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“Put it on the Top, I’ll Read it Later”: Investigating Users’ Desired Display Order for Smartphone Notifications

Published: 07 May 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Smartphone users do not deal with notifications strictly in the order they are displayed, but sometimes read them from the middle, suggesting a mismatch between current systems’ display order and users’ needs. We therefore used mixed methods to investigate 34 smartphone users’ desired notification display order and related it with users’ self-reported order of attendance. Classifying using these two orders as dimensions, we obtained seven types of notifications, which helped us not only highlight the distinct attributes but understand the implied roles of these seven types of notifications, as well as the implied meaning of display orders. This is especially manifested in our identification of three main mismatches between the two orders. Qualitative findings reveal several meanings that participants attached to particular positions when arranging notifications. We offer design implications for notification systems, including calling for two-dimensional notification layout to support the multi-purpose roles of smartphone notifications we identified.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2021
    10862 pages
    ISBN:9781450380966
    DOI:10.1145/3411764
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    Published: 07 May 2021

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    Author Tags

    1. Attentiveness
    2. Experience Sampling Method
    3. Mobile Receptivity
    4. Notification Display Order
    5. Notification Management
    6. Notification Order

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    • (2024)Investigating User-perceived Impacts of Contextual Factors on Opportune MomentsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36765148:MHCI(1-28)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024
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