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

Title of the Paper

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

Paper Information

• Research Area: Human-Computer Interaction Design, specifically notification ordering and user behavior on smartphones
• Keywords: Notification ordering, notification management, user behavior, mobile devices, attention, informed design, mixed methods

Research Background and Problem

• Problem and Challenges: Smartphone users often do not process notifications in the default display order, exhibiting behaviors such as starting from the middle or ignoring certain notifications altogether. This indicates a potential mismatch between user needs and the current notification ordering mechanisms. Academic research on users’ ideal notification display order and its divergence from actual interaction behavior remains insufficient or unexplored.
• Significance: As the number of smartphone notifications increases, frequent interruptions can lead to task delays, reduced productivity, and attention fragmentation. Understanding users’ preferred notification display order can help optimize smartphone notification management, enhance user experience, and reduce cognitive load.
• Research Motivation: Current design assumptions prioritize a “top-first” order, but this hypothesis has not been systematically validated to align with users’ actual needs, particularly in specific behaviors and contexts. Investigating the differences between ideal notification display order and actual interaction behavior can provide a foundation for more efficient and user-friendly notification system designs in the future.

Proposed Solution

• Methods:
  1. Employing the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and in-depth interviews to collect data on users’ preferences for notification ordering and their actual behaviors.
  2. Studying 34 smartphone users by combining quantitative data analysis and qualitative interviews to analyze the characteristics of different notification categories and the discrepancies between ideal display order and actual engagement order.
• Innovations:
  1. Proposed a new classification system that categorizes user notification preferences into seven types, combining ideal display order and actual engagement order.
  2. Identified three primary mismatches between users’ ideal notification display order and actual order, and explained the reasons behind these discrepancies.
  3. Explored the different meanings users assign to notification display positions and how these positions reflect the multifunctionality of notifications.
• Implementation Steps and Key Techniques:
  1. Developed an Android-based research application to record user notifications and trigger questionnaires.
  2. Established notification sampling rules to ensure diversity and data integrity: notifications were sampled from various applications, and high-frequency app combinations were limited to construct a diverse research sample.
  3. Quantitative analysis: categorized notification types and ordering preferences, and analyzed notification characteristics (e.g., importance, urgency) using statistical models.
  4. Qualitative analysis: conducted thematic analysis of user interviews to uncover the deeper motivations behind ordering behaviors.

Research Findings

• Specific Findings:
  1. Classification System: Notifications were categorized into seven types, including “require immediate action,” “priority display but delayed action,” and “no display needed but requires action,” capturing the multifunctionality of notifications.
  2. Mismatch Phenomena: Three types of mismatches between display order and engagement order were identified:
     • Higher Displayed but Later Handled
     • Lower Displayed but Quickly Handled
     • Displayed but Not Handled
  3. Contextual Influence Analysis: Different contexts (e.g., location, activity) significantly influenced notification ordering strategies. For instance, users were more likely to prioritize reminder notifications at home, while social notifications were given higher priority outdoors.
• Advantages:
  Compared to current notification ordering mechanisms based on logical priority, the new classification system better aligns with users’ actual ordering needs, especially in multitasking and multi-context scenarios.
• Experimental Results:
  1. Nearly one-third of notifications were marked as “unnecessary to display,” indicating users’ strong demand for optimizing the current notification overload.
  2. Significant differences in ordering preferences were observed across notification categories. For example, instant messaging notifications were typically placed at the top, while tool-related notifications were often ignored.
• Limitations and Future Directions:
  1. The user sample was limited to young Android users in Taiwan, and the results may not generalize to other age groups or regions.
  2. Notification design was constrained to a one-dimensional vertical layout, which cannot fully support users’ complex needs. Future research should explore two-dimensional layouts or modular designs to enhance notification organization and multifunctionality.
  3. Further studies are recommended to investigate multi-device scenarios, such as notification synchronization between smartwatches and smartphones.

Design Recommendations

• Short-term Recommendations:
  1. Add a “Pin” feature to accommodate users’ preferences for specific notification positions.
  2. Provide manual drag-and-drop ordering functionality, allowing users to adjust notification order independently.
• Long-term Recommendations:
  1. Introduce two-dimensional layouts to support tab-based categorization and horizontal expansion.
  2. Offer intelligent sorting and filtering options, integrating users’ ordering habits and contextual information.
  3. Enable notification clustering and batch operations, allowing users to manage large volumes of notifications more efficiently.