Facilitating Behavior Change with Mobile Notifications

Whether you're trying to get someone to exercise or get someone to shop at your store, you are asking for a user to modify their behavior. One of the most powerful tools for behavior modification these days is the smartphone, and more specifically the ability to trigger notifications on them. Notifications have had the ability to inspire delight or cause dread. Here's how to get it right.

In 2008, the CEO of the company I was working for urged everyone to create a twitter account. At first, I didn’t get it. “Why would I stop what I’m doing to post a text message to a bunch of people who may or may not care about what I have to say or what I’m doing?” I thought. For the first 3-4 months I tweeted a grand total of probably 3 times, inspired mostly because my coworkers were talking about Twitter or a specific tweet which caused me to feel guilty for not having used it in a while.

Then one day I heard about Twitterrific, an app that made it possible for me to use twitter without having to go to the website, and decided to give it a try. It was compact, semi-transparent, and it was native which felt like a better UX. It also had a feature where after I closed the window it would pop back up after a certain amount of time that I set so long as I had new tweets. It sounded like yet another way for an app or service to try and gain my attention so they can upsell me or get me to engage with their product so they could get another DAU, but I decided to give it a try anyway. In a matter of days the idea of tweeting was top of mind and I started posting several times a day.

Years later while doing some initial customer development for a new fitness app the team put sketched storyboards in front of customers to see how people reacted to the idea of getting notified when there were moments they could be active throughout their day. We were delighted (relieved!) to find that most of the people we interviewed actually smiled and in some cases even made their own sound effect (“Ding!”) when just seeing a sketch of a notification.

In world where we are overwhelmed with notifications from our smart devices and inboxes, what makes some of these messages delightful and others dreadful?

Ask yourself "who is this for really?"

A good notification is one where you are doing something for the user, instead of asking the user to do something for you. A reminder that its someone's birthday or that you have a coupon you forgot about in the store you just walked into are examples of enhancing a user's life with abilities or knowledge they wouldn't have had otherwise. But telling someone about a person they should be friends with in your app or that they should watch a video of a tornado tearing through a town is asking a user to do something for you.

With twitterrific, the app was reaching out to me only when I wanted it to, with content that was contextual and relevant. With our fitness app concept, users saw that the notifications were intended to find down times during their day and appreciated that the app would likely cause them to make healthier decisions.

When you ask a user to take time or energy out of their already busy day to do something for your benefit, your app (and even the smartphone entirely) are perceived as a net negative for the user and you lose the powerful impact it has on your user's behavior. If you don't use that tool properly, customers are likely to ignore, dismiss, or even turn your notifications off entirely, removing your ability to affect the change you desire.

Every app is in the business of behavior change whether they know it or not. Understanding the power of mobile notifications and how to use them effectively will go a long way to building a strong relationship with your users.