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A simple change I'd like to see in tech culture is to change how we refer to the notifications feature. We should call them interruptions instead. Do I want my

A simple change I'd like to see in tech culture is to change how we refer to the notifications feature. We should call them interruptions instead. Do I want my meeting interrupted if my spouse calls with an emergency? Absolutely. Do I want that meeting interrupted to find out I've been given a $10 Lyft credit? Absolutely not. That Lyft credit, thank you, can be delivered to the proper home for notifications: my email.

mikestew 7y ago
I can only speak from the iOS side, but naming it "notification" or "interruption" is entirely up to you. By default, I answer "Do Not Allow" to "AppX would like to send you notifications". Boom, I'll never hear from that app. If I later find that I would like the app to notify me of certain events, I go back in, turn the notification setting on, and customize delivery to my tastes. You picked a particularly timely example, as just this morning I set Lyft to "notify me about ride stuff" and "absolutely do not ever again tell me I have a credit".
- tonystubblebine 7y ago
  To me, iOS is such a great example. We know Apple cares deeply about design and yet the number of places where iOS is setup to work against productivity is very large. It does feel cultural. If Apple can't get this right, then it points to a cultural blind spot for all of tech. Humans are not computers--we don't multi-task. And measuring usage is just a proxy for measuring value--lots of times more usage means the experience was less valuable.
  - smitty1e 7y ago
    I submit that the whole topic of human/tech interactions from mundane interrupts to data/privacy management, is a good decade or so from settling out. My kids have had their lives documented on social media in greater detail than I ever did with the old family albums. Hopefully they aren't too upset with the results.
  - addicted 7y ago
    Apple has never been very good about productivity IMO. They have a lot of things they are good about, but productivity usually gets sacrificed at the altar of simplicity, or a prettier look. If you look at how the Mac productivity apps have changed, every one of them has moved from being productivity focused to being more about the design and looks. The obvious examples are Mail and Calendar (although Mail has been decent about bringing back some of the features it lost). Contacts/Address Book has always been a terrible app, and the iWork suite of apps also took a disastrous turn towards simplicity where they ended up losing a lot of functionality. What used to be really great about the Mac OS ecosystem was the plethora of productivity focused app makers, who also had a great sense of design. When it came to productivity on the Mac (or any platform, for that matter), the real strides came from 3rd party Mac developers.
  - chachachoney 7y ago
    >> It does feel cultural. If Apple can't get this right, then it points to a cultural blind spot for all of tech. I don't think it's so much a blind spot as a deliberate disempowerment of the user. If we actually had general purpose computing devices with operating systems designed to empower users with the ability to manage complex flows of data in both meaningful and aesthetic ways, the 'tech' market as we know it would collapse. Cars have become computers, computers have become devices, and devices have become advertising nodes. Nodes are interested in invisible collection of data about the user, not aiding users in benefiting and sorting through the data generated. >> And measuring usage is just a proxy for measuring value--lots of times more usage means the experience was less valuable. So much this. We originally created these machines to automate repetitive tasks, but somewhere along the way we switched paradigms and now they force us to engage in repetitive tasks.
- basch 7y ago
  by clicking not allow, you never get the notification. android now has silent notifications. they appear in the bar but dont interrupt you. you can choose alert me or silent or none. its a much better paradigm.
  - denzil_correa 7y ago
    iOS 12 allows "Silent Notifications" too. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201925#manage-alerts https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201925#manage-alerts
    - basch 7y ago
      I guess I havent played with 12 enough this year. Amazing what taking off a year can do.
    - erikstrottmann 7y ago
      iOS 12’s new “Delivery Quietly” notifications don’t appear on the Lock Screen, play sounds, or show banners when the device is unlocked. All of those have been possible for years, but iOS 12 made it easy to toggle directly from a notification.
    - rolltiide 7y ago
      This is an interesting thread because I always have my phone on silent so I dont notice there was a problem Does this mean that notifications dont vibrate my phone when it is unlocked and Im using it?
