🔔 Does there always have to be a notification?

I often catch myself thinking about whether "now" would be a good time to send a message to someone on WhatsApp for example.

As far as I'm aware, WhatsApp doesn't have a scheduled send, like slack for example, but that's not really aligned with my thinking anyway.

Let's start out with a bit of context:

Context

When I send a message to a friend, or family member, or even into a group chat, I disturb the receiver. They get a vibration on their smart-watch, or in their pocket, and even some will get an audible notification.

This is disturbing for people around the recipient as well the recipient themselves.

This is entirely by design, I’m convinced, as to grab more attention of the recipient and have them interact with your service more. It also triggers a psychological effect that encourages them to pick up their phone, or turn their wrist to check who is trying to contact them, and what they want etc.

But what if I don't want them to be disturbed. What if they are having a nap, or in a meeting or having some quiet time, or even in the car. I can think of a lot of moments when I wish I hadn't been notified about that particular message.

As it makes me feel anxious to receive that message, could I, as a sender, have more control over the recipient's psychological response?

☑️ Existing solutions

Focus Modes (iOS)

On my iPhone, I have 2 focus modes set up. One is Do Not Disturb, and the other is Sleep.

Do Not Disturb, I find myself rarely using and in theory, it blocks all notifications. As I'm a sucker for the Apple Ecosystem, I also have a MacBook and an Apple Watch and find myself only using Do Not Disturb to give me some focus time at work, or when I'm presenting, stopping the endless slack notifications, or native Outlook notifications. It's quite good and really just does what it says on the tin. But it also feels somewhat passive-aggressive. "Leave me alone".

Sleep is more friendly in my opinion, and I've set it up so that it blocks all notifications from anyone, except my wife. She gets the keys to my haptic engine, and she is the only one who can wake me from my slumber. Sleep focus turns itself on when I go to bed and disables itself when I wake up. Makes sense. I also manually toggle it on and off when I'm having a nap for example. It serves the purpose. However, it's still me that is deciding "All messages are not important" or "Everything is important". There's no context to the content of the message.

Notification Summary

This is not a feature I use often except for perhaps LinkedIn notifications, or other more mundane things that I can check up on at the end of my day. I understand this feature will collect all relevant notifications and hide them from view until such a time as I am mentally prepared (usually at a set time in the afternoon/evening).

This, however, classifies these notifications as somewhat meaningless. If I didn't need to know about it at the time, then do I really need to know about it now?

iMessage

iMessage has this feature that will show me, the sender, if the person I'm sending a message to has a focus mode enabled. For example, if they have their phone set to Do Not Disturb, it shows that before sending a message. This at least will give me more information and help me decide if I do indeed want to send the message.

Notification Saturation

As mentioned above, I have an Apple Watch. I charge it for an hour or so before bed, wear it to sleep, it wakes me up and it grabs my attention throughout the day with a light tap on the wrist for each notification.

I know people think this is distracting, and even rude if I look to see a notification saying telling me Deliveroo are offering me free delivery on something I don't want, when I should be engaged in conversation with the person sat opposite me.

Apps will always be trying to get you to open the app, trying to be at the forefront of your mind and get as much screentime, or orders out of you as possible. That's always going to be the case.

What If...

What if I wanted to let me wife know I'd made it home safe without risking waking her up. Sure, she could be waiting for a message from me, but she may have also fallen asleep and waking her up seems in-humane.

What if I had a dinner suggestion to a group of friends that came to me at 3am and I wanted to suggest it, but didn't want to disturb anyone.

What if I knew that my father was on a long drive and I wanted to share something with him, but certainly didn't want him to be distracted by the notification whilst he was meant to be concentrating on the road?

The Silent Send...?

I think I'd greatly appreciate the ability to send a message silently. Meaning, I decide if the recipient is notified about my message.

I think it would also be important to mark that a message you've received was also sent silently. A visual marker in the green bubble, or something similar would be great. That way you could tell why you weren't notified about that particular message.

I could silently tell my wife that I'll be home an hour later without risking waking her up. She might wake and wonder where I am but would be reassured when she looked to see if there was a message and in fact there was. But she may also sleep through and not even notice I'd come in an hour later. Win Win.

I could silently recommend Joan, an Italian tapas bar to my group of friends for dinner the following night but not wake everyone up.

I could remind my father the code to the garage without him having to take his eyes off the road, and when he got to the garage and perhaps realised he'd forgotten the code, he'd see that there was a message, silently awaiting him.

Bottom line

I want less distraction from my phone and watch. Sure, I could not wear my watch, but that's another thread.

I want to decide if my message is worth disturbing others, or if it's not.