience which makes me very reluctant to have my grandparents using a tablet because it is so unpredictable for them, despite there being some fantastic apps and functions that they could make use of to assist them in elderly living. The worst notifications, of course, are the ones written in Chinese characters. I've no idea how to eviscerate my mum's phone of the app responsible for them.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
> I feel a rare sense of violation whenever I find an unexpected push notification on my Android device. Oh, exactly this. I remember the fist time when I got a push notification about offers nearby from a banking app. My reaction: what the fuck? Why is the banking app even running in the first place?. The violation came mostly from that a banking app has approximately zero sensible reasons for running in the background, wasting phone's resources.

csydas 11y ago

I don't think you give yourself enough credit as a user - I would suggest a more typical "lay-user" is not going to even slightly comprehend the design of the system that runs on their phone, that is, they can't much figure out what happens during installs much less envision what it means for software to "wrap" around the OS/device. The truth is, I don't think a lot of people find notifications all that frustrating, at least not privately. Regardless of the content or how annoying it is, whenever someone's phone alerts/buzzes with new content, they tend to look. Though this is anecdotal, I can recall friends even in the tech field who would pull out the phone mid conversation to get a notification from Facebook or from a shopping app offering a 10% discount; they'd look, complain about the annoyance, put it away, and then repeat as soon as the next notification popped up. This is a bit of a tinfoil hat theory, but I suspect that the entire structure of notifications is just designed to feel good on a certain level - even though you don't want the content, you're important because you're receiving so many notifications. No one else can see what it is you're getting, no one else knows that it's just some offer from a company, they just know that you get a lot of notifications on your phone. (Or, conversely, maybe they do know, but at the end of the day, you're the one who is so busy that you need to keep checking your phone while theirs sits idly by)

DrScump 11y ago
"... they'd look, complain about the annoyance, put it away, and then repeat as soon as the next notification popped up." But I'm guessing they'd be a lot less likely to purchase anything from that entity than before the pushes. That's how I react.
gizmo686 11y ago
Alternatively, they think that their is a chance that it is an important notification and are willing to take the chance that it is not, rather than risk missing an important one.
MistahKoala 11y ago
Perhaps; what we might think of as 'lay users' might have more dimensions to their experiences of responses, though. A lot of novice users certainly don't have much idea of what happens in an install or on the OS (at this level, technology is often 'magic'). To that end, something unanticipated can be unsettling. For example, my mum might install an app (which she can just about do). For her, she's installed it and only seems to expect to interact with it when pressing its icon. When a notification appears, it causes her to slightly panic or become uncertain about what has just happened and why, so she'll often consult me (when I'll simply swipe it away for her). It doesn't matter that the notification might give a clue about what it relates to - it's already thrown her. It's this kind of experience which makes me very reluctant to have my grandparents using a tablet because it is so unpredictable for them, despite there being some fantastic apps and functions that they could make use of to assist them in elderly living. The worst notifications, of course, are the ones written in Chinese characters. I've no idea how to eviscerate my mum's phone of the app responsible for them.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

> I feel a rare sense of violation whenever I find an unexpected push notification on my Android device. Oh, exactly this. I remember the fist time when I got a push notification about offers nearby from a banking app. My reaction: what the fuck? Why is the banking app even running in the first place?. The violation came mostly from that a banking app has approximately zero sensible reasons for running in the background, wasting phone's resources.