Dismissed!: a detailed exploration of how mobile phone users handle push notifications

ABSTRACT

We analyzed 794,525 notifications from 278 mobile phone users and how they were handled. Our study advances prior analyses in two ways: first, we systematically split notifications into five categories, including a novel separation of messages into individual- and group messages. Second, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of the behaviors involved in attending the notifications. Our participants received a median number of 56 notifications per day, which does not indicate that the number of notifications has increased over the past years. We further show that messaging apps create most of the notifications, and that other types of notifications rarely lead to a conversion (rates between ca. 15 and 25%). A surprisingly large fraction of notifications is received while the phone is unlocked or the corresponding app is in foreground, hinting at possibility to optimize for this scenario. Finally, we show that the main difference in handling notifications is how long users leave them unattended if they will ultimately not consume them.

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