Suppressed notices must remain retrievable
Aliases: DND is not deletion · post-focus review · held-item retrieval
What it is
Do not disturb blocks interruption now, not the right of the information to exist. After the mode ends, suppressed notices must still be findable: a digest, a "N held during focus" chip, or the corresponding pending work inside the app. If suppression equals discard, people read the mode as "the world paused," discover that it did not, and never turn it on again.
This is the contract of the mode: blocked ≠ deleted. It does not specify how a history list keeps original timestamps, and it does not collapse similar items into a shade summary—those are different structures.
Why it happens
People use focus to allocate time: not now, later. That allocation holds only if "later" has a landing place. Without one, suppression is deletion in information terms, missed-item blame shifts onto the user, and the counter is to leave the mode or watch a second screen in parallel.
The landing place should surface once when the mode ends, not only after someone already suspects a miss and goes hunting in settings. The surface can be light—a one-screen digest, one bundled shade item—but it must lead to the held objects. Saying nothing at exit demands that people remember they had the mode on. That memory is unreliable.
Studying it
Deliver several non-exception notices during a focus window; after exit, either prompt with a digest or not. Count how many items are recovered and how many people then disable the mode.
Independent variables: digest at exit or not, whether the digest opens the original objects, whether in-app state still updated during suppression. Dependent variables: retrieval rate, disable-because-afraid-to-miss, time spent catching up after exit.
Lab prompts to "check whether anything was missed" turn retrieval into the task and overstate it. Closer to life: give an unrelated task after exit and see whether people spontaneously look. An in-app badge is not retrievability if nobody knows which app to open.
Where it stops holding
Time-limited items (codes, held seats) may already be dead at exit; retrievable does not mean still actionable—mark expired rather than pretending. Encrypted or ephemeral content may forbid digest bodies; at least leave "this source tried to reach you." In clinical and legal settings the suppression log is itself an audit object; compliance sets the grain, and a tidy UI must not wipe it.
Applying it
- On focus end, offer one tappable digest: sources, count, whether any starred objects were held.
- Pending work inside the app should still accumulate; the mode is not a zeroing button.
- Mark expired items in the digest so people do not try to complete a dead action.
- Verify by sending three non-exception notices during a session, giving no spoken hint at exit, and seeing whether all three can be found within two minutes. If not, the contract is broken—and the mode will not be used next time.