Notifications are incredibly powerful, capable of both elevating and sinking the best of products. Their effectiveness depends on so many variables: relevance, delivery mechanism, timing, phrasing, and so much more! For the past seven years, I have worked on a product that delivers real-time notifications to physicians while they are busy taking care of patients. Given the well-known problem of alert fatigue in the high stakes healthcare delivery environment, my team has had to come up with creative ways of classifying, tuning, and even disguising these notifications, turning the “slap on the wrist” into an award-winning aid that is welcomed by physicians. I believe that our approach can be applied to other contexts, and I would like to share what we’ve learned in this talk.
