Notification Display Choice for Smartphone Users: Investigating the Impact of Notification Displays on a Typing Task

Notification displays have the potential to make smartphone notifications easier to manage when a user is committed to a primary task. The authors investigate the impact of negotiating notifications with six notification displays on a typing task. The results from their lab experiment with 30 participants show that desktop pop-ups were preferred significantly most, the display choice that required the fewest actions to read notifications, and the most actions to respond. The notification bar was least preferred, which required the most actions to read a notification, and the fewest actions to respond. This work is a well-controlled pre-cursor to the application of notification displays in social scenarios. The results motivate the use of external notification displays to manage attention around a smartphone.