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Maybe your app is a rare exception, but apart from chat apps, any use of notifications I’ve seen are undesirable and abused to spam users. Even those that do ha
by 3np 6y ago
Maybe your app is a rare exception, but apart from chat apps, any use of notifications I’ve seen are undesirable and abused to spam users. Even those that do have a legit use-case still abuse it by pushing non-desirable (from user perspective) messages.
I think apart from Gitter I’ve never wanted a notification, as a user.
- kitsunesoba 6y agoSimilarly, I’ve rarely needed web notifications and on the handful of occasions I have they’re of a nature that’s better tied to a desktop/laptop than a phone or tablet.
- heavyset_go 6y agoThis app helps sick patients navigate the healthcare system. Notifications were requested by users so that they don't need to continuously go back to the web app to see if there are any updates.
- asaddhamani 6y agoHow about sending notifications over email?
- heavyset_go 6y agoSee this post[1]. We already do text and email notifications. Not all phones and tablets get texts, and email notifications are unreliable. Many users wanted desktop and mobile notifications, hence why we implemented them on top of texts and emails. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26520303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26520303
- yunohn 6y agoThis speaks to your inexperience in making applications for the average user - they barely use email.
- onion2k 6y agoThe speaks to your inexperience making applications - using anecdotes and assumptions about "the average user" to determine what to do is nowhere near as useful as asking your actual users. Real data is better than guesswork.
- yunohn 6y agoI have built global apps, and found that users struggle to even accept email address confirmations. The reality is that email is dying.
- onion2k 6y agoThat's true for the users you've seen. My users all open emails with no problem. Now do you see why "the average user" isn't useful to determine how to build something? Even if most people suck at using email, in my app it works well.
- yunohn 6y agoSo you would agree that some users can prefer notifications over email/sms, or is that line of reasoning only self-serving?
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
- bashinator 6y agoI use apps like this to manage my health care. Email would be a significantly worse experience than notifications.
- diebeforei485 6y agoGreat. Take their phone number and text them. Amazon charges what, $0.00645 per SMS?
- genericstorage3 6y agoWhat a terrible ux
- yunohn 6y agoYou want to send potentially sensitive health updates over SMS? Or just a link, that then opens the web-app anyways? Definitely sounds like bad UX.
- Google234 6y agoCVS has no problem sending text notifications. You can send informative alerts without any sensitive info. Push notifications are subject to the same HIPPA rules as sms. You can’t included sensitive info.
- yunohn 6y agoPush notifications go through apple/google servers. The advantage of PWA notifications is that they can be local - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Re-engageable_Notifications_Push https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web....
- GekkePrutser 6y agoI agree. Most websites use push notifications for the wrong reasons. This has given them a bad reputation. But when properly used they are certainly powerful and useful. I use them for some local forums to notify me of replies. Don't want to fill up my inbox for this.
- jfoster 6y agoThere's nothing stopping Safari having a less annoying implementation of notifications. They have full control of the experience.
- bentcorner 6y agoI don't like browser notifications, especially on mobile. Maybe it's me but there's no explicit place agreed upon between me and the browser where the browser says "if the site sends a notification, here is where it will be". Mobile is already bad enough where if you swipe a notification away, well I hope you remembered the icon and the bit of context that was on that notification. Browser notifications just make this worse. And then there's the whole "will I get a notification if the browser app is closed? What if I get a notification in the middle of the night, will I receive it in the morning? Will it continue to receive notifications if I restart my phone?" kind of questions. Maybe it all just works but I am very untrusting of the whole feature.
- wruza 6y agoTechnically, webpush-enabled site starts a service on your phone (read on js service workers) that then asks a browser to accept notifications from some origin and sends permission credentials to that origin. Then it decides for every incoming notification if it is worth popping up (e.g. if a site is a chat and it is already on the screen, there is no need to spam with popups), or if it’s worth a new tab on tap/click, etc. It is a hassle to configure, but then it usually just works. I suspect that your browser has to be running anyway, because a service worker is just a restricted browser env. Push providers may have delayed delivery, at least there is a ttl field in a notification at server-side. Didn’t test that much and only used that in one project, but remote alpha users already reported missing notifications. I have no clue how to debug that, because it simply doesn’t happen (phone config seems okay).
- mda 6y agolichess notifies when it is your turn, quite useful. There are many legitimate uses of this feature especially business environments.