The Problem with Push Notifications

These little gray banners that suddenly appear at the top of your screen. Do you hate them and turn them off for every app you have? Do you love them and wonder why you’re replying to your friends instead of working? How often do you even think about them?

I spent some time thinking about push notifications and now I think I know what the problem with notifications is. Apple Push Notification Service is not to blame for your procrastination and distraction. The problem is simply this:

Most push notifications are not deliberate enough.

A great example of a deliberate notification is a reminder you set to a specific time or location. An awesome example is starting compilation (or any long process) on a remote server through SSH and sending a notification after that (eg. make && prowl 'compilation finished'). Noticed anything about these examples? You make it clear you want a specific notification.

Social notifications aren’t like that. You can only tell the app something very generic, like, you want to be notified about replies. You post something, start working, a notification pops up and distracts you. Suddenly. Not when you wanted.

Of course, there are solutions to this, like a mute switch (OS X Notification Center), silent hours (Prowl, Netbot) and so on. But why solve a problem when you can avoid creating it in the first place? Why tell apps when not to notify you instead of telling them when to notify you?

I don’t use push notifications in social apps because social notifications are broken. Here’s how to fix your app: add a “notify me” button to every comments/replies thread view. When I want to be notified, I’ll tap it.