  - mikestew 7y ago
    by clicking not allow, you never get the notification. I know we're talking past each other, or our use cases are different, because to that I reply, "duh, that's kind of the idea." :-)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
arendtio 7y ago
I like the idea. 'Notification' sounds so nice and subtle, but most of the time it is actually an unnecessary diversion, that would be better categorized as an 'interruption'.
hinkley 7y ago
I started wondering a year or so ago if there's enough metadata available in my dev tools to determine if I am actively engaged in debugging or if I'm just decompressing (aka 'fucking around' according to some) on Hacker News. If I can get that information reliably enough, I could use Automator on OS X to enable Do Not Disturb until a couple minutes after I task switch to anything else that's not focus-based.
- bob_theslob646 7y ago
  Great idea!
- mgiannopoulos 7y ago
  RescueTime is what you need.
- chrislh 7y ago
  At work, we've been pushing everyone to use an app called clockwise. Basically it integrates with your calendar, moves meetings around (with your approval) to maximize focus time (2+ hour blocks of work). It also allows you to set up "Do not disturb" on slack during your focus and meeting time. It's awesome. (BTW, no personal association with the company, just a happy user). https://www.getclockwise.com/ https://www.getclockwise.com/
- TooCleverByHalf 7y ago
  I like it! Im having a hard time coming up with solid indicators that Im debugging or otherwise in focus mode that wouldn't also be red herrings for other activity. Have you come up with any good examples for yourself?
- Bjartr 7y ago
  I've used RescueTime[1] to track my own behavior during work to better understand my own patterns. It might be usable to do what you describe. https://www.rescuetime.com/ https://www.rescuetime.com/
judge2020 7y ago
Using the iOS 13 beta is pretty nice in this regard. Calendar events usually show a (non-sound interruption) notification prompting you to turn on Do Not Disturb for the duration of the calendar event.
sam_bristow 7y ago
One thing that I find really annoying with my current Android phone (Nokia 6.1) is that all notifications use the same sound. Plugging in a charger sounds the same as receiving a text message sounds the same as an email arriving.
- samplatt 7y ago
  One of my happiest purchases of the last few years was a smartwatch. It has a different vibration pattern for every type of notification, meaning I can set my phone to silent permanently and still know what's going on. It's kind of empowering to receive a message and know if I even need to look at my wrist or not (let alone actually bring out my phone). Makes me feel like a cyborg.
  - jlawson 7y ago
    Next just set it up to read out the message header to you in Morse code vibrations.
gnicholas 7y ago
Lyft is particularly nefarious in hiding the preference to treat important notifications (your driver is here) differently from the BS coupon crap. In the app sidebar, you have to go to Settings, Privacy (subtitle: choose what data you share with us), Notifications Preferences. There you can disable the promo crap notifications. But to find this setting basically requires traversing every node in the settings tree, not following common sense. The Privacy subtitle in particular (“choose what data you share with us”) is especially misleading, since it makes it seem that that the Privacy Settings are only about controlling what data you share with Lyft. It’s underhanded crap like this that shows me Lyft is no better than Uber. They’re both mercenary, deceptive companies willing to do anything for an extra buck.
jrootabega 7y ago
Let's work together please
mikekchar 7y ago
I don't really understand why people turn on notifications. The one feature I would like (and I can sort of doing for some applications) is just to give me a list of notifications that have happened when I explicitly look for them. Like you say, I don't need real time notifications for anything, really -- I just eventually need to know that something has happened. It would be nice to have that in an organised list rather than spread around a bunch of different applications.
chachachoney 7y ago
Indeed. It's unfortunate that any useful communication channel is a vector for advertising/promotion and is ultimately destined to be so overridden by spam that we're forced to take drastic measures. If this weren't the case, we'd be able to use a single channel for all of our notifications, but every time a channel gets overridden by spam, we're forced to shift to less noisy channels as our primary focus of attention. Rinse and repeat. Hopefully we're able to establish and enforce meaningful cultural norms surrounding the exploitation of these channels and demand simple sophisticated granular filtering mechanisms before we adopt intensely immersive and liminal technologies which ultimately encase the entirety of our existence in a cacophonous chamber of commercial cadjoling.

