5. Blackberry Notifications

6. HP Palm WebOS

7. WP7 Notifications Raw Toast Tile

8. But this is a platform problem.What can you do as an application designer?

9. What’s wrong with alerts? They interrupt the user They only contain a little bit of information They follow us everywhere

10. What’s good about alerts? They interrupt the user They only contain a little bit of information They follow us everywhere

11. 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?

12. Eisenhower Matrix Stephen Covey in “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” Habit 3: Put First Things First

13. Urgent Not Urgent Prevention New opportunities Recreation Crises Pressing problems Deadlines Old friend has checked in nearby Meeting with CEO Wife in labor Important Depends on when it happens, what else is going on, and what the information is for. ? eBay auction ended RSS feeds updated Trivia Time wasters Interruptions Not Important

14. Context

15. Context is both the Curse and Opportunityof Mobile

16. © Igz © CurtisLeeJones © interactive_devices02

18. Locale (or Tasker) for Android

19. Rule 1 Never notify the user unless you’re certain it is both urgent and important

20. 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

21. Rule 3 Try to help the user forecast that something important is going to happen soon

22. The only way to prevent an interruption Enable the user to predict upcoming events and developing situations Help them maintain awareness

23. 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

24. Thanks Irina, Angelina, and Alexander of Lucrat BobyDimitrov for the Sofia panorama All the brilliant people of VMware Sofia Come and join us, we want more great designers!