[graypegg]

Also, just to add to that because it's on my mind now, I think there's a ratchet effect to "UI that screams at you" or at least "UI that tries to tap into my senses". The more of it becomes common place, the more people expect to be able to annoying you, via your devices.

It doesn't matter that I can force my phone's vibration motor to only output an anemic "buhhhh..." no mater what coeffienct of bothersomeness some app sends to it. The person causing my phone to make that API call still expects the cacophony of pain to emit from it. We all become numb to how annoying this all is because it becomes the standard TO BE annoyed and distracted.

The uber eats sound is annoying because it conveys nothing except "whatever you're doing is unimportant!!!! PAY ATTENTION TO UBER!! UBER THINGS ARE HAPPENING!!!". There's a million other better ways to do that, so *I* find the information. *I* go to the stupid glass brick when *I* can take on a new order. But because we already set the expectation that the user is allowed to set off an alarm in any kitchen in the city for the low-low price of overpaying for food, the stupid glass brick tells ME when it's time to deal with it.

Spatial computing (like the example of a note taking app) now introduces all of the extra work of cleaning to a digital note. The computer wants me to sort my own notes now. It opens up the potential of being an e-slob for no reason other than my ability to make it as equally messy as my desk.

I don't know why we would expect this even-more sensory-focused model of computing to not also ratchet up the stress and dread of being alive.

I'm 27 going on 95 I guess, just send me to the old folks home now lol

[airstrike]

The only solution is to turn off notifications for all but literally a handful of apps. Trust me, you won't miss those apps

[turtletontine]

This is how I live, and I cannot comprehend how people live otherwise.

I have no work email or slack on my phone. The only notifications that appear on my lock screen are texts, calls, and when there’s a new crossword available. Seeing other people’s phones buzz every time they get an email, or every time their news apps have a new article… seems utterly insane to me. Why would you give every one of those the opportunity to demand your attention, without warning, at any time? How do you live like that?

[specproc]

News apps are baffling, I've worked in the business and couldn't comprehend why colleagues needed notifications for news and socials.

Can't see how it's possible to be effective whilst so reactive in a professional context. For a person who's job doesn't involve keeping tabs on the world it makes even less sense. Damaging and stressful.

[WorldMaker]

I think the 24-hour news cycle in general has gotten too obsessed with "fast" and "breaking" over "news worthy" and "attention worthy". I've realized as much as anything that what I want is slow news and that the old models were possibly best: daily morning paper, maybe an afternoon rag. That's it. Real news doesn't seem to me to actually move faster than that, we've just sort of let "entertainment" and "anxiety" and "engagement clickbait" substitute for "news worthy" for long enough that people think they need the constant attention to it.

[Propelloni]

Same here, it's insane. The only things that are allowed to play a sound from my phone are the actual telephony apps (I've got two for reasons).

[sfn42]

I like to disable most notifications, but I'm confused about the Uber eats thing. If I'm a restaurant and I take orders via Uber eats, I probably want to be notified about new orders. That seems quite important to me. It's not the kind of thing you can leisurely discover an hour or two later. It's on the same level of importance as a customer walking into the restaurant. I can't really imagine many things more important than that.

Similarly if I'm on the receiving end I need to know that the delivery is here. I want my food and the courier wants to get going. I live in an apartment building, so I like being downstairs ready to pick up my order when they arrive.

So that's something I want to get notified about. I don't use Uber eats but I use Wolt, where I can monitor the couriers location and get a notification when they're close. I don't turn those off because these are actually important in my eyes. There's a real person potentially waiting for me right now.

Snapchat on the other hand gets muted immediately. Whoever came up with notifications for someone typing should be locked up. Not to mention all the bullshit like "some influencer or whatever posted something" notifications. I barely want to know when my friends sent me something.

[WorldMaker]

I like Apple's growing approach of distinguishing "Time Sensitive" notifications and "Live Activity" notifications from all the other types of notifications from an app.

An Uber Eats delivery is a "Live Activity" with a tracker that is sticky on the lock screen (and Apple Watch "activity area"). That makes a lot of sense. "Deals" and other random garbage Uber Eats wants to send to me aren't "Live Activity" so can be filed to later/slower delivery.

A buzzer notification from my condo buildings front door is a "Time Sensitive" notification that gets priority. But that same app's "weekly neighbor updates" isn't and can be filtered differently. Those things are great.

I can send most notifications to "Notification Summaries" which give me digests of all the notifications in roughly ~4hr chunks. There are very few things that I need faster than that (esp. when apps properly support "Time Sensitive" and "Live Activities").

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility. I've caught LinkedIn abusing "Time Sensitive" notifications (because of course it would, LinkedIn loves notification spam too much not to) and entirely revoked its privilege to send them.

[sfn42]

That sounds pretty great, especially if it's handled from the developers side and we don't have to customize it.

I know I can customize notifications for my apps but when I go to look at it an app has like 50 different types and I just don't care enough to deal with that so I just mute the whole app instead.