mikestew 7y ago

I can only speak from the iOS side, but naming it "notification" or "interruption" is entirely up to you. By default, I answer "Do Not Allow" to "AppX would like to send you notifications". Boom, I'll never hear from that app. If I later find that I would like the app to notify me of certain events, I go back in, turn the notification setting on, and customize delivery to my tastes. You picked a particularly timely example, as just this morning I set Lyft to "notify me about ride stuff" and "absolutely do not ever again tell me I have a credit".

tonystubblebine 7y ago
To me, iOS is such a great example. We know Apple cares deeply about design and yet the number of places where iOS is setup to work against productivity is very large. It does feel cultural. If Apple can't get this right, then it points to a cultural blind spot for all of tech. Humans are not computers--we don't multi-task. And measuring usage is just a proxy for measuring value--lots of times more usage means the experience was less valuable.
- smitty1e 7y ago
  I submit that the whole topic of human/tech interactions from mundane interrupts to data/privacy management, is a good decade or so from settling out. My kids have had their lives documented on social media in greater detail than I ever did with the old family albums. Hopefully they aren't too upset with the results.
- addicted 7y ago
  Apple has never been very good about productivity IMO. They have a lot of things they are good about, but productivity usually gets sacrificed at the altar of simplicity, or a prettier look. If you look at how the Mac productivity apps have changed, every one of them has moved from being productivity focused to being more about the design and looks. The obvious examples are Mail and Calendar (although Mail has been decent about bringing back some of the features it lost). Contacts/Address Book has always been a terrible app, and the iWork suite of apps also took a disastrous turn towards simplicity where they ended up losing a lot of functionality. What used to be really great about the Mac OS ecosystem was the plethora of productivity focused app makers, who also had a great sense of design. When it came to productivity on the Mac (or any platform, for that matter), the real strides came from 3rd party Mac developers.
- chachachoney 7y ago
  >> It does feel cultural. If Apple can't get this right, then it points to a cultural blind spot for all of tech. I don't think it's so much a blind spot as a deliberate disempowerment of the user. If we actually had general purpose computing devices with operating systems designed to empower users with the ability to manage complex flows of data in both meaningful and aesthetic ways, the 'tech' market as we know it would collapse. Cars have become computers, computers have become devices, and devices have become advertising nodes. Nodes are interested in invisible collection of data about the user, not aiding users in benefiting and sorting through the data generated. >> And measuring usage is just a proxy for measuring value--lots of times more usage means the experience was less valuable. So much this. We originally created these machines to automate repetitive tasks, but somewhere along the way we switched paradigms and now they force us to engage in repetitive tasks.
basch 7y ago
by clicking not allow, you never get the notification. android now has silent notifications. they appear in the bar but dont interrupt you. you can choose alert me or silent or none. its a much better paradigm.
- denzil_correa 7y ago
  iOS 12 allows "Silent Notifications" too. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201925#manage-alerts https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201925#manage-alerts
  - basch 7y ago
    I guess I havent played with 12 enough this year. Amazing what taking off a year can do.
  - erikstrottmann 7y ago
    iOS 12’s new “Delivery Quietly” notifications don’t appear on the Lock Screen, play sounds, or show banners when the device is unlocked. All of those have been possible for years, but iOS 12 made it easy to toggle directly from a notification.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    This is an interesting thread because I always have my phone on silent so I dont notice there was a problem Does this mean that notifications dont vibrate my phone when it is unlocked and Im using it?
- mikestew 7y ago
  by clicking not allow, you never get the notification. I know we're talking past each other, or our use cases are different, because to that I reply, "duh, that's kind of the idea." :-)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

arendtio 7y ago

I like the idea. 'Notification' sounds so nice and subtle, but most of the time it is actually an unnecessary diversion, that would be better categorized as an 'interruption'.

hinkley 7y ago

I started wondering a year or so ago if there's enough metadata available in my dev tools to determine if I am actively engaged in debugging or if I'm just decompressing (aka 'fucking around' according to some) on Hacker News. If I can get that information reliably enough, I could use Automator on OS X to enable Do Not Disturb until a couple minutes after I task switch to anything else that's not focus-based.

bob_theslob646 7y ago
Great idea!
mgiannopoulos 7y ago
RescueTime is what you need.
chrislh 7y ago
At work, we've been pushing everyone to use an app called clockwise. Basically it integrates with your calendar, moves meetings around (with your approval) to maximize focus time (2+ hour blocks of work). It also allows you to set up "Do not disturb" on slack during your focus and meeting time. It's awesome. (BTW, no personal association with the company, just a happy user). https://www.getclockwise.com/ https://www.getclockwise.com/
TooCleverByHalf 7y ago
I like it! Im having a hard time coming up with solid indicators that Im debugging or otherwise in focus mode that wouldn't also be red herrings for other activity. Have you come up with any good examples for yourself?
Bjartr 7y ago
I've used RescueTime[1] to track my own behavior during work to better understand my own patterns. It might be usable to do what you describe. https://www.rescuetime.com/ https://www.rescuetime.com/

judge2020 7y ago

Using the iOS 13 beta is pretty nice in this regard. Calendar events usually show a (non-sound interruption) notification prompting you to turn on Do Not Disturb for the duration of the calendar event.

sam_bristow 7y ago

One thing that I find really annoying with my current Android phone (Nokia 6.1) is that all notifications use the same sound. Plugging in a charger sounds the same as receiving a text message sounds the same as an email arriving.

samplatt 7y ago
One of my happiest purchases of the last few years was a smartwatch. It has a different vibration pattern for every type of notification, meaning I can set my phone to silent permanently and still know what's going on. It's kind of empowering to receive a message and know if I even need to look at my wrist or not (let alone actually bring out my phone). Makes me feel like a cyborg.
- jlawson 7y ago
  Next just set it up to read out the message header to you in Morse code vibrations.

gnicholas 7y ago

Lyft is particularly nefarious in hiding the preference to treat important notifications (your driver is here) differently from the BS coupon crap. In the app sidebar, you have to go to Settings, Privacy (subtitle: choose what data you share with us), Notifications Preferences. There you can disable the promo crap notifications. But to find this setting basically requires traversing every node in the settings tree, not following common sense. The Privacy subtitle in particular (“choose what data you share with us”) is especially misleading, since it makes it seem that that the Privacy Settings are only about controlling what data you share with Lyft. It’s underhanded crap like this that shows me Lyft is no better than Uber. They’re both mercenary, deceptive companies willing to do anything for an extra buck.

jrootabega 7y ago

Let's work together please

mikekchar 7y ago

I don't really understand why people turn on notifications. The one feature I would like (and I can sort of doing for some applications) is just to give me a list of notifications that have happened when I explicitly look for them. Like you say, I don't need real time notifications for anything, really -- I just eventually need to know that something has happened. It would be nice to have that in an organised list rather than spread around a bunch of different applications.

chachachoney 7y ago

Indeed. It's unfortunate that any useful communication channel is a vector for advertising/promotion and is ultimately destined to be so overridden by spam that we're forced to take drastic measures. If this weren't the case, we'd be able to use a single channel for all of our notifications, but every time a channel gets overridden by spam, we're forced to shift to less noisy channels as our primary focus of attention. Rinse and repeat. Hopefully we're able to establish and enforce meaningful cultural norms surrounding the exploitation of these channels and demand simple sophisticated granular filtering mechanisms before we adopt intensely immersive and liminal technologies which ultimately encase the entirety of our existence in a cacophonous chamber of commercial cadjoling.