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Notification load, attention, and subscription services

Pielot et al.'s research on smartphone notification volume and what reducing it actually does to mood and productivity.

4 min read·

The empirical study of notification load is anchored in mobile-HCI research.

Pielot, Church & de Oliveira's 2014 CHI paper used large-scale logging of smartphone notifications to characterize the load real users experience and the psychological correlates of that load.

Pielot et al.: "Receiving many notifications is associated with hostility, depression, and stress… Notifications that are perceived as unimportant are particularly likely to lead to negative emotions." — Pielot, M., Church, K., & de Oliveira, R. (2014). "An In-Situ Study of Mobile Phone Notifications." Proceedings of MobileHCI 2014, 233–242.

A separate strand of research has tested what happens when notifications are reduced experimentally. Kushlev, Proulx & Dunn's 2016 CHI paper randomly assigned participants to enable or batch notifications.

Kushlev et al.: "Receiving notifications continuously throughout the day produced higher levels of inattention and hyperactivity than receiving them in batches… The batched-notification condition reduced negative affect." — Kushlev, K., Proulx, J., & Dunn, E. W. (2016). "'Silence Your Phones': Smartphone Notifications Increase Inattention and Hyperactivity Symptoms." Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference, 1011–1020.

Subscription apps are heavy notification senders. The default behavior on installation is to request permission; the default user behavior is to grant it. The cumulative load Pielot et al. measured and Kushlev et al. experimentally reduced is, in significant part, contributed by subscription apps a user no longer needs to hear from.

The intervention follows: audit notification permissions per app. Anything not in the small set of apps you actively want to be interrupted by should be silenced. Most subscription apps don't make the cut.

References

  • Pielot, M., Church, K., & de Oliveira, R. (2014). MobileHCI 2014, 233–242.
  • Kushlev, K., Proulx, J., & Dunn, E. W. (2016). ACM CHI 2016, 1011–1020.

Related: App switching · Attention economy · Subscription fatigue

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