We use Teams at my organization. It started off great, especially with the GIF integration.
Well, let me clarify that. Once I turned off ALL the notifications, it was good. Literally all. 100% of notifications that could be turned off. 10/10 turned off. All of them.
Well now there are a bunch of notifications with no controls to turn off, and it's driving me nuts. I spend more time in teams clearing notifications that I don't want, don't need, and no one should have programmed to begin with, than I do chatting. I spent like 30 minutes typing this up, sourcing it, etc. That's how much catharsis I needed for the rage of this stupidity.
By my count, there are 4(!!!!!) different notification bars within the application, and then random full screen notification about random stuff, and still other ways to notify me of things I don't need to be notified about. I just cleared a double tap notification (back-to-back) about a new feature that wasn't even new!
Stop. The. Notifications. I don't care. I'm busy doing stuff and you are derailing my train of thought. I don't care what your justification is for the notifications. Stop. You are raping my attention span.
Notifications:
1. Full width top bar, usually white text on a black background.
2. Conversation/chat-width top bar, usually white text on a black background
3. Conversation/chat-width bottom bar, tells about out of office messages in a group chat. White text on a black background. You have to clear this notification every time you come back to the chat. Our chat usually has someone out of the office, so this one is especially annoying.
4. In-meeting notification about call controls. Ever. Single. Call. I don't care. We have multiple call programs here, stop telling me about it. You're taking up 5-15% of the screen real estate for something I've known about for a year.
5. Pop up notifications with an arrow pointing out new features
6. Full screen or large window-sized popups that dim the whole program.
7. Random post-meeting solicitation about feedback. No. Have a specific button somewhere to report feedback for a meeting/call. Not a notification.
"So that’s what days were like. A bunch of tiny frustrations, and a bunch of tiny successes. But they added up. Even something which seems like a tiny, inconsequential frustration affects your mood. Your emotions don’t seem to care about the magnitude of the event, only the quality.
And I started to learn that the days when I was happiest were the days with lots of small successes and few small frustrations."
Joel Spolsky, https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/24/user-interface-design-for-programmers/, https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/10/controlling-your-environment-makes-you-happy/, emphasis mine
"Notifications are anti UX. They are a distraction. So how to design your notification so that it becomes purposeful and useful?"
https://uxplanet.org/how-to-design-notifications-for-better-ux-6fb0711be54d
emphasis mine
I came up with a joke recently, sparked by my use of Teams. It goes like this:
"How do you know if software was made by a millenial?
Don't worry, it will notify you!"
I'm a millenial, and this joke is based on a similar one about vegans.
I don't want your notifications. Turn them off, or let me turn them off.
