The Do Not Disturb Challenge: A Day Without Notifications

Abstract

We asked 12 people to disable notification alerts for 24 hours on all computing devices. We collected data through open post-hoc interviews and analyzed the qualitative data using Open Coding. The participants showed very strong and polarized opinions towards notification alerts. During work, some participants felt less stressed and more productive thanks to not being interrupted, however outside of the work context, some became stressed and anxious because they were afraid of missing important information and violating expectations of others. This is the first holistic approach to notifications studying their effect across services, devises and work and private life. In contrast to previous studies, some participants acted upon the positive experiences and turned notifications of some applications off.