Blackberry Notifications

HP Palm WebOS

WP7 Notifications

• Raw

• Toast

• Tile

© 2011 VMware Inc. All rights reserved

But this is a platform problem.

What can you do as an application designer?

What’s wrong with alerts?

• They interrupt the user

• They only contain a little bit of information

• They follow us everywhere

What’s good about alerts?

• They interrupt the user

• They only contain a little bit of information

• They follow us everywhere

What’s the distinction?

• We want some alerts, but we don’t want others

• We want them sometimes, and not other times

• How are we to know which is which?

Eisenhower Matrix

• Stephen Covey in “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”

• Habit 3:Put First Things First

Urgent Not Urgent

Imp

ort

an

tN

ot

Import

an

tCrisesPressing

problemsDeadlines

PreventionNew opportunitiesRecreation

Interruptions TriviaTime wasters

Meeting with CEOWife in labor

Old friend has checked in nearby

eBay auction ended

RSS feeds updated

?Depends on whenit happens, whatelse is going on, andwhat the informationis for.

Context

Context is both the Curse and Opportunity

of Mobile

© interactive_devices02© CurtisLeeJones© Igz

Locale (or Tasker) for Android

Rule 1

Never notify the user unless you’re certain it is both urgent and important

Rule 2

Try to glean what is important to the user by what they do.

Only if you can not find any other way, enable the user to define what is important to

them

Rule 3

Try to help the user forecast that something important is

going to happen soon

The only way to prevent an interruption

Enable the user to predict

upcoming events and developing situations

Help them maintain awareness

Stop Interrupting Your Users

• Rule 1: Interrupt only for the urgent and important

• Rule 2: Figure out what is important through context

• Rule 3: Help the user maintain awareness and forecast

events

Thanks

• Irina, Angelina, and Alexander of Lucrat

• Boby Dimitrov for the Sofia panorama

• All the brilliant people of VMware Sofia

• Come and join us, we want more great designers!