WIP Notifications: current state and suggestions

[kernkatja]

Sharing the work (in progress) about notifications; if we decide to go with it I can create separate tickets but would first like to first talk about it + include and combine other ideas.
My current suggestions are based on making "smaller" improvements from the current state in case we can't (yet) afford to make the more wholesome change as Pri suggested.

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Link to the spreadsheet with data about the current state of the notifications:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VZ-7sZHh6iWpejpLArl7OGzyLHh2jF1OTFp1cWeBXqA/edit?usp=sharing

Suggested changes - quick wins:

What to improve for the notifications (based of what we already have):

1. Reduce the alerts

Currently, we have Notifications divided as : ALL, SYSTEM, USERS and user gets Red Bell ringing for ALL notifications

Suggested quick win: To have Notification divided: HIGHLITED, SYSTEM, USERS, ALL(tbd if it is necessary) and only Highlited notification would make the bell icon ring

User gets the Red bell ringing only for selected notifications in HIGHLITED as are:

• when user is mentioned
• when user is assigned
• when someone replies on comment that user created
• failed payments*
• successful renewal*
• requests for the teams (when the user is Owner or Admin)
• acceptances to the team* (if user sent a request and was accepted to the team)
• joining the team (when user is added to the team; currently user gets email but no notification)

*Currently, we don't have notifications for those actions

2. Simplify and unify the notifications text (spreadsheet - First nine rows in G,H column)
Current challenge:

• Text for Mention and assignment (6 and 7 row) is very long and has: "name of the user" You were ... - Name of the user is not necessary in this cases

• Assignment for everyone - Only the Creator of the assignment can resolve the assignment and that is not in sync with the text we display when creating assignments (The assigned person will be notified and responsible for marking as done.)

3. Reduce the number of notifications for one action.

Current challenges:

• Users get two or three notifications per certain actions (look in the F and I coulmn; row 14, 15, 17)

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My notes for further work:
When user use everyone tag in a comment - the system doesn't notify other users about created thread while for other created comments there is notification - is it necessary (?).

[olegoethe]

Great work, Katja!!!!

Let's see what @PriscilaSelmo and the funessers suggests. :)

[jedelizabella]

Great summary Katja! Let's discuss it more at the next CX-meeting. I'd also like to add that maybe users should not get notified when someone creates a comment and answers to comments on a board since this (at least from my perspective) creates a lot of notifications that are not always necessary. Maybe the solution to this is that only the comments the user is mentioned in or assigned to should be included in the notifications for now. Also, there are a lot of notifications about the system updates. For users it might be more relevant to learn about new features, which I believe we could incorporate into the product walkthrough.

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[ghost]

Yes, great work @kernkatja ... this is a beast of a file! I can tell it was a lot of work to gather it all. Good on ya! I'm still trying to wrap my head on all the line items so having you show/tell would be helpful for me. Visual learner here. :) Then I can best see where MKTING can help from the UX Writing perspective so we can update the automation email copy and notification blurbs.

One thought we can look at implementing is that a user should (to personalize and declutter the 'noise' themselves) be able to choose:

1. Exactly what "type" of notification user receives (i.e. administrative, tasks, commentary, product features, software updates)
   --> This makes me wonder if we should categorize these "types" a bit tighter?
2. How often user receives those notifications. (i.e. One consolidated list of notifications per day, per week, per month)
3. and by what means would user like to receive this info (i.e. email, in app only, text, integrated into Slack)

All in all we want to reduce the cognitive load and these really can be a huge source of distraction, annoyance and anxiety inducing (seeing the pile up before noon! even) :)

Playing devil's advocate here: on the flip side of ALL this chatter about notifications. What about NO notifications? We ride the backlash of these "naughty notifications" and don't productize them period. Why do we need to be notified at all? If were all using the product efficiently, we would see in the boards what's been changed, added, etc. and what we were tasked in something maybe automatically gets fed into our "to-do list"... Just another angle here, especially if we really want to back up our product with science, taking this human-centered "caring to user well-being" approach to not disturb/disrupt or be too invasive and the notifications is a great place for us to really get right if we say we practice less = more.