Dark mode of push notifications: You are being tricked by the red dots on apps...

Open your phone and count how many apps have a red circular number in the upper right corner? Do they interfere with your daily life? Would you be annoyed by this? ) This article shared today will introduce you to push notifications with a "dark mode" halo, and discuss the future development through several cases.

Have you ever had a nightmare like this? In the dream, you drowned in a sea of ​​red circular notification numbers...

I once dreamt of such a scene, which made me think: What exactly is a push notification? Are they a kind of dark mode? This article will introduce you to the phenomenon of "pseudo push notifications" and share some thoughts on future design patterns.

What are push notifications?

As the name suggests, push notifications are a type of prompt that conveys information to users in various ways when the application is not in the foreground.

Since the popularization of smartphones, push notifications have undergone many small changes.

First of all, no matter big or small, apps are happy to push information to users. The push notifications you receive on your phone are no longer just phone calls and text messages, but also include game progress, Weibo updates, and even reminders urging you to complete the task of walking 10,000 steps a day. As you can imagine, these push notifications really come to you automatically.

Secondly, push notifications are presented in more diverse ways. There are unread digital prompts in the upper right corner of the App icon, text prompts that pop up at the top of the phone screen, special ringtone prompts, and of course, prompts from smart voice assistants.

In different ways, push notifications have penetrated into our daily lives and work, disrupting our attention from time to time.

Distracting users' attention is definitely not good for them. But for developers, this is their winning formula . After all, only in this way can we attract your attention.

Push notifications are a powerful tool for developers and UX designers. Because of its existence, it can cause psychological pressure on people. Users may click it out of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

It is no exaggeration to say that each of us has had this experience: when we see the red circular number in the upper right corner of the icon, we can't resist the urge to click it. Even if we know there won’t be any surprises after clicking it, we still can’t help but click it.

Previous push notifications were used to inform us of the information we needed. However, various developers are desperately trying to get users to participate in the interaction, and have turned push notifications into a "rat crossing the street" - a dark mode that is extremely manipulative and destructive ?

Dark mode in push notifications

Dark mode can be understood as a design technique that deceives or encourages users to participate in interactions without the users' active behavior.

Dark mode first appeared on the web, and many second- and third-rate websites have pop-up windows. It achieves its purpose by using small tricks to lure users to click and direct them to other irrelevant sites.

Image source: malwaretips.com

Today's dark modes are more prevalent and more complex. Many sites use seemingly innocuous methods (a small overlay "Subscribe" window that pops up when browsing the web) to attract users to enter their email addresses to subscribe.

But this still aroused the dislike of users, after all, users did not actively allow these dark modes to appear. Despite this problem, many companies still find this intermittent, low-end annoying model worth adopting, after all, everyone wants to gain more users.

There are actually quite a few users who understand and accept this statement. But if there are more creative elements, like in advertising, perhaps users will be more tolerant.

Dark mode push notification example

Many of the sites we use every day exploit our psychological weakness - our fear of losing things. Therefore, they use fake push notifications to promote marketing information, or when there is really no content to push, they come out to show their presence, let users remember it, and lure users to use their products.

LinkedIn

Log in to the LinkedIn homepage and you will see the following navigation bar:

“Hey, I have 7 notifications! (But… reactivate premium account? I don’t think I ever had a premium account – dark mode again, playing on my fear of loss)”

But when I clicked to view the notification, the content was completely irrelevant. What happens after clicking on this fake push notification:

• Reminders for updating other contacts’ personal information;
• Upgrade to premium account invitation to see who has viewed my profile;
• Browse job promotions.

LinkedIn’s fake push notifications

As a LinkedIn user, I find that when there are no new messages or invitations to connect, there are always "ads in sheep's clothing" in the notification bar. Only in this way can we spend more time on their website, jump back and forth between different pages, and complete more interactions.

Facebook

Speaking of Facebook, many of the push notifications we use today may have patents from it. In the past few years, Facebook has also learned to use fake push notifications to attract users.

Facebook Notifications Panel: These Notifications Are Not Notifications

How does Facebook work? The notifications it designs are relevant to the services you use. If you refresh the page and there is no real notification prompt (comments, likes, etc.), it will definitely recommend other content to you in the form of push notifications. For example, it can recommend you to review your Facebook activities , tell you how many consecutive days you have been active, or show you the number of visits to your personal page.

Twitter

On Twitter, if you don't have any notifications yourself, you'll be shown other people's notifications.

Twitter adopts a similar strategy, and its purpose is simple - it doesn't want the notification bar to become lonely.

If the system has no content to interact with users, it can only look for interaction information from other users to show off. In the Twitter example above, it tells me the activity of the accounts I follow (have all the notifications been upgraded to 2.0?)

Twitter also pushes this type of notification to the notification bar of your phone, allowing you to interact more with the App.

Increase daily/monthly active users at all costs

The cases of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are just three notable examples. In fact, this method has been gradually rolled out to sites in various industries.

Sites that use this type of push notifications must address these issues: Is your push notification based on the user's perspective or your own perspective? If it is based on a self-perspective, have the interests and needs of users been taken into consideration?

The advertising revenue of many websites depends on clicks . With push notifications, it is easy to "force" users to help solve the problems of clicks and revenue.

To be honest, this method does work. Sometimes, as users, we realize that we are being manipulated, but we still click.

From the perspective of the overall business environment, it seems that all competitors are doing this. When others are counting money until their hands cramp, if you still insist on your so-called principles and refuse to use such effective means, it may bring disaster.

However, then again, whether this method is really effective depends on the change in user attitudes .

As users, we’ve all experienced push fatigue to some degree. Personally, this kind of "aggressive" push notifications makes me want to give up or use the service less (but unfortunately, I can't seem to stop using Facebook).

As users learn to identify and avoid fake push notifications (just like avoiding ads), push notifications nowadays don’t attract as many users. In other words, it’s not as effective as it once was in terms of calling to action .

Moreover, if users take a more rigorous attitude towards push notifications, its development as a dark mode will be hindered, and it will also affect users' understanding and recognition of its brand.

From this perspective, we can understand it from another level: if someone’s push can be concise, elegant, without routine, and highly transparent , he or she may be the final winner?

Push notifications: the balance between technology and life

In the past, we always discussed the balance between work and life. Now, we can talk about the balance between technology and life.

The emergence of push notifications, a dark mode, makes us think: In the age of information explosion, we are "bombarded" with a large amount of information provided by various shameless service providers every day. How should we manage and control these so-called smart technologies?

Technology connects us to each other and improves the quality of our social and personal lives. But the emergence of push notifications also proves the negative impact of technology.

This brings us back to the question: We are in the 21st century, and the entire society is so developed, what does this mean for us humans?

Why should we really care about the value of being connected? What problems do we want technology to solve in the field of social relationships?

As we continue to explore these issues, we are always learning how to enjoy the benefits of new connectivity.

What the future holds

There is no doubt that technology companies have also noticed the issue of balance between technology and life, and this topic has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Perhaps, we can wait and see, Facebook will completely abandon fake push notifications through unknown means at some point in the future.

In the near future, I believe Facebook will be able to understand users’ needs and preferences for push notifications through machine learning. With this information input, the system can automatically push personalized content to me.

For example, if its algorithm finds that I often clear or ignore relevant push notifications about "going to a new city", its future iterations of the product may not push this type of information to me, or may push other types of information.

However, everything has two sides. At the moment, fake push notifications aren’t “smart” enough, but at least I can easily tell the real from the fake. But as machine learning advances, this information may become increasingly “intelligent” to the point where we can’t easily detect it.

As users, we should always be vigilant and be able to meet and initiate challenges at any time. As designers and developers, we must explore experiences that truly respect our users. After all, users are discerning, have bottom lines, and have personal dignity. Don't treat users as cheap tools to exchange for clicks.