Notification Guilt: The Anxiety of Unread Messages

Nowadays, everything is connected, one click away and available at all times. While such technologies are amazing and allows humanity to advance to unprecedented frontiers, it also creates hurdles and issues along the way. In fact, it became quite common to be constantly disturbed by notifications on a daily basis, either through waking up to an inbox with over 200 e-mails or receiving a text message alert at 2 in the morning.

These situations create what it is called "Notification Guilt", which is any kind of emotional discomfort users face when receiving persistent alerts, unread messages and any type of unresolved related issues. Notifications created new boundaries and an entire new social/psychological environment to be analyzed. As a matter of fact, it became the norm for all individuals whom are involved with digital products and communication.

What Can Cause Notification Guilt

There are many factors that contributed to such maligned effect to appear, including poor design prioritization, information overload and social expectations that come out of such feature. Let's dive a little deeper into some design patterns that are a little bit problematic:

• Badge Count - The amount of notifications represented by a badge helps to notify the user of the situation, but it can also trigger anxiety by creating an unnecessary sense of urgency. This usually happens when using really contrasting colors, such as red. Also, there is no prioritization on whether the messages are urgent or not. In cases where there are a lot of messages, the number on the badge can create severe user overload.

• Read Receipts - There is nothing worse than accidentally opening a chat conversation and not being to respond to that person at that moment. The possibility of learning the other user status regarding all interactions creates a complex social dynamic, where not responding or anything similar can be seen as rude.

• Persistent Pop-ups - The amount of notifications an app emits can significantly impact its approval and satisfaction rate. Big amounts of notifications can be annoying, unnecessary and stress inflicting.

• Lack of more global controls - When dealing with large sample-sizes of messaging, not having the ability to easily mark all as read, or delete all, or anything similar can be quite detrimental. Navigating through thousands of notifications can be an overwhelming experience and immensely impact the user.

The designs patterns presented have been evolving throughout time, and it will continually emerge new trends and aspects that will cause guilt on the users. However, central to all those questions will always be the nature of human interaction and psychology.

Psychological Tendencies Behind it

Psychology has many different theories and specialist that can explain the notifications guilt effect over the human mind. However, here it's going to be focused on the main ones, such as:

• Zeigarnik Effect - Discovered around the 1920s by the psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, the effect it is described as humans tend to remember incomplete or interrupted tasks more than completed ones. In fact, unread or incomplete elements create a much bigger reaction on the brain, causing a cognitive itch. Where users’ brains feel overloaded by the amount of information and stimulations it is being displayed. This is felt, for example, when a user checks their phone and there is a WhatsApp notification mentioning the user has over 200 unread messages.

• FOMO - Or commonly known as fear of missing out, it has many different theories behind it, including 2 quite socially opposite theories such as Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and Social Comparison Theory. SDT implies that there are 3 main pillars of social motivation, one of them being relatedness or feeling connected to others. This implies that when relatedness is threatened or there is a disconnected between a person and their social group – they are failing their relationships, therefore, creating user anxiety. This is commonly seen as users feel bad for being more absent, not responding to messages or even going through trouble just to answer or check a notification. Opposite to that, social comparison theory approaches a more competitive side, where people evaluate their worth based on comparisons with others. Which, feeling left behind, is one of the worst possible outcomes, inducing users to neurotically try to keep up with all notifications and latest news.

How to Approach Notification Design

Understanding the psychology behind it is essential, but more importantly it is to execute the design accordingly, trying to incorporate the concepts and analysis into tangible design principles. There are 3 main aspects to consider when designing notifications–User control and customization; calm design incorporation (only necessary visual communication, focusing on the user well-being); and build for mental hygiene. With this in mind, let's tackle some of the major issues:

• Too many alerts and overstimulation - Notification customization is key here. It is possible to have granular settings, where only determined types of notifications gets alerted or have badges. Any kind of batching, snoozing or even muting contacts/chats/groups are essential to avoid user overstimulation, as it creates a unique experience that fits the user rhythm and flow. In this case, it would also be wise to consider introducing calm design and mental hygiene elements to the design, such as subtle animations and non-intrusive badges, as well as less contrasting and buzzing coloring. It is important to have in mind that there is a fine line between overstimulation and not creating minimal prioritization hierarchy on the design.

• Guilt from unread badges - In order to tackle this, the user needs to be able to batch commands for larger amounts of notifications (e.g. mark all as read), as well as having a more neutral, but still relevant badge design. In fact, it might even remove the badge all together, while focusing on a simpler notification status.

• Silence shame - With the enormous amount of notifications displayed on an hourly basis for all users, it needs to be normalized the need for silence. It is vital that users can use focus modes and snooze/silence notifications when desired, while avoiding social pressure language on the interface and alerts. Designers should encourage users to take breaks, rather than urgency, in those situations.

Conclusion

Design is centered around the interaction between humans and the digital realm. By recognizing users’ limitations and processing in this new digital dynamic, it is possible to design more appropriate and beneficial products that will only increase company value.

To reduce notification guilt is not necessarily to reduce digital engagement, but rather to create better and more effective engagement on the basis of care for the users. Empathetic and trustable